Victor Gruen

Victor Gruen ( born July 18, 1903 as Victor David Green Tree in Vienna, † February 14, 1980 ) was an Austrian town planner and architect, who saw through the planning of the first modern shopping centers on the outskirts of cities in the U.S. international sensation. In Austria he is regarded as the spiritual father of the first major pedestrian zone in Vienna, which was set up in 1974 despite fierce criticism in the Kärntner Straße. Well-known argument from him in this matter was: "Cars do not buy anything. "

Life and work

Even while studying architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he made ​​himself as a political cabaret artist name. He openly criticized the Nazis and was an avowed social democrat ( he built as a young architect, inter alia, Otto Bauer's apartment to ).

From 1926 to 1933 or 1934 Green Tree initiated together with Robert honorary branch ( later Lucas) the political cabaret. In Cabaret Literature at the Naschmarkt he met the young stagehand Felix Slavik, who later became mayor of Vienna, know. This led to a friendship that should be for Vienna out to be very positive, when he was commissioned in 1965 by Felix Slavik with a downtown concept, resulting in 1970, the first pedestrian zone in Vienna emerged.

When his architectural practice in 1938 expropriated by the Nazis because of his " non-Aryan origin ", he emigrated to the United States. In New York City he made through conversions from Fifth Avenue boutiques quickly talked about, and in 1940 he moved for an order of a large retail chain to Los Angeles. In 1947 he planned a department store with a parking deck on the roof, which did not exist until then and its popularity gave a further boost.

In 1949 he founded together with his Austrian counterpart Rudolf tree field, the working group " Victor Gruen Associates ", which with 300 employees (among architects and planners, artists and sociologists ) as soon as one of the largest US-based architectural office was. Today is the office with locations in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC strongly represented in the United States.

1952 began implementing his life's work when he should find his first shopping center, where visitors not only shopping, but all of the functions of urban centers in Northland, near Detroit, built. He was the inventor of the "Shopping Mall ", the epitome of American suburbanization, although his visions were in quite different from those dominated by car traffic direction: He saw his Mall - with its theaters and cultural institutions - as the center of a dense urban space to as a kind of improved Downtown, which should be surrounded by dense residential development, parks and sports facilities.

As early as 1956 was his first indoor " shopping mall " in Southdale, south of Minneapolis, built. Next to shops but it also included a school, a lecture hall and a skating rink. His real vision, he was able to put in parts three years later: In Kalamazoo, a U.S. average small town, two blocks of the main street " Burdick Street" were closed to traffic in order to clear the space for a mall in the city center. This Gruen managed a break with the successive subjugation of the American urban space under the requirements of motorized individual; but his vision went further. Given spacious suburbanization and motorization of American society he predicted the major gridlock in the city centers, if the building structures were not fully aligned to this development. His plan for Kalamazoo City saw therefore ( as before, the plan for Fort Worth, who was regarded as the prototype of all urban renewal plans soon, and later, the plan for Fresno ) in front of a ring road with large-scale parking around the city center and the greatest possible freedom from traffic for the city center itself. He should have continued to have the development of the center of his hometown of Vienna in mind. More comprehensive master plans followed

• For the newly founded city of Valencia near Los Angeles with a population of 200,000, which was also widely implemented.
• For the conversion of Welfare Iceland into a model city with functional and social mix, where all traffic had been laid in the ground.
• Vienna, which is now implemented largely.

1948 Gruen visited for the first time after the war, his hometown, and kept from this time again in Vienna. He entertained a well-known circle of friends, among other things, the of today's Federal President Dr. Heinz Fischer, the former director of the Natural History Museum, Bernd solder, the former Science Minister Herta Firnberg and the former mayor of Vienna Felix Slavik belonged. However, perhaps the most successful architect of the 20th century in Vienna in 1967 was in court: The Vienna Chamber of Architects Gruen recognized the professional title of "architect", since he had " failed " it in Nazi Vienna to complete his studies. 2010, after the airing of the TV documentary " The Gruen effect. Victor Gruen and the Shopping Mall ", the current President of the Chamber, DI Georg Pendl, Gruen symbolic honorary membership bestowed posthumously as a gesture of reparation.

In 1968, Gruen in Los Angeles society, " Victor Gruen Center for Environmental Planning", and withdrew from the " Victor Gruen Associates " majority back. In the same year returned Gruen and his fourth wife finally returned to Vienna, where he in 1973 the sister company " Centre for Environmental Planning" founded. He died on 14 February 1980 in Vienna.

Importance

Who takes the name Victor Gruen exclusively associated with the construction of large temple to consumerism, misinterpreted him. While was the creation of spaces that invite you to remain and consumption, one of his great concern; the labor -oriented world of men should be the equivalent of the consumption -oriented world of women are compared, the loss of the comfort of the Vienna consumer worlds (coffee houses) was to him in his early years in the U.S. hard in the stomach. But Victor Gruen was about more than the promotion of consumption in a car-oriented world. His main interest was the creation of a livable environment for humans.

• With his concept of the covered car-free center, he wanted to recover mixed urban structures in walking distance for use by pedestrians and optimized by additional weather protection in the face of historical experience increasing urban sprawl and destruction of the ( public ) road space. In the U.S., where there are the traditional historical Old Town district to remain and enables residents' identification with their city, does not exist except for a few exceptions, it was his intention through the construction of multifunctional centers, in addition to shopping and public and social include facilities to create such " city centers " only. Gruen was an outspoken opponent of the unifunctional center, so the pure shopping center.
• But He also called as a fundamental realignment of settlement planning to reduce the need for mechanical aids to a minimum.
• Required ways would be to cover with fast, energy-saving and low-cost collective transport.
• The urban environment should invite to stay and offer a high quality.
• And finally, should not even be effectively separated by architectural finesse all the technical services area of human life that they simply can no longer be perceived.

So Victor Gruen may well be regarded as a pioneer of the "Compact Cities" or the " city of short distances ". He wrote down his ideas in hundreds of articles and numerous books. In written by him " Charter of Vienna", which he called " The survival of Cities" published in his book, he formulated principles for environmentally sound and geared to the needs of the people urban planning.

But the fact that his vision failed in the implementation and ultimately remained only the idea of ​​optimizing the spatial coincidence of supply and demand in a motorized world of his plans is not surprising given the era of his work.

But Victor Gruen's work lives not only on the North American continent on. So included in Gruen's birthplace Vienna his thoughts during the first urban development plan, which provided, among other things, the creation of the first pedestrian street of Kärntner Straße. The numerous pedestrian zones, in the 1970 - and 1980 originated in the cities of Germany, can be attributed to Victor Gruen, or on the model of Vienna traced.

Awards

Writings

• Victor Gruen: Centers for the urban environment: survival of the cities. In 1973. German -language edition: The survival of the towns way out of the environmental crisis. Vienna 1973, ISBN 3-217-00491-4.