page_title: Havana Plan Piloto
section_title: The Athens charter
hierarchical_section_title: Havana Plan Piloto / CIAM / The Athens charter
caption_attribution_description: Vista aérea da Esplanada dos Ministérios em Brasília. Foto: Geraldo Magela/Agência Senado
context_page_description: The Havana Plan Piloto was a 1955-1958 urban proposal by Town Planning Associates which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, the Catalan architect Josep Lluis Sert, Seely Stevenson of Value & Knecht, Consulting Engineers seeking to combine "architecture, planning, and law," in a project heavily influenced by the politics of Fulgencio Batista which in turn were dictated by his involvement with the American Mafia and their desire to augment United States tourism, and thru his architects, the modernist principles of CIAM and the Athens Charter. The Charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the in SS Patris II bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy "Architects' Congress." The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, thru Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, on the proposed modernization of Havana and in the effort erase all vestiges of the 16th-century city.
context_section_description: The Athens Charter became a new administration for urban areas defining the city as composed of four functions—residential, entertainment,  labor, and transportation—each function was assigned its own sector and a prescribed architectural solution. The Athens Charter emphasized the interrelation between the city and its political, economic, social, and physical structures. Regarding housing, for instance, architects and planners observed that populations were compressed into unsuitable areas in the cities and required planned residential sectors oriented towards nature. In addition, the charter situated the city to the greater region, to economic demands, and to political and social requirements.
  The Athens Charter (French: Charte d'Athènes) was a 1933 document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The work was based upon Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse (the Radiant City) book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the early 1930s.La ville radieuse.
  The Charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the in SS Patris II bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: "Architects' Congress."  
  The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II.
   The observations taken from the studies of 33 cities set guidelines under the titles: living, working, recreation and circulation.
  CIAM demanded that housing districts should occupy the best sites, and a minimum amount of solar exposure should be required in all dwellings. For hygienic reasons, buildings should not be built along transportation routes, and modern techniques should be used to construct high apartment buildings with wide spaces in between to free the ground for parks.
  -Mumford, 2000, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960, The MIT Press, p85
  Additionally, they said it was important to reduce commuting times by locating industrial zones close to residential ones and buffering them with wide parks and sports areas. Street widths and requirements should be scientifically worked out to accommodate the speed and type of transport. Finally, with regards to conservation, historic monuments should be kept only when they were of true value and their conservation did not reduce their inhabitants to unhealthy living conditions.
  The observations formed the basis of Josep Lluís Sert's book Can our cities survive? and were incorporated in Le Corbusier's Athens Charter published in 1943. The resolutions formed part of Le Corbusier's book The Radiant City published in 1935.
  The text of the Athens Charter as published became an extension of the content of The Radiant City and Le Corbusier significantly re-worded the original observations. As well as adding new material he also removed the urban plans upon which the original text was based. This treatment made the Athens Charter an abstract text of general value but also transformed the original force of the observations that were founded before on concrete references. Despite its title, the Athens Charter cannot be considered as the mutual outcome of the CIAM conference, which took place ten years earlier, but largely as an expression of Le Corbusier's individual concerns.
caption: Design of Brasília – influenced by The Athens Charter
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3S", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "PhotoScape", "Image DateTime": "2012:10:18 08:39:05", "Image Artist": "", "Image WhitePoint": "[313/1000, 329/1000]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[16/25, 33/100, 21/100, 71/100, 3/20, 3/50]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[299/1000, 587/1000, 57/500]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "452", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "33076", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/2000", "EXIF FNumber": "71/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "500", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:10:18 08:39:05", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:10:18 08:39:05", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "1", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "17", "EXIF SubSecTime": "57", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "57", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "57", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2784", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1848", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R03", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "33046", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "153/100", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "25", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Gamma": "11/5"}