PLANNING THEORY AND PROCEDURE
WALTER ADOLF GROPIUS AND PETER HALL
CONCEPT – NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT THEORY
PRESENTED BY – SIDDHI V. KANKARIYA
M. ARCH
SEMESTER 1
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
ACCADAMIC YEAR – 2022-23

• Pioneer Master Of Modern Architecture.
• Born In Berlin On 18 May 1883.
• He was A German Architect And An Educator.
• Influential Proponent Of Modern Design And
Furthered His Ideas Through Bauhaus School
Design.
• He Was Taught By His Father Who Also Was An
Architect And Learned The Study Of
Proportions With Actual Architectural
Expressions By His Uncle.
• Gropius Could Not Draw, And Was Dependent
On Collaborators And Partner-interpreters
Throughout His Career.
• In School He Hired An Assistant To Complete
His Homework For Him.
• Gropius’s Career Was Interrupted By The
Outbreak Of World War-1 In 1914 And Served
As A Sergeant And Then As A Lieutenant.
INTRODUCTION
GEORGE WALTER ADOLF GROPIUS

• 1903 He Left School And Went To The Technical University In Munich To Study
Architecture.
• Although He Studied Architecture In Munich And Berlin (1903-1907), He Received No
Degree.
• In 1908,gropius Worked Under The Renowned Architect And Industrial Designer Peter
Behrens Till 1910.
• In 1919, Gropius Transformed The Grand-ducal Saxon School Of Arts And Craft Into The
World Famous Bauhaus.
• In 1934, He Moved And Began To Work In Britain.
• In 1937, He Moved To New York And Taught At The Harvard University.
• In 1946, Gropius Founded The Young Architects Association, The Architects
Collaborative.
EDUCATION AND EARLY WORKS
FAMOUS BUILDINGS
• Fagus Factory (1911-1913)
• Bauhaus
• Gropius House (1937-38 )
• Josephine M.Hagerty House 1938
• J.f. Kennedy Federal Building : 1963-1966
• Pan Am Building (now Metlife Building)
1960-1963
• Waldenmark 1939

• Simple Geometry Often Rectangular.
• Use Of Modern Materials Like Steel, RCC And
Glass.
• Smooth Surface
• Primary Colors
• Linear And Horizontal Elements
• Grid System
• His Design Has Full Command Of The Elements Of
Architecture, Which Were To Constitute The
International Modern Style.
• He Believed That All Initial Training For Artist And
Craftsman Should Be Same I.e. Introduction To
Form, Color, Nature Of Material.
• In Those Times The Use Of Machine Was
Encouraged Because Of The Phase Of
Industrialization.
• He Realized The Interdependence Of Machine
And Architecture, Thus Encouraged The Use Of
prefabricated units.
PRINCIPLES
PLANE SURFACE WITHOUT ANY ORNAMENTATION
PLANE SURFACE WITHOUT ANY ORNAMENTATION

COLOURS OF HIS BUILDINGS -
USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY
"The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! The artist is a heightened
manifestation of the craftsman... Let us together create the new building of the future
which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting." -Walter Gropius
CONCRETE GLASS STEEL
white, gray, beige or black

PROJECT-
• The Fagus Factory Is A Shoe Last Factory In Alfeld On
The Leine In Germany And Is An Important Example
Of Early Modern Architecture.
• Constructed Between 1911-1913, It Was Walter
Gropius' First Independent Commission
• It Was Called An Artistic And Practical Design By
Gropius
• It Was In Collaboration With Adolf Meyer.
• Most Striking Thing: Simplicity And Confidence Of
The Architecture.
FAGUS FACTORY (1911-1913)
• Fagus Structure Was Actually A Hybrid Construction Of Brick Columns, Steel Beams And Concrete
Floor Slabs And Stairways.
• It Was A Steel Frame Supporting The Floors, Glass Screen External Walls.
• Pillars Are Set Behind The Façade So That Its Curtain Character Is Fully Realized.
• Glass Screen Was Used All Over The Walls To Have Proper View From Inside.
• Walls Are No Longer Supporters Of The Building But Simple Curtain Projecting Against Increment
Weather.
• It Was Domination Of Voids Over Solids.
• Plane Surfaces Predominate In This Factory.
• The Glass And Walls Are Joined Cleanly At The Corners Without The Intervention Of Piers.

