Chapter 2 | Alvar Aalto's Professional Networksallow city dwellers to enjoy the essentials of life – the sky, the trees, the light. Le Corbusier
held that housing was the most important one of four life functions defined by CIAM
(dwelling, work, recreation and transport). He criticised the garden city model for its lack
of organisation. Cars and the railway had recalibrated the scale. The land in cities should
be freed up to benefit the community and be allocated to a master plan.^504
After the conference, Giedion was entrusted with compiling the proceedings of the
conference. Architectural historian Erich Mumford from the United States described
the correspondence between Giedion and Le Corbusier reflecting the change in the
European political climate. In Giedion’s opinion, CIAM was faced with the fundamen-
tal question whether to be a technological or political entity. In the given circumstances,
Giedion felt that the former was the only option. If the latter role were adopted, they
could achieve nothing, for as an active political actor, CIAM could only exert any influ-
ence in a socialist system.^505
British Professor John Gold has described the difficult process that ensued after the
Athens conference. The conference failed to release a public statement, although Giedion,
among others, wanted to give the opposite impression. There had been tensions between
German and French delegates throughout the early 1930s, and the members could not
reach unanimity on the essence of the Athens conference. The first draft was further edited
by the Swiss and Parisian members in autumn 1933. Eventually, in 1936, a decision was
made to publish two publications, one for the general public entitled Town Planning In
Creation and one, a more scientific one, entitled The Functional City. The editors were una-
ble to find a publisher for either edition, and at the next CIAM conference of 1937, the
responsibility for the publication fell on the Spanish colleague José Luis Sert, who soon
went into exile in the United States due to the Spanish Civil War. The publication finally
came out in 1942 under the title Can Cities Survive? As Gold points out, the work now
served more like a source for current city planning and a retrospective on the situation 10
years earlier than a forward-looking manifesto.^506
Le Corbusier formulated his own opinion in his 1933 book La Ville Radieuse (The
Radiant City). He gave his description of the conference in the Chapter “Mobilisation of
the Land”. On the outward journey from Marseilles to Athens, the delegates had introduced
their sheets and problematics that their respective cities were facing. On the inbound journey,
the delegates had engaged in group work. Le Corbusier used this material in the Chapter
“Plans”, in which he attempted to summarise his views on the problems in the planning of
certain cities, such as Stockholm, and his suggested solutions. He saw current city planning
practices as a driver of inequality offering the wealthy a host of options, while millions were
left unable to fulfil their basic needs at any point in their lives.^507 The conference limited
its discussion to technical aspects of architecture and city planning.^508 Le Corbusier was
504 Mumford 2002, p. 79.
505 Ibidem, p. 87.
506 Gold 1997, pp. 56–77, particularly pp. 64–77.
507 Le Corbusier 1964a [1933], p. 187.
508 Ibidem, p. 188.