Epic Failure

Architizer News

Epic Failure

July 13, 2010

What can we learn from the enormous failed architecture projects like Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, the infamous housing project of 33 eleven-story buildings, mercifully demolished in 1972?

Pruitt-Igoe wasn’t a specific structural failure, like the 1981 Hyatt Regency Collapse in Kansas City that took 114 lives, but instead failed because of skip-stop elevators, dark, isolated hallways, and above all a lack of ownership over the space, which isn’t surprising when you have 10,000 people stacked on top of each other in cold, soulless buildings. A project of this scale would have never worked—one can’t pretend that one small area of the St. Louis is Manhattan.

So it gives us a history-induced case of the butterflies to consider the top 10 largest projects in the world, recently published in Engineering News-Record. Dubai is still booming (can’t wait for the $64 million Dubailand!) as is China, Abu Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Or so it seems: in Dubai, ghost towns have popped up and 25% of offices are still unoccupied. Could these developments be future Pruitt-Igoes, waiting to be put out of their misery?

Let’s take a closer look at some architectural lessons gleaned from St. Louis to the deserts of the Middle East. Grand visions, they became epic failures to serve as examples of what not to do.

Pruitt-Igoe housing development, St. Louis

Pruitt-Igoe housing development was built in St. Louis, Missouri in 1955 by Minoru Yamasaki (architect of the World Trade Center). As we can see in the sequence of the film Koyannisqatsi (below), it’s not a cheerful place. This is the dramatic demise of Pruit-Igoe in motion. Historians called this demolition the symbolic — if not literal — “Death of Modernism.”

Lesson: Don’t build big, unnecessarily.

PruittIgoe

Palm Jumeriah, Dubai

David Beckham bought a mansion there. The island is shaped like a tree. What’s not to love? Rumor has it that the city’s trademark development is sinking into the ocean, and cockroaches come out of the faucets. It seems that quality details weren’t part of the plan and debt-ridden residents are fleeing, leaving a possible ghost town. But, even if it does succeed, it’s still a freakin’ tree-island!

Lesson: Don’t overcharge for shoddy work.

Palm

Palm2

Palm Jumeriah, Dubai, United Arab Emirates via Real Estate Webmasters and ekosedanepura

Penn Station, New York

Pennsylvania Station is an epic failure, more for what it lost than what it is. Impressively, Madison Square Garden stands on top of Penn Station, a vast system of subways and trains leading to and from Manhattan. Unfortunately the arena on top was formerly the grand beaux-arts Pennsylvania Station, designed by McKim, Mead and White as a huge Greek temple with iron and glass framework. It was one of the largest indoor structures in the world at the time. Now, only the underground tunnels and stations remain.

Lesson: Think twice, or sixteen times, before demolishing a city center. New York City learned that lesson the hard way (though the Landmarks Preservation Commission was established as a result).

Pennold