Driving into the Carr Square neighborhood along Jefferson Avenue toward Cass Avenue, if you stop and glance out the passenger-side window, you’ll see the former site of Pruitt-Igoe – a high-rise public housing project still synonymous with architectural failure and socioeconomic inequity.
The 57-acre area is now largely forest, “its boundaries delineated by a tall chain-link fence and barbed wire meant to discourage a curious public,” according to Michael R. Allen and “Pruitt-Igoe Now,” an ideas contest that tasked creatives with reimagining the site. Since its demolition in the 1970s – a televised implosion – a now-vacant elementary school was put up, plus a few other structures. Currently, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has plans to build a 700,000-square-foot office building on the grounds.
All things considered, the site’s future seems bright – even if construction has been a stop-and-start process over the years. But the complex’s history is still subject to scrutiny by architectural experts, researchers, journalists and the public at large. The reasons behind Pruitt-Igoe’s short-lived existence are multifaceted…