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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

I would like to discuss for a moment the automobile storage space. We have used our automobile garage building budget to elevate the apartments above the noise and dirt of the streets. Then by the careful planning of the commercial areas - swimming pool and service areas below the plaza - we have managed to create a feeling of openness and expansiveness at the pedestrian plaza level.

The commercial building has been designed as a backstop to our residential towers. Here again, we have continued our use of concrete as a materiel relating the office building to the residential towers through the use of a single material. We have designed our office building wall as a texture, rather than as a revelation of the special structural system. The office building as you remember shelters the project from the undeveloped area lying to the north.

The theatre building is the building which will be seen in terms of greatest intimacy by the approaching pedestrian or passenger. This is a building which in its scale of forms we have retained personal intimacy and suggestion of masculinity. We hope that there is a physical quality to the design of the theatre, which will relate the onlooker to the composition as a whole.

The next slide shows the curious relationship of the structure of the theatre tot he physical structure of an arm. Where the exterior concrete frame of the theatre touches the ground, we have the elbow. At the extreme cantilevered reaching end, we have the hand. And high up, we have the shoulder. The roof is slung by means of catenary cables between the hand and the shoulder. The seats, the gallery, is supported along the concrete arm itself.

We have used many devices to relate the theatre form to the pedestrian. We have mentioned the masculinity of the form, we have mentioned the physical quality of the form. A third relationship is in the slope of the theatre overhang. This is identical to the slope of the automobile ramp, and will relate these complex buildings one to the other.

The next slide shows the rear of the theatre which will be the Dearborn Street frontage. Here you may see the shoulder muscles which are holding the shoulder down to the ground and which keep the structure from tipping over around its elbow.

Marina City is the microcosm of the city. It is a total urban center. A total environment. It is a way for people - some people - to live and a necessity certainly if Center City is to survive.

Marina City has been called revolutionary, but I do not believe along with Corbusier that things are revolutionized by making revolutions. The revolution lies in the solution of existing problems.

The Central City Plan

City Planners are usually the last people to arrive at the ideas of their time. After the idea has jelled, after the demand for a living pattern has been clearly expressed by the "consumer market," the planner uses the idea. And this goes for the banker who finances the plan.

This procedure of the planner bringing up the rear with the help of the banker is in the great scheme of things, proper. The states are too great, both in terms of human life and money to allow the planner more than the role of showing the public the ideas which it has already accepted.

The England of the early 19th Century had already enthusiastically undertaken the idea of industrialization when the planners first began to place the houses around the factory. Later in the Century, the ideas of Ruskin and Morris had already been put on wallpaper when the planners used these same ideas for the "garden city."

Our plans for the ideal residential community, the suburban community, separating the city from the country, have their roots in the scientific planning of more than 80 years ago. And the plan for the high-rise city apartment surrounded by an expanse of unusable, unwalkable, green grass belongs to the concepts of organized urban society dating back 40 years.

We acknowledge that we follow "precedent" as planners - but for bankers who expect the economic life of a project to extend through the next two generations, it is important to know we are following this year's "precedent," and not the one which is already downgrading last year's projects.

There is a new "precedent" in this year's planning: in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston; in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit; in Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans; in Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco - there is a new plan. The new plan is to make the Central City habitable.

The new plan has economic roots. We wish to save our investments. But the new plan has human roots. People like to live closely and enjoy the work and the play which is the byproduct of high density living.

If you could take a giant cookie cutter and take out a section of Chicago's Loop, take all the human activities whereby people express themselves throughout a 24-hour day, and reshape this cookie into a vertical pattern to occupy a square block - if you could do this, you would have the Marina City plans.

Marina City is a mirror of the city:

  1. High density living (300 families per acre)
  2. Working space (180,00 square feet of office
  3. Recreation (boating, swimming, skating, gymnasium, bowling, walking, parks, movies, meeting hall)
  4. Service (restaurant, shops, automobile parking, transportation)

Marina City is a plan for a 24-hour living, which no tenant could afford on less than a 24-hour basis. This means that the facilities for living pleasure offered by Marina City cannot be supported by a commuting population, or a weekend population. And if housing is something more than just shelter and running water, the new housing must provide the background for the leisure time which our work patterns are giving us.

"Urban Renewal" plans have already established a concept of rebuilding an entire cross section of our urban life. We rebuild houses, shops and work space.

But beyond "Urban Renewal," there is an established market, a voiced demand and a public consciousness to provide for people once again, the balanced life of a Center City. More than 3500 applications for Marina City living already received testify that people want to live together with their work and want the recreation and the moderate rents which can be offered in high tax, high cost areas, only by tapping a 24-hour source of income.

Marina City income is divided about 1/3 to upkeep costs and 2/3 to debt service, but neither of these costs could be supported by residential income alone. Over 39,000 families have indicated a desire to live in the Central city area by survey made in April, 1959. Few of these families could afford the Marina City tax rate which would be close to $400 per year per apartment. Few of these families could afford the cost of amortizing recreational facilities provided in Marina City. And without a balanced daytime and nighttime population, the cost of operating either garage or swimming pool would rise beyond the ability of the Marina City tenant to pay for these facilities.

Marina City, therefore, is the new plan for the balanced living which Central City must provide. As the farmer has understood that his house means house and barn; as the suburbanite has understand that his house means house and garage; so does the Urbanite understand that this house means House and Work and Recreation. This is Central City housing.