PROJECT- FAGUS FACTORY (1911-1913)
• Use Of Floor-To-Ceiling Glass Windows On Steel Frames That Go Around the Corners Of The
Buildings Without A Visible (most of the time without any) Structural Support.
• The Other Unifying Element Is The Use Of Brick.
• All Buildings Have A Base Of About 40cm Of Black Brick And The Rest Is Built Of Yellow Bricks.
• In Order To Enhance This Feeling Of Lightness, Gropius and Meyer Used A Series Of optical
Refinements Like Greater Horizontal Than Vertical Elements On The Windows, Longer
Windows On The Corners And Taller Windows On The Last Floor.

INTRODUCTION
• Name - Peter Geoffrey Hall
• Born - 19 March 1932
Hampstead, London, England.
• Died - 30 July 2014 (aged 82)
London, England
• Occupation - Urban geographer, Town
Planner
• Known for – World Cities ranking, Urban
Planning history, city regions enterprise
zones.
• His Famous Publications-
PETER GEOFFREY HALL

• In a 1977 address to the Royal Town Planning Institute, Hall put forth the idea of a "Freeport"
within a city, a concept that would come to be known as an Enterprise Zone.
• Enterprise Zones were to be open to immigration of capital and people, without taxes or
bureaucracy, modeled after Hong Kong in the 1950s.
• In practice, Enterprise Zones became areas where taxes were waived and development highly
subsidized.
• In his final years, Hall strongly perceived that British planners had fallen behind their European
counterparts.
• His last book Good Cities: Better Lives and last book chapter "The Strange Death of British
Planning: And How to Bring About a Miraculous Revival",
• Both published in 2014, stress this point and seek to direct attention to planning examples from
mainland Europe.
• His vision of clusters of existing towns and new garden cities to form new dynamic city regions in
the north-west, the Midlands and the south-east of England won his team a commendation in
the Wolfson Economics Prize competition in May 2014.
AWARDS –
• the Royal Town Planning Institute Gold Medal and the Founder's Medal of the Royal
Geographical Society for distinction in research in 2003
• and the Balzan Prize for the Social and Cultural History of Cities since the Beginning of the 16th
Century in 2005.
His academic work

PROJECT- MILTON KEYNES
• Planning fell into a long downward spiral,
and even at the time was criticised for
being too prescriptive and too restrictive.
• A study in 1973 concluded that the
historic 1947 Town and Country Planning
Act was too radical, based on the
assumption that the planners would take
the initiative, and that private
developers – remarkably seen as totally
residual in a world that would be
dominated by public housing – would
simply respond to what the planners had
told them.
• That rather amazing assumption collapsed
soon after the return of a Conservative
government in 1951, elected on the
promise to build 300,000 new homes a
year, half of them by private developers.
The contradiction remained over the
succeeding 60 years.

• In the 1970s and the 1980s, as
deindustrialization decimated the economies
of the cities, attention shifted into urban
regeneration, but the overall job of planning
town and country development remained.
• The Blair era saw a brief return to strategic
planning: John Prescott’s Sustainable
Communities Strategy of 2003, with its
proposal for three major development
corridors radiating from London, had strange
shades of the almost-forgotten 1967 Strategy.
• But in 2004 voters in the north-east rejected
the proposal for a democratically elected
regional assembly; a tragic failure, comparable
to the abandonment of city regional
government in 1974.
• Lacking democratic legitimacy for the regional
planning process, it was all too easy for the
coalition to abandon the entire regional
structure, bringing us back to the 1980s – or
maybe full circle, to the early 1920s.
PROJECT- MILTON KEYNES

• The ‘neighborhood unit’ as a planning concept evolved in response to the degenerated
environmental and social conditions fostered as a consequence of industrial revolution in the
early 1900s.
• One of the earliest authors to attempt a definition of the ‘neighborhood unit’ in fairly specific
terms was Clarence Arthur Perry (1872-1944) a New York planner.
• Perry’s neighborhood unit concept began as a means of insulating the community from the ill-
effects of burgeoning sea of vehicular traffic.
• However, it evolved to serve a much broader purpose of providing a discernible identity for the
concept of the neighborhood, and of offering to designers a framework for disseminating the
city into smaller subareas.
• The neighbourhood concept is arguably one of the major planning landmarks that shaped the
urban form of the twentieth century city in many countries.
• Neighbourhood Unit idea of Clarence Perry were published in 1929.
• For Perry the physical arrangement of the elementary school, small parks and playgrounds, and
local shops was the basis of his neighbourhood idea.
• Each neighbourhood was to be a unit of the city.
NEIGHBOURHOOD UNIT THEORY
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND -
EVOLUTION AND CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT

