Gérald Hanning

Gérald Hanning (15.9.1919-31.12.1980) was a French urbanist.[1] [2]

Biography

Gérald Charles Hugh Hanning began his career as an architect but before he was 30 he made the choice of specialising in the field of urbanism where his originality and quest for answers to satisfy cities' spatial needs resulted in an important international career. A French citizen born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, he was the son of Alice Gilbert-Pierre from the French Réunion and Charles James Hanning, a Scotsman from Mauritius, who died in a motor-bike accident when he was only two years old.  While his widowed mother travelled to Europe he remained in Madagascar with his paternal uncles who played an important role in his education.  As a result, he was bilingual. This immense tropical country renowned for its dramatic landscapes and spectacular wild-life seems to have left a deep mark on the way he perceived the world.  When he was twelve years old he was reunited with his mother in Paris.

Records show he attended the Debat Ponsan architecture workshop at the Paris Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA)1937-1945.  He was imprisoned for military reasons from August 1940 to February 1941 in the Fort du Ha in Bordeaux.[3] This damaged his health after which he went to recover in the Alps. From this period we have interesting private letters full of sketches in which the young man expressed his ideas and concepts about architecture, his contribution to Le Modulor and the spatial design of l'Unité d'Habitation ou Cité Radieuse.

One of Hanning's regrets was that he didn't live long enough to write his theories and experiences for posterity.  In a highly technical field of planners he stood out as a creative and innovative thinker. He shared his ideas and enthusiasm with all those who worked with him and is still remembered today in the profession as a charismatic personality and an exceptional urbanist.  He was a workaholic who, despite his health having been damaged at a young age, burnt the candle at both ends.  He died prematurely, at the drawing board, on 31st December 1980 aged 61 years old.

Le Corbusier

A family friend, Joël Martel, sculptor, introduced him to Le Corbusier with whom he worked for ten years (1937-1947)[4].  During the war Le Corbusier had few commissions and devoted his energy to develop new theories, plans for reconstruction and spend time with his team talking late into the night.  In 1943 Hanning was a founding member of ASCORAL (Assemblée des Constructeurs pour une Rénovation Architecturale)[5] and a contributor to Le Corbusier's book on proportion 'Le Modulor[6]'. In 1945 Le Corbusier appointed him head of his famous office at rue de Sèvres in Paris.

1945 St Dié, Vosges, France had been razed by the Nazis in 1944.  Le Corbusier was commissioned to redesign the town and it was an opportunity to demonstrate the feasibility of his Cité Radieuse concept. Gérald Hanning and André Wogenscky made the drawings.  In total contrast to the town's dense medieval buildings and lanes, Le Corbusier's plans were for a landscape of parks and modern road network with five Unité d'Habitations composed of 337 apartments each and one 75 metre high office building to house the municipality, the préfecture, tax, social security and other social services etc. On the other bank of the Meurthe river a 1200 M long band of standardised industrial units was projected.[7]

In January 1946 St Dié Town Council voted to reject Le Corbusier's proposal.

1946 New York. Hanning and Vladimir Bodiansky, Engineer,[8] were sent to the US to promote Le Corbusier's project for the United Nations building and introduce Le Modulor to American industrialists.

1946-1947 Mainz, Germany This industrial town had been destroyed in the 2nd WW by the British RAF.  The proposals for reconstruction were drawn up by Hanning and Marcel Lods, Architect.  In many ways the exercise was similar to the St Dié project.  From the lively illustrations made by Hanning it seems to have been a soul-searching exercise in which old and new are continually opposed and composed.  However this project was not successful either.  This failure seems to have deeply affected him.

1947 in an emotional resignation letter[9] to Le Corbusier Hanning questions the ideas behind Ascoral and CIAM (Congrès International de l'Architecture Moderne).

Urbanist

This was the turning point in his career.  From now on not only he would specialise in urbanism but he would pursue his own personal theories of town planning in contrast to Le Corbusier's; all this in a post-war context where the reconstruction of many cities was urgent, demographics were escalating, and colonisation was collapsing throughout the world.

1947-1948 Claude Laurens architect, Brussels employed with his friend, Roger Aujame, architect.

1947-1949 Ivory Coast and French Guyana with Marcel Lods he worked on public housing projects and health infrastructure.

1949-1950 Island of the Réunion city developer and technical advisor to the Préfecture.[10]

1950 Paris, Chargé de Mission au Ministère de l'Aménagement du Territoire, Service du Plan, Ministry of Reconstruction.

1950-1953 AT.BAT with Vladimir Bodiansky and Jean Bossu designed a standardised school project and mass housing projects

1953-1959 Algiers  Pierre Dalloz, Consultant Urbanist for Planification appointed Hanning to head the Algiers Urban Development Agency where he drew up the city development plan of over 10 km2.  The way his design integrates the topographical characteristics of the site is in contrast to the Modern Movements grid plans.  

