At the Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles, I had a Howard Roark moment.

Photo by PictFactory (Creative Commons License)

I was at the top of the world. I stood on a thin metal parapet, the landing of a narrow staircase supported on the roof of the building. I clutched the delicate iron framework and could feel the ripple of the heavy concrete mass underneath, and the earth from which it rose. The vast horizon, with mountains on one side and the sea on the other, made me dizzy, and the warm sea breeze made me unsteady, so I held the metal more tightly.

And I thought this was divine. Architecture is the attempt by human ingenuity to reverse the process of atrophy in an expanding universe and this building on which I stood was a masterpiece and a milestone. It represented shelter and audacious idealism. It was carved and sculpted by a giant. Surely this must be forbidden and shunned by all religions; for it was intoxicating and I felt like I had sinned.

Real innovative progress took place in the small industrial towns of Germany, spreading from there to the larger cities, and then to the rest of the world. Stuttgart is one such town.

I headed to Stuttgart right after Dessau. Situated on a big hill, Stuttgart is home to the Weissenhof Housing Estate, a model neighborhood where several modernist architects were invited to design workers’ homes in the new International Style in 1927 under the supervision of Mies van der Rohe. It is home also of the little-known but extremely important Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, a thriving force for Architecture and Industrial Design in Germany, as well as of the Porsche Museum which I had no idea existed.

I had spent a little more than 24 hours in Berlin. In those 24 hours I had visited and got to know my two main destinations in the city: the AEG Turbine Factory by Walter Gropius, and Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum. I had walked along the river, had a nice lunch, walked into the closing ceremony of a certain pride parade, saw much more of Berlin’s architecture at night, and ended up spending several hours of the night at a huge party called GMF which took place on three levels at the top of a Berlin skyscraper. I had had to take a cab home and had spent half the night at the bus stop right outside my hostel. I am glad it was Germany and not France or Italy. Finally I had passed out on my bed at 4am.

I was woken up at 10am because that was the check-out time at the hostel. I had missed my 7am train to Dessau and Stuttgart. I would have to renew all my reservations and contact my workplace to let them know I would be taking Monday off.

I arrived in Stuttgart at 11:30pm on the ICE train, which is Germany’s TGV and is much more impressive and comfortable than the TGV. I took a taxi to my hostel, and it pulled up on a mountain street overlooking the town below, with just a small entrance on the cliff. The rest of the building was on lower levels on the slope below.

I’ll go directly now to the three things I wanted to write about in Stuttgart. The first is the tram system. It was extremely impressive how these trams glided smoothly up sloping streets, through tunnels, on regular streets alongside cars, and down steep slopes. The map and guide was crystal clear and intuitive and it must have been the easiest train system to use that I have ever encountered.

The second is the Weissenhof Housing Estate. The Germans are not ashamed of Modernism like the French or Americans. The housing project was well maintained. The most remarkable thing was that these houses – most of them small and not luxurious – were occupied by real people living there. Each house had a small sign outside it, explaining the concept and displaying the plans. People parked their cars, got out with their groceries and walked into their home, even as others took pictures of the neighborhood.

Mies van der Rohe’s building was highly reminiscent of some of the dilapidated architecture I had seen in Clichy-sous-Bois. It made me realize that renovation and maintenance plays a very important role in the perception of architecture and, more importantly, that the same forms may have different symbolic value in different places.

Chair on display at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste

After walking around the Weissenhof Estate, I stumbled upon the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. I reminded me of Harvard GSD and the Indus Valley School in Karachi and other places that seem to exude a spirit of creative energy. It is the Bauhaus of the 21st century. I was so excited to walk around inside that, for a moment, I seriously considered trying to learn German and applying here for grad school. Earlier that morning, I had met three German students from various parts of the country who had come to take an admissions test for the Industrial Design program at this school. They had had to send their portfolios earlier on for a preliminary selection process. They were super-impressed that I was a Pakistani studying architecture in the US here just to visit a housing project that they didn’t even know about.

There is an obsession in France about the problem of housing the "working class," or poor people. This is strange to someone coming from America, where there is very little recognition of the existence of the homeless. What exists in America though is a heightened awareness of racial equality, so no one group is ever deliberately isolated. Whereas Americans discriminate against the poor people as a whole, the French, it seems, find people such as the pied noirs unbearable.

For decades, the French have experimented with logements sociale, in an effort to "integrate" the immigrants, or at least to lure them out of Paris. Here are two old cartoons I found at a stall along the Seine. They depict some radical modernist plans for France and Paris respectively.

On Saturday, I visited Clichy-sous-Bois, the infamous Paris suburb where the 2005 France riots started.

In November 2005 two Muslim teenagers got electrocuted in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois while trying to flee from pursuing police. Ten days of violence ensued, in which thousands of cars were burnt in the Paris metropolis, and all over France.

The police steer clear of Clichy-sous-Bois, BBC reporters were threatened when they tried to report on the condition of this suburb, and I'm told by Parisians that Sarkozy himself cannot go there. No Metro or RER lines connect it to the center. So I was a little scared of going there alone. But I felt safe precisely because I am really nobody important. With the right attire, I might just be able to blend in -- until of course I would take out my camera. I was positively frightened to do that.

