The film tells the story of a public housing project in St. Louis that provided affordable homes for thousands of families in 1954. However, in less then twenty years it was in disrepair and was demolished. Could this have been avoided?
The Pruitt-Igoe housing project came to be associated with the end of the social housing utopia in America. In several years, thirty-three brand new eleven-floor buildings turned into unlivable slums. Postmodernist thinker Charles Jencks compared the demolition of the estate to “the death of modern architecture.” But why did a utopian project turn into a nightmare and who or what was to blame—architects’ miscalculations, politicians’ mistakes, or neglect on the part of the inhabitants? Chad Freidrichs does not content himself with simple answers, showing that for many people Pruitt-Igoe was their first and dearly loved home, just like the five-floor Khrushchyovka buildings for several Soviet generations.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
Director Chad Freidrichs, USA, 2011. 79 min.
12+