1954 Head of Paris Office of City Planning.

1959 Guardaïa, Algeria, Consultant for the urban development guidelines of the M'zab group of oasis towns.  He transferred this study to André Ravereau, Architect, when he left Algeria.

1959-1970 United Nations Assistant Director to Urbanism and Habitat Bureau.

1959-1965 Cambodia United Nations technical advisor and consultant to Phnom Penh Office of Urbanism.  He headed the Greater Phnom Penh development plan, the 'Front de Bassac' project, Sihanoukville deep-sea Port and new town  and the internationally acclaimed National Sports Complex, Phnom Penh, with architect Vann Molyvann, and engineer Vladimir Bodiansky, built to Olympic standards, inaugurated 12 November 1964.[11][12][13][14][15] He participated in the efforts of the Sangkum by experimenting with different kinds of habitat taking into account the tropical climate and readily available building materials .[16]

1963-1965 created and headed the AFTRP (Agence Foncière Technique de la Région Parisienne) responsible for defining public policies of land ownership.

1965 Carros le Neuf, Nice with Henri Beri, Architect, for the first time Hanning implements the idea of 'technological transfer' by locating high tech industry, university research labs and 3500 dwellings together in an attractive landscaped environment - with the aim of encouraging "start-ups".

1966 – East Pakistan (Bangladesh) UN expert.

1967 - Singapore UN expert for urban development.

1967-1970 – Provence-Côtes d’Azur France territorial development project with guidelines for maritime ressource management and coastline protection.

1967 –1969 Isola 2000 French Alps private consultant with Beri for the concept of this innovative ski resort.

1970-1971 - Madagascar UN expert for the study of the site of Tananarivo and regional development strategies.

1971 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur - Plan for the protection and improvement of the coastal area, technical advisor to the Regional Development Department.

1971 Valbonne Plâteau, France - concept for the scientific and industrial complex of Sophia Antipolis.

1972 Paris La Défense architecture competition for this new business district.

1973 – 1980 Institut d’Amenagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne (IAURP) Technical advisor.[17]

1973 – 1980  Agadir, Morocco UN expert he obtains the commission for IAURP for the development plan of the Region of Agadir and the "three Cities", including the town of Dakhla.

1973-1976 IAURP gave a series of conferences remembered by numerous professionals, that demonstrate how the city infrastructure, habitat and the volumes of construction can be integrated into a harmonious whole based on a thorough understanding of the geography, the topography and landscape.

1974 Paris SDAURP (Paris region development plan)

1974-1976 Paris Plâteau de Saclay Scientific Research hub now considered one of the top such centres in the World (comparable to Silicon Valley).

1976 UNESCO with Robert Cresswell "Memorandum on traditional Rural Housing - Transfer of techniques and work chains".

1976 CORDA research contract from Direction de l’Architecture with Paul Ceccaglini & Annick Jaouen.[18]  In this research published in 7 volumes, "La trame foncière comme structure organisatrice de la mise en forme du paysage" (traces of property divisions as the organisational basis for the landscape) Hanning explains his ideas about the way in which old property divisions and geographical features can be integrated into new projects.

1977-1980  – Paris - Quartier de la Défense; development project for Paris (POS); restructuring of the Halles sector in Paris (future Beaubourg); N-E Paris green croissant project; Le Bourget; St Quentin en Yvelines new town centre.

1979 Dakhla, Agadir, Morocco a new town designed for a population of forty thousand. A series of magnificent sketches give us an idea of his work method.[19]  He also made a set of planning regulations and detailed architectural guidelines.  Construction began in 1979 and today, forty years later, it is possible to evaluate the faisabality of his proposals. It is a living example of his well-founded approach to urban design.  

Innovative urban development tools

Due to their large scale and complexity, urban plans, even more so than building plans, require the consensus of numerous social, political and technical bodies before they are finally (but rarely) developed.  Always a pragmatist, Hanning devised several ingenious tools for town planning in order to facilitate their implementation, notably;

  • COS 1954 while working at the Paris Office of City Planning he had the idea of a 'system for calculating density' that would ten years later be baptised ‘coefficient d’occupation des sols’. The COS became a famous town planning tool that allows the floor surface of buildings to be programmed on cadastral maps;
  • Agence d'Urbanisme 1956 in Algiers, he put into practice the idea of an autonomous urban development office (Agence d'Urbanisme) that creates an independent work environment aiming to protect urban planning and design from the inevitable political pressure that it tends to suffer from;
  • La Trame Foncière 1963 when working with J Coignet and B Warnier on the siting of Paris New Towns he first came up with this idea to identify "traces of property divisions as the organisational basis for the landscape" that he developed fully in his 1976 CORDA research.
  • 'la composition urbaine' - the name given by Hanning to his method of urban design, developed in the series of conferences held in Paris from 1973 to 1976.

