ATHENS CHARTER (1943)

The “Athens Charter” was the name given by Le Corbusier to his version of the results of
the fourth congress (1933) of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne
(CIAM). This congress was organized on the theme of the “Functional City,” a concept
developed in part by the Dutch town planner Cornelis van Eesteren, who became
president of CIAM in 1930. In contrast to what he called the “cardboard architecture” of
classical urbanism, van Eesteren and other CIAM members advocated an approach to city
planning based on the most rational siting of functional elements, such as workplaces and
transportation centers. This idea was linked to the belief that city planning should be
based on the creation of separate zones for each of the “four functions” of dwelling,
work, recreation, and transportation. At the fourth congress, held on a cruise ship
traveling from Marseilles to Athens and back in July-August 1933, CIAM members from
Eastern and Western Europe analyzed the samescale plans of 33 existing cities prepared
by CIAM members according to guidelines developed by the Dutch CIAM group. At the
Entries A–F 155
end of the congress, the CIAM members present had planned to draw conclusions from
these analyses and to issue resolutions about how cities should be reorganized according
to CIAM principles. Disagreements over whether CIAM should call for the expropriation
of existing property for such a reorganization and over Le Corbusier and others’
promotion of high-rise housing delayed the issuing of these resolutions. In the fall of
1933, the congress instead published what it termed preliminary Cons tatations (Observations) in
French and Fes tellungen (Findings) in German.
In both the French and the German versions, which were not completely consistent
with each other, the text emphasized that cities are part of an economic, social, and
political system. Under “Dwelling,” CIAM found that population densities were typically
too high in historic centers and that open spaces were lacking. It demanded that housing
districts should occupy the best sites and that a minimum amount of solar exposure
should be required in all dwellings. For hygienic reasons, CIAM asserted that buildings
should not be built along transportation routes and that modern techniques should be used
to construct high apartment buildings widely spaced apart to free the soil for large green
parks. Under “Leisure,” CIAM found that existing open areas were generally insufficient
for recreation or not well situated to benefit the inhabitants of dense central areas. It
called for the demolition of these central areas so that they could be turned into green
spaces, with schools and other collective facilities sited in them. Under “Work,” CIAM
found that the relationship between dwelling and places of work was not rational, as it
usually required long commutes. It determined that travel distances should be reduced to
a minimum and called for the separation of industrial quarters from housing, buffered by
a neutral zone of green areas and sports fields.
Under “Transportation,” CIAM found that most cities had street patterns that had
become unsuitable for modern means of transportation, such as streetcars and
automobiles. It proposed that rigorous statistical methods be used to establish rational
street widths, classified according to the speed of different modes of transport. Under
“Historic Districts of the City,” CIAM stated that historic monuments should be
respected when they “are a pure expression of previous cultures and are of general
interest” and when their conservation did not mean that their inhabitants had to live in
unhealthy conditions.
In the Cons tatations , CIAM concluded that the chaotic conditions of present cities do not
correspond to the “primordial bio-logical and psychological necessities of the
population.” It declared that the city should be organized according to the four functions
and that city plans should conform with these biological and psychological needs. CIAM
also emphasized that urbanism was “a three-dimensional science” and that the “element
of height” could be used to solve traffic problems and efficiently create green spaces for
leisure.
Le Corbusier’s La charte d’Athènes , published in Paris in 1943, is an expanded version of the Cons tatations that was
published in various European journals in 1933 and later. Le Corbusier began to call the
results of the fourth congress “La charte d’Athènes” in his “Pavilion des Temps
Nouveaux” at the 1937 Paris Exposition. In 1941, while serving on an urbanism
commission of the Nazi-controlled Vichy government, he began to prepare a new
publication of the Cons tatations . By November 1941, as Vichy officials grew increasingly hostile to
him, he decided to publish the Athens Charter anonymously. He also established a new
French CIAM group, ASCORAL (Assemblée de Constructeurs pour une Renovation
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 156
Architecturale), which began to issue a series of publications on urbanism in anticipation
of postwar reconstruction. One of these publications, authored by “CIAM-France” (later
Le Corbusier), was La charte d’Athènes .
Although the book was based on the Cons tatations issued after the fourth congress, the immediate
inspiration for it had been Le Corbusier’s involvement with the reconstruction committee
in Vichy, where it was intended to provide a basis for legislation governing postwar
reconstruction. By publishing it with its 1941 introduction by Jean Giraudoux, the book
linked Le Corbusier and ASCORAL to the pre-Vichy era and paved the way for its
acceptance by the government after liberation. Although the text maintains the same
sectional headings (the four functions and the “Historic Districts of the City”) as the
original 1933 Cons tatations , much new material was added, and existing points were significantly
modified. For example, the first point on the city in the original text is expanded into an
eight-point section called “The City and Its Region” in the Athens Charter, and what had
been simply termed “Summing Up” is retitled the more directive “Points of Doctrine.”
Without Le Corbusier and his associates’ urban plans, which are the text’s absent
illustrations, the Athens Charter is less clear than the terse 1933 CIAM Cons tatations , and it often
reads as a series of platitudes. Nevertheless, it was widely referred to in postwar Europe
as the key text of the urbanism of the Modern movement. Later, it became the focus of
much of the Postmodernist reaction against this brand of urbanism.