#luwig hilberseimer

[spatialnotebook]

“It is true that Hilberseimer’s “city-machine,” the image of Simmel’s metropolis, seized upon only certain aspect of the new function assigned to large cities by capitalist reorganization. But the fact remains that, in fact of the new techniques of production and the expansion and rationalization of the market, the architect as a producer of object had indeed become an inadequate figure. It was now no longer a question of giving form to single element of the city, nor even to simple prototypes. The real unity of the production cycle having been identified in the city, the only suitable role for the architect was as organizer of the cycle.”

— Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia (1976), p. 107.

[spatialnotebook]

“A city born of the spirit of speculation will be always an artificial, never a necessary product. And everything artificial awaits an imminent downfall. According to Henry Ford the modern metropolis has been wasteful. It is bankrupt today and will tomorrow cease to exist because its lifespan is determined solely by its functionality and profitability. When both fail, decline will set in. So the end of the metropolis? NO! But an end to the metropolis that is based on the principle of speculation and whose very organism cannot free itself from the model of the city of the past despite all the modifications it has experienced─an end to the metropolis that has yet to discover its own laws.”

—Luwig Hilberseimier, Großstadtarchitektur (1927; Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1978)