Videos
An aerial photo by the US Geological Survey compares the narrow, monolithic blocks of Pruitt-Igoe with the neighboring pre-Modernist buildings of St. Louis. ImageCourtesy of Wikimedia user Junkyardsparkle (Public Domain)
Few buildings in history can claim as infamous a legacy as that of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project of St. Louis, Missouri. Built during the height of Modernism this nominally innovative collection of residential towers was meant to stand as a triumph of rational architectural design over the ills of poverty and urban blight; instead, two decades of turmoil preceded the final, unceremonious destruction of the entire complex in 1973. The fall of Pruitt-Igoe ultimately came to signify not only the failure of one public housing project, but arguably the death knell of the entire Modernist era of design.
PechaKucha, or “chit chat” in Japanese, is a concise presentation style, comprised of twenty slides at a duration of twenty seconds each that advance automatically. PK Nights invite creative thinkers of all fields to meet, present projects, and exchange ideas in this 20 x 20 format in over 1000 cities around the world.
Momoyo Kajima, co-founder of Atelier Bow-Wow. Photo courtesy of Atelier Bow-Wow.
“I came to the conclusion that recovery from Great East Japan Earthquake should be compared to Japan’s recovery from the World War II.” —Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Co-founder, Atelier Bow-Wow and member of ArchiAid