CIAM and Its Outcomes

CIAM, the Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, founded by a coalition of European architects in 1928, was an international forum for new ideas about the urban design of housing and cities in an emerging socialist context. Its most influential concepts were the Existenzminimum, the small family housing unit affordable on a minimum wage income and the focus on CIAM 2, 1929; the design of housing settlements of such units, the focus of CIAM 3, 1930; and the Functional City, the idea that entire cities should be designed or redesigned on this basis. This article briefly explains these ideas and considers some of their subsequent outcomes.