I set off from my temporary home, the Cite Universitaire campus on the RER B line toward the Gare du Nord. At this train station I need to buy a ticket to Le Raincy/ Villemomble/ Montfermeil. It was all very interesting because Montfermeil happens to be the partial setting for Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, which I am reading these days.

It is not easy for us in these days to imagine what a country outing of students and grisettes was like forty-five years ago. Paris no longer has the same outskirts, and what might be termed the face of circum-Parisian life has wholly changed. Instead of the post-chaise we have the railway-carriage, and instead of the sailing-cutter, the steamboat... Paris in 1862 is a town with all of France for its suburbs. (Hugo 126)

Here I was, setting out into the very same suburbs almost a hundred and fifty years later. Now, it seemed, Paris was the same small town but with the entire world for its suburbs -- in particular, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and other French colonies of the twentieth century.
Because my destination was in a zone outside "Paris," I had to buy a new ticket. I found myself in line with African -- for they were dressed in traditional African clothing -- men, women and children that seemed out of place in Paris. Finally I got my return ticket and got on the RER E. I might not have bothered because I could have gotten in with my Pass Navigo and jumped over the barrier in Montfermeil like most other people. I knew from my little incident last summer that I should never travel in an empty carriage. The train zoomed with a speed that made the NJ Transit seem like Hugo's "post-chaise."

At Montfermeil I had to take the 601 A/B bus to one of the stations in Clichy-sous-Bois. I had no idea how to get a ticket for this bus but I found two friendly women who helped me out. And then I was on my way.

Landing in Clichy-sous-Bois was bizarre. It was undelwhelming because there was nothing there really, except some shops and long arrays of apartment buildings. I walked around like I knew where I was going, or like I lived in one of those buildings and was just going back home... everything was calm but there was an ominous feeling in the stillness.
I was awed because here I saw a perverse realization the the Ville Contemporaine and of the theoretical "garden city," a sustainable modern development where the modern man lives in tall buildings that rise from large green fields. It is all supposed to be very sustainable. And not only was this a realization, it was also a sort of fast-forward in history where I could walk around and see for myself and judge what had worked and what hadn't, after 60 or so years had passed since the height of modernist idealism.
To my surprise, a lot of subtleties started to emerge: for example, not all housing seemed to be dilapidated and sickly. There was an entire spectrum from the traditional French cottages in neat streets to the clean and well-maintained gated apartment enclaves to the large modern building that seemed airy, comfortable and middle-class, to the last, which comprised many, many very long buildings with the same entrances, windows, etc. It seemed like someone had a lot of steel and concrete and had multiplied one unit a thousand times to generate a building, and then had proceeded to multiply the building many times to create the Grand Ensemble. It was these buildings that lacked any sort of character. The clothes, bicycles, broken appliances, laundry and trash that hung out from the windows gave to the building its identity.

I took out my camera and started taking pictures. I just had to. Taking pictures is like stealing a little bit of the subject to manipulate it for one's use. You get to set the composition and tell the story. And so I tried to be as humble and reverent as possible. I got some stares but generally I seemed to fit in. A "bonjour" here and there sufficed.

The public spaces, the pilotes, the large windows, the absratct compositions in some of the better-designed buildings were really quite beautiful. It was like seeing the modern dream sort of work, but knowing that somewhere along the line it had failed. The problem, I realized, lies in the social and urban organization of space rather than just architectural.

Another very peculiar thing I noticed was that there was a helicopter continuously making rounds over the entire area. It just did not go away. I wondered what it would feel like to be under surveillance like that all day.

In any case, I had a sandwich at a Muslim place. It was adorned with Islamic art and had arabic all over. And the man behind the corner, who was Tunisian, was so pleased when he found out I was from Pakistan, I got a "Mashallah" from him. A few arab gang members came in and shook hands with everyone, including me. Wow I really was blending in in this place. Was I still in France though... I don't know. There was a little can for the collection of funds to build an Islamic University. There was a drawing on it -- a nice elevation of a grand building. He told me very few people had contributed. The people here seemed out of touch with the rest of France. Only the super-modern buses passing through were a reminder that this was still the republic of France.
Later as I took more pictures, I was screamed at by a young man, and almost followed. I held my breath and walked as quickly as I could away from the place, only to find that a lot of these housing projects had iron fences around them, inhibiting free movement and dividing the town between the rich and the poor.
To my amazement, I walked into a beautiful park, complete with a lake, dense trees, and people picnicking and fishing. None of these people were black or Arab, and the park was fenced off from the Grand Ensemble. The pictures I took are available on my Flickr page (click here).
I came back not with answers but perhaps with an awareness of the complexity of what I was trying to understand. The most troubling thing was the volatile nature of the social fabric in this great metropolis, which I experienced as an outsider. I could identify both with the bourgeois Parisian and with the frustrated Muslim teenager in the suburb. And I believe more than ever that it may now be the time to confront the divide by addressing it... and while that may sound too idealistic, you need only to listen to President Obama's speech in Cairo to begin to want to believe.

