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Presented by Bertrand Goldberg at the seminar on “Architectural Aspects of Edmonton Civic Centre Plan”
September 27, 1959

Marina City Lecture: Part One

There is another inroad that has been make by our Anti-Scientific group on definitions of health. Health may be freedom from care as readily as it may be freedom from city smoke. Health may be freedom from the heart attacks that are produced by lawnmowers and health may be the result of reasonably controlled temperature summer and winter, reasonably controlled sanitation and reasonably controlled physical amenities, such as hot water. It is not always necessary to think of health as that condition of mankind which proceeds from the barbecue on the suburban lawn.

The Anti-Scientists have also established beyond question the need for mental stimulation in a man's environment. There has come a creeping doubt in the minds of planners as to whether all men are happy in the rigid level contours of suburban environment.

The kinetics of urban environment are intriguing. We do not yet know whether the sense of movement is necessary to all men. Certainly all men love to live at least a portion of their lives with and amidst the movement of ideas, amidst a movement of cultural experience and amidst something so simple as the movement of lights which occur during the 24-hour day in the city.

The Anti-Scientists in City Planning have not yet used such words as the "mystique" of the city, but there is a magic to the city which has not been accounted for by any planner. It accounts for the fact that 50% of urban growth is comprised of influx of country boys.

There is a new return of the ex-urbanite, which is still unmeasured, but which we know to be substantial.

Neither of these groups knows any better. Neither of these groups knows that for almost a century now life in the country, life in the suburbs was supposed to be far superior to Central City, and yet the movement toward the Center continues.

There is an apparent need for men to become a part of their productive environment.

We are beginning to realize that men cannot become disconnected from their environment. We are beginning to realize that the separation of man into a production machine and into a well-analyzed group of conditioned reflexes cannot produce a city plan. Correspondingly, we recognize that a city plan that does not take into consideration the total man and his total environment will produce an unnatural city.

There is an economic problem in planning that we will discuss before we look at the city of the future.

Several weeks ago, I had the experience of walking down Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. I was overwhelmed by the blind "Curtainwalledness" of the entire area and amazed at the reshaping of Park Avenue.

Apartment buildings are being town down and replaced by offices. Briefly, this is the real estate man's answer to need for additional income. Space, which as apartments is returning $3 a square foot, is being replaced by space, which as offices, is returning $8 a square foot - very simple mathematics.

In addition to the rebuilding of Park Avenue as an office area, Grand Central Station is being rebuilt with a new population of 25,000 office workers.

There is obviously enough money in New York to provide the additional subway facilities, the additional utilities, the streets, the sewer, the water supply for this new and highly concentrated daytime population.

But there is another factor which will have to enter this planning. A 24-hour day population is being replaced by a 7-hour per day population for a period of only a 5-day week.

Our growth of leisure time results in two by-products: One, we are most familiar with: More time to devote to leisure activities; the second by-product is the idle standby time of our specialized areas of offices, factories, and urban services, public transportation, streets, sewers, water supply lines, generating facilities, gas lines, a police force, a fire department.

We are replacing in New York the historical natural-city growth plan, the "unplanned plan" if you wish, with a specialized plan. We are saying that the Victorian hangover of our 19th Century scientific solutions causes us to put offices here, people there, factories there without relationship to the length of time we can use our capital investment in those facilities.

There is no type of specialized working unit which by itself can support the high cost of Center City, and there is no housing unit which by itself can support these costs on a part-time basis.

There is an imperative to our future planning which we have caused by our taxes and our investments. It will be necessary to have combined activities of housing, of recreation, and of work to carry this tax load and the investment in our urban services if our center cities are to survive.

The tax imperative states that we must restore our use of urban environment to the 24-hour day, 7-days per week-both summer and winter.

This is what William L. McFetridge was thinking in Chicago when he said: "Let's build a city within a city where most of our members hold their jobs. Let us bring people back to live in the Center Cities of America. But let us provide for them as a way of living, a complete life."

What I have been describing so far has been the introspection which came about when you asked me to tell the story of what we were designing at Marina City. This is the story of the boy with his hand in the cookie jar-with his mouth full, who was trying to explain how he got there. All of this thinking, all of these thought processes, all of this philosophy has somehow dribbled into the consciousness of the architect. Marina City was not designed with these paragraphs before me.

Marina City was already designed - I was asked to explain it, and in order to explain it, it seems to me that I have had to explain much of the present thinking which I hope certainly has become a part of not only my own subconscious, but of every productive person in the fields which touch our economic planning.

So now, let us examine the design of Marina City, and let us see if the design of Marina City belongs to the environment of today's thinking.

The space in which Marina City is located, as you can see from the slide, is in a forest of high buildings. Marina City, itself, will occupy almost a square block between State Street and Dearborn Street on the north bank of the river.

This is Marina City. Here in Marina City, we have completely eliminated the concept of the street. We have created a plaza in the best European classical sense of the city square, and on the plaza we have erected five interrelated buildings.

The plaza in itself marks the disappearance of the corridor street. The plaza becomes the open platform on which automobiles and people, alternately passengers and pedestrians can wander as they choose. Also, in terms of space here in Marina City, we have done what few cathedrals in Europe are able to do. We have reached out for a piece of vertical space, which is so thrilling to men everywhere.

I mention five buildings contained within this indefinable space. The buildings consist of a commercial platform constructed of concrete post and beam system which covers the entire three acres of property. This lower building contains of the going and the coming - the commerce, the health club, the package room, the lobby, the restaurant, the marina for the storage of 700 boats, and indeed the boat slips themselves with the water penetrating 75 feet into the interior of the building. The second and third buildings are the residential towers built of concrete around cores 35' diameter and 600' high surmounting the garage by 20 stories. The fourth building is the theatre building with a catenary roof stretched on a concrete frame. This is the Marina City Center - the building which will attract the immediate attention of the pedestrian. And, finally, the fifth building is the office block constructed on bearing concrete mullions which form a background and a fence to mark off the end of Marina City and protect Marina City from the inroads of the yet undeveloped areas to the north.

Marina City at night is a lighted city. The question of the difference of appearance between daytime and nighttime is an important design factor for urban centers-not so much for the suburbs, not so much for the countryside. But in town where people will live with a structure 24 hours a day, the difference in appearance between the structure summer and winter and day and night becomes a thing of tremendous importance.

Architects are always discussing "scale" - the relationship between the human and the building which surrounds him.