Held in 1933 on a ship in the Mediterranian, the fourth CIAM congress and Le Corbusier's subsequent Athens Charter (La Charte d'Athenes) are widely regarded as a defining period in Modernist urban planning, a moment when architects came to an agreement on what the future of our cities should look like. But how correct is this interpretation? Edited by Evelien van Es, Gregor Harbusch, Bruno Maurer, Muriel Perez, Kees Somer and Daniel Weiss, a significant new 480-page book, "Atlas of the Functional City - CIAM 4 and Comparative Urban Analysis" examines the congress in depth. In the following excerpt from the book's introduction, Daniel Weiss, Gregor Harbusch and Bruno Maurer examine the commonly accepted history of the congress, finding that support for the underlying principles of Modernism was perhaps not so unanimous after all.
