This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

In 1933, a group of architects boarded a ship called the SS Patrice II and set sail

from Marseille, France toward Athens, Greece. On board were several of the world's most

famous modernist architects and artists. Erno Goldfinger, Le Corbusier, of our alto,

and dozens of others representing more than 15 countries. There was a silent film made

of the voyage that shows grainy shots of the architects on deck of the ship in short-sleeved

white shirts and sunglasses. Cigarettes in their mouths, their hair blowing gently in the breeze

as they listen to lectures. One of the architects wrote in his journal,

We eat and drink copiously and we're all half naked.

The architects were on the ship for the International Congress of Modern Architecture, commonly known

by its French acronym CM.

That's Senior Producer Katie Mingle and I'm going to hand this story over to her now.

So yeah, the architects were on this boat trip for a CM meeting, but more specifically,

they were there to talk about how to plan a better city. The members of CM thought that

cities were too congested, too noisy and polluted and chaotic, and they thought that some of

these problems could be solved by separating out the functions of a city into distinct zones.

So separate everything, housing, working, recreation, traffic, separate all the kinds of

traffic. So pedestrians, cyclists, cars, the trains, it would mean the end of congestion.

That's Zepheimal.

I'm Zepheimal and I'm a planner.

Hamel spent a bunch of years working for the city of Amsterdam as the head of the urban

planning department and now he teaches at the University of Amsterdam.

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