• Perry described the neighborhood unit as
that populated area which would require
and support an elementary school with an
enrolment of between 1,000 and 1,200
pupils.
• This would mean a population of between
5,000 and 6,000 people.
• Developed as a low density dwelling
district with a population of 10 families
per acre, the neighborhood unit would
occupy about 160 acres and have a shape
which would render it unnecessary for any
child to walk a distance of more than one-
quarter mile to school.
• About 10 percent of the area would be
allocated to recreation, and through traffic
arteries would be confined to the
surrounding streets, internal streets being
limited to service access for residents of
the neighborhood.
• The unit would be served by shopping
facilities, churches, and a library, and a
community center, the latter being located
in conjunction with the school

Perry outlined six basic principles of good neighborhood design. As may be understood, these
core principles were organized around several institutional, social and physical design ideals.
• Major arterials and through traffic routes should not pass through residential neighborhoods.
Instead these streets should provide boundaries of the neighborhood
• Interior street patterns should be designed and constructed through use of cul-de-sacs, curved
layout and light duty surfacing so as to encourage a quiet, safe and low volume traffic
movement and preservation of the residential atmosphere
• The population of the neighborhood should be that which is required to support its
elementary school
• The neighborhood focal point should be the elementary school centrally located on a common
or green, along with other institutions that have service areas coincident with the
neighborhood boundaries
• The radius of the neighborhood should be a maximum of one quarter mile thus precluding a
walk of more than that distance for any elementary school child
• Shopping districts should be sited at the edge of neighborhoods preferably at major street
intersections.
SIX BASIC PRINCIPLES OF GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD DESIGN

Neighbourhood CONCEPTIONS BY OTHERS
• N.L. Engelhardt, Jr. presented relation to the
various levels of school facilities.
• He proposed a radius of ½ mile as maximum
walking distance to the elementary school.
Playgrounds and nursery schools are proposed
with a radius of ¼ mile walking distance for the
families in the neighborhood.
• The diagram shows the grouping of three
neighborhood units served by a high school and
one or two major commercial centers, the radius
for walking distance to these facilities being one
mile.

• The concept of a neighborhood has been subjected to numerous criticisms. Some have
opposed the neighborhood with the claim that it leads to a grouping of people that inevitably
results in compulsory class distinctions.
• Some categorize the neighborhood concept as too romanticized and idealistic a delineation to
be practical for modern life.
• The school as focal point has been criticized for being impractical and too child centered
whereas community facilities for being inadequate and often far for some residents.
• The proliferation of small parks and other public spaces necessitates expensive maintenance
service.
• Critics question the utility of Perry’s concept of a common meeting area, given the diversity of
individuals usually found in an urban area.
• Also, neighborhood schools would be too small to undertake specialized activities that are
economically feasible in large schools.
IMPACT OF NEIGHBORHOOD CONCEPT ACROSS THE GLOBE
• Neighbourhoods form the urban tissue of the city both physically and socially.
• The concept of the neighborhood is well established as a basic unit of planning the cities.
• Further, it is a popular and accepted element of social and physical organization in the minds of
most people.
• Hence the neighborhood has become the symbol and the means to preserve the socio-cultural
values of an earlier less harried way of life in our increasingly complex and fast moving urban
centers.
CONCLUSION OF NEIGHBORHOOD CONCEPT

• One example of such a place is the Port City of Ashdod, established 1956, which consist of a
large port and industrial area to its North and 17 neighborhood units to the South.
• The city has about 250,000 people in it, but instead of utilizing this congregation of people it
is actually made up of 17 villages of 10,000- 20,000 people, each with its own slowly
decaying low-level commerce.
• Ashdod is now trying to take one of its arterial roads and turn it into a real urban street,
connecting its disjointed neighborhoods with an ambitious plan that tackles street network
changes, land use changes, commercial development and public transit. Whether such a
change is feasible is open to debate.
Example of Neighbourhood concept