In contrast to the Modern Movement's grid plans, his urban designs draw on a thorough understanding of the geography and context.  His idea was not to reject tradition but to integrate it into modernity.  In contrast to the 'tabula rasa' promoted by the CIAM and Modern Movement his approach was based on a thorough understanding of the 'lay of the land' that he achieved by layers and layers of tracing over the maps at his disposal, underlining the property divisions and their cardinal directions, surface water and water-sheds, traces of paths and roads, vegetation and buildings to reveal a kind of canvas that he named 'la trame foncière'.  

Innovative and visionary Hanning chose to work in a highly technical field that is little known to the public.  However, in his professional network he was an inspiration everywhere he worked - to name but a few: Jean Bossu, Roger Aujame, Henri Ravereau.  Vann Molyvann the Cambodian architect said that Hanning was his 'master'.  The team in Dakhla, Agadir still remember him today forty years after he worked there.  He was a complex character, at once a creative designer and an idealist whose methods and theories can inspire those responsible for the future of the world's cities at a critical time in the ecological balance of our planet.

References

  1. "La Carriere internationale d'un grand urbaniste - Gérald Hanning" Cahiers de l'IAURIF, vol 62 édition speciale 1981
  2. Grant Ross, Helen "Gérald Charles Hugh Hanning, Architecte Urbaniste 1919-1980" Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies, UFR Histoire de l'Art et Archéologie, Université de Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, juin 2002
  3. Archives Départementales de la Gironde
  4. Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris correspondance with Gérald Hanning
  5. Hanning Gérald, Bézard, J. Commelin, Coudouin, J. Dayre, Hya Dubreuil, Le Corbusier, Leyritz, Aujames, de Looze, Les Trois Etablissements Humains, Paris, Denoël, 1945
  6. Le Corbusier, Le Modulor Essai sur une mesure harmonique à l'échelle humaine applicable universellement à l'architecture et à la mécanique, Bäsel, Suisse, Birkhäuser, 1950,p. 36-43
  7. Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier 1910-1965, Zurich, Edition Girsberger, 1967
  8. Centre de Documentation Georges Pompidou, Paris, holds the personal archives of Vladimir Bodiansky
  9. Hanning, Gerald to Le Corbusier, 10th October 1947, Le Corbusier Foundation
  10. Bernard Leveneur, 60 ans de culture urbaine Société Immobilière du Département de la Réunion, Éd. du 4 Épices, (SIDR), 2009
  11. Grant Ross, Helen & Collins, Darryl Leon, "Building Cambodia 'New Khmer Architecture' - 1953-1970", Bangkok, The Key Publisher, 2006 (ISBN 974-93412-1-X)
  12. HANNING, Gerald, BODIANSKY, Vladimir, VANN Molyvann, « "le complexe olympique et forum de Phnom Penh - dans la grande tradition angkorienne" », Techniques et Architecture vol 25, 1964
  13. HANNING, Gerald, BODIANSKY, Vladimir, VANN Molyvann, « "complesso olimpico des Sud-Est Asiatico foro della citta di Phnom Penh" », Rassegna dei lavori pubbici vol 4, 1964
  14. HANNING, Gerald, BODIANSKY, Vladimir, VANN Molyvann, « "le complexe sportif de Phnom Penh" », Cahiers du Centre Scientifique et Technique du Batiment vol 73, avril 1964
  15. HANNING, Gerald, BODIANSKY, Vladimir, VANN Molyvann, « "le complexe olympique de Phnom Penh" », Architecture d'Aujourd'hui vol 34, 1964
  16. HANNING, Gerald, Nobuo Goto et Setsuo Okada, « “Réadapter l’Autoconstruction Tentative Cambodgienne (1963)” », Architecture d'Aujourd'hui vol 167, mai juin 1973
  17. IAURP devient IAURIF, actuellement IAU-IDF rue Falguières, 75015 PARIS Centre de Documentation détient de nombreux travaux, documents et archives.
  18. HANNING, Gerald, JAOUEN Annick & CHECCAGLINI, Paul, "La trame fonciere comme structure organisatrice de la mise en forme du paysage.", Paris, CORDA, novembre 1976, 7 volumes plus conclusions
  19. BECARD, Laurent, “Trois Cités Nouvelles autour d’Agadir”, IAURIF document 1984


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