I am back at the Cité Universitaire campus after less than a year. Last time, I was here for 17 days. And yet everything is so familiar that moving in feels almost like returning to Princeton after a break.

British Airways and London Heathrow was a combination of nice and not-so-nice—nice because some of the flight attendants were very kind and friendly, and a little awkward because BA and the security at Heathrow always make me feel like I've done something wrong, like I don't belong; there's a sense that I'm being discriminated against in a way that I can't exactly pinpoint.

Anyway, Starbucks (to the rescue) and the efficient and quick processing at Charles de Gaulle airport was like a refreshing breeze. As I set off for central Paris from the airport (which is located in the suburbs of Paris) I began to see the public housing architecture that I have been researching and writing about all spring semester at Princeton.

Unfortunately I didn't catch the announcement that I had to switch trains at the first station in Paris. Soon I realized I was on my way back to the airport in the same train. I panicked and exited on the next station, baggage and all. This station just happened to be Drancy, which was ironic because Drancy was the site of the first Grand Ensemble, a horrific array of “modern” slabs with repetitive housing units that were used during the Second World War as a prison for Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz. It is the epitome of architecture gone wrong, both in terms of form and symbolism, and was later taken down. However, the stark contrast between the City of Lights and its forsaken suburb was evident, for there were no manicured gardens, gargoyles, or monuments here—only high-rise apartments in empty space, lots of graffiti, and people who didn't resemble Parisians.

Finally I got on another train and came to Paris. Tomorrow I start work at kilo architectures.

For my senior thesis at Princeton, I will study how the modern housing projects in the Paris suburbs are linked to the marginalization of the metropolitan area's immigrant population. This summer I will visit the suburbs of Paris to conduct preliminary research.

In September 2005, massive riots broke out all over France. Ten days of severe unrest were sparked by an incident in which two African Muslim teenagers, sons of working-class immigrants, were electrocuted to death at a power sub-station while attempting to evade the police. On some nights of the rioting, up to 1500 cars were set on fire (Cohen 98). Reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post noted the ominous presence of the massive social housing estates in the Paris suburbs (or banlieues) where the accident took place, as if the architecture itself had performed a role in the genesis of the horrific incident:

The Washington Post: With unrest expanding through the northern suburbs of high-rise apartments that house some of France’s poorest immigrant populations, senior government officials were debating how to curb the violence during Wednesday morning’s weekly cabinet meeting. (Moore A12, emphasis added)

The New York Times: In life, they were uncelebrated. In death, Zyed Benna, 17, and Bouna Traore, 15, have inspired more than 10 days of riots that have spread from housing projects in the suburbs of Paris to cities and towns across France. (Crampton 1, emphasis added)

The incident served as a spark that set off an explosion, the real cause of which was the deep social divide that the suburban space itself had come to symbolize and contribute to.
Indeed, commentators around the world pointed to the public housing projects in the Paris suburbs as sites of political contestation and social unrest. They especially noted the significance of the ominous Grands Ensembles, countless large housing estates constructed in the mid-twentieth century, each containing a minimum of 1000 repeated units. In the 2007 Architectural Record, Sam Lubell denounced the formal elements of these slab-like apartment buildings, calling them “tinderboxes for trouble” (14). He advocated for better design interventions to “stave off a sense of alienation and resentment” in the residents of these housing estates (Lubell 14). Steven Wassenaar, in his article for Volume in 1997, urges for “livable, spatial architecture (urban ‘healing’)” (7). Pieter Uittenhove, writing in 1997 for Archis, called the modernist architecture in the banlieues a “space of exclusion” (50). All three writers reject as a fallacy modernist idealism that “set itself up as a sort of Noah’s Ark to save civilization from ruin” (Uittenhove 51). In their rejection of Modernism, they focus primarily on formal architectural elements such as the use of industrial material, repetition of units, a lack of public spaces, and the abundance of “towering blank walls framing empty courtyards” (Lubell 14).

I posit that the architecture of the large housing projects, the Grand Ensembles, is indeed inextricably linked to the marginalization of France’s working class immigrant minorities; however, to fully understand the nature of this marginalization, we must go beyond just the aesthetic or functional form of public housing architecture and analyze the symbolic meaning it has acquired over the last half century. I will argue that despite the objective nature of spaces in public housing, individuals and groups living in them subjectively internalize the architecture that surrounds them. Conversely, over time, the very same residents project their identity onto the architecture: either mentally, when they associate it with specific stereotypes, or physically, by using graffiti and defacement as tangible marks of their frustration. In the case of the modernist housing projects, the tabula rasa architecture has performed over several decades as an instigator of social strife for the people in the suburbs, as well as a contested space loaded with meaning and symbolism. In other words, architectural space in the Paris banlieues is oppressive in two ways: it physically entraps its inhabitants and it serves, at the same time, as a symbolic record of that imprisonment.