Hard and soft revisited

Abstract

In the postscript to The Social Logic of Space (1984), Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson argue that there are two versions of modernism in urban space: hard and soft. The former invests in continuity and density of the urban fabric, but with a proliferation of barriers resulting in labyrinthine schemes typical of housing estates. The latter invests in distances, discontinuities, sprawl and vast tracts of open unoccupied land. Brazil’s federal capital, Brasília, presents both...