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page130from Nordic Architects Writes
Still the magnitude of today’s catastrophe
makes speed once again a vital consideration. Therefore, it is up to us to
create a system where the restrictions of time will receive an equal
consideration with such other factors as the satisfaction of biological needs
and the need for permanency. But the desire for speed in construction must not
receive such an emphasis as to eclipse the other two factors and bring back the
barrack-shelter situation.
To satisfy the need for human shelter in an
organic way we must first of all devise a shelter which will provide the
essentials of protection for the individual family and for the community. At
the same time it should be possible for this shelter to develop, step by step,
with the social group.
In
the present situation there is immediate need for an elementary human shelter
that can be produced in large quantities. But at the same time, the permanent
character of human life requires that such shelters should be a nature that
they may be developed into shelters on a higher level – that is to say, be
turned into “homes”.
Therefore,
our problem today must envisage three factors, each of which must receive equal
consideration. Our problem demands:
Speed
of construction;
Satisfaction
of biological needs;
Construction
which will envisage a degree of permanency.
By
this last feature, permanency, we should understand a possibility of expansion
in step with the needs of a developing society – a system of construction that
would not require demolition and reconstruction with each step in the progress
of the communal unit.
The prime objective then should be a
building system which would provide a community, first, the most elementary
protection and then gradually more and more fully developed forms of human
dwellings. Our ideal should be a “growing house” so constructed that higher
levels of the living standard can be reached and developed without the
destruction of any part of the first elementary constructions or the elementary
communal skeleton first worked out.
This
means we should give the people, first all, walls, a roof, and a primitive
system of ordinary services. In the next step the construction will be
developed to a higher degree. This procedure should be maintained until the
house, in the final building period, will have reached the quality of a
complete human “home”.
Different
forms of utilities should follow the same line of development; for example,
first, a primitive type of temporary heating system, then later a more fully
developed one. Other supply services which in the primitive stage will be
collective for the sake of economy or facility of construction, will later be
worked out on a private or individual basis. Sanitary equipment, especially,
will follow this line: the first phase of hygienic convenience will be
established on a collective basis and later on the basis of a smaller social
unit such as the family.
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