Robert Moses, urban planner. Roosevelt Island, New York, 1959.Credit...Arnold Newman/Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery

Moses: The dynamo of capitalism is restlessness. Nothing is ever enough. For us, nothing is ever settled. We are always on the move.

I recently watched ‘Straight Line Crazy,’ a fine new David Hare play about the urban planner Robert Moses. (The Bridge Theatre, London until 18 June)

Moses: Once Americans cease to believe they can remake America better, then it ceases to be America.

Though he was never elected to any public office, Moses was often described as the most powerful man in New York. As head of the New York City and Long Island State Parks Commissions between 1924 and 1963 (along with holding many other official roles), he built a system of 627 miles of expressway, connecting the city to the great outdoors. He created bridges, parks and swimming pools.He led the construction of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs in New York and helped persuade the United Nations to locate its headquarters in Manhattan.

Moses: A leader makes the mood, he’s not a victim of it.

Moses began his career with an avowed intent to improve the lives of ordinary city dwellers. But he ended it a pariah - criticised for the destruction of communities to make way for his road schemes; for his unwavering commitment to the car; for his refusal to embrace mass transit; for his disregard for public opinion.

Moses: Your principal error is this: to imagine that the people’s views are of any importance at all…We must advance their fortunes without having any respect for their opinions.

Moses provides a case study in how a leader’s resolute commitment to a vision can evolve into intransigence and anachronism; how a hero can over time become a villain.

Moses: People may not like me, but they need me… I’d rather be right and alone, than be soft and with other people.

Robert Moses with a model lower end of Manhattan and the bridge with which it is proposed to connect Battery Park with Brooklyn, March 1939. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

The play focuses on two significant years in Moses’ life: 1926 and 1955.

We begin with a young Moses planning a scheme to build two big expressways across Long Island. Alert to changing social needs and aspirations, he wants to give New Yorkers access to the region’s woods, open spaces and beaches.

Moses: The people have discovered a new occupation. It’s called leisure. And one day it will be as popular as work.

Long Island is peaceful, sparsely populated and controlled by a few aristocratic families who are united in their opposition to his scheme. Moses has learnt that in order to get any project off the ground, he needs to be comfortable with confrontation and conflict.

Moses: People characteristically revolt against any innovation…Nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved without initial resistance.

Indeed Moses is prepared to press ahead with road construction ahead of attaining final sign-off.

Moses: Once you sink that first stake, they’ll never make you pull it up. Public work relies on one thing. Impetus… Anyone can argue about where a freeway ought to be. But it’s pretty damn hard to argue about where it is.

Moses is highly intelligent, hard working, rational and uncompromising. He has fixed views, and is particularly convinced of the liberating power of the motor car.

Moses: People like cars. You own something and you’re in control. That’s a nice feeling. When I was young, America was sitting there, like a tin can. The car was the can opener. Still is.

Though Moses is reserved, socially awkward and wary of the public stage, he is driven by a fundamentally democratic urge.

Moses: I’m in a hurry, and I’m in a hurry to help – to help the millions out there who have no access to a good life. And if a few fences get kicked over in the process, does that really matter?

At length Moses achieves his objective on Long Island with the help of a supportive Governor, a sympathetic New York Times and an amenable judge.

The play then leaps ahead to 1955. Moses is proposing to put a four-lane highway through Washington Square in Manhattan. The scheme will alleviate traffic congestion in the area and create horizontal routes to match the existing vertical expressways.

Moses: What kind of city have we created where roads run up and down, but nothing runs across? …It’s an offence against logic and against reason.

Moses has little regard for the impact the development will have on the local neighbourhoods.

Moses: Things must exist for a purpose. SoHo has no purpose. Vitality is dependent on function. And when function decays, so does life.

However, Moses comes up against a group of community activists, foremost amongst whom is architectural journalist and writer Jane Jacobs. She challenges his view that the automobile should drive decisions about urban development. And she thinks he is ‘straight line crazy.’

Jacobs: Mr Moses is a man under hypnosis. He got hypnotized at the age of twenty-five by two ideas and they’re both delusions. First, he has this insane idea that the answer to the problem of too many cars is more cars. And second, he’s convinced the answer to the problem of congestion on our roads is more roads.

Jacobs believes cities are vibrant, organic ecosystems that should be planned from the bottom-up.

Jacobs as chair of a Greenwich Village civic group at a 1961 press conference

Jacobs: Cities grow up. They just happen. Bit by bit. Hand a city to the planners and they’ll make it a desert. Hand it to the people and they’ll make it habitable. Robert Moses looks at the West Village and he sees a slum. I look at the West Village and I see a healthy neighbourhood. I see life.

We realise that Moses’ forceful, top-down style of leadership, which once made him so successful, now represents an impediment. He has lost touch with public sentiment. He’s a man out of time.

Moses: The people lack imagination. The job of the leader is to provide it.

Ultimately Moses is defeated by an alliance of middle-class campaigners, political progressives and broader public opinion. In the play his long-time colleague Finnuala Connell (a fictional character) summarises the cause of his demise.

Finnuala: Once you believed in cars because you thought they would liberate people. Now you force people into cars and you force cars onto roads because you want to be vindicated. It’s no longer about the people. It’s about you…You’re stuck. You’re stuck with an idea you had thirty years ago. And you can’t move on. Is there anything worse than being trapped in a dream?

Robert Moses provides a lesson for us all. Leaders need insight into cultural change, a vision that addresses that change, a strategy to deliver and the iron will to see things through. Moses had all these capabilities. But as the world evolved, his views remained the same. What once was self-confidence became arrogance; what once was resolve became intransigence. He loved progress, but only in the direction he envisaged. He liked to regard the city from a distance, from above: all grand schemes, expansive concepts and logical systems. But the broader his perspective, the less room it had for empathy and community. And in the end he was wrong.

This does not mean however that Moses’ opponents were entirely right. At the close of the play Jacobs reflects on the fact that theirs was a hollow victory.

Jacobs: Our efforts to preserve Greenwich Village and SoHo succeeded in transforming it into the most expensive piece of real estate in the world. What was once a community was cleansed of everyone but the rich. The Village was saved, but it was also destroyed.

[If you’re interested in learning more about this subject, I’d recommend the 2016 documentary about Jane Jacobs, ‘Citizen Jane: Battle for the City’.]

'Oh, can't anybody see,
We've got a war to fight?
Never found our way,
Regardless of what they say.
How can it feel this wrong?
From this moment,
How can it feel, this wrong?’’

Portishead, ‘Roads’ (B Gibbons / A Utley / G Barrow)

No. 369

Charlotte Perriand in her studio on place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1928. The hands holding a plate halolike behind her head are Le Corbusier’s. Photo: Archives Charlotte Perriand

'The extension of the art of dwelling is the art of living.’
Charlotte Perriand

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of the work of designer Charlotte Perriand (The Design Museum, London until 5 September).

Perriand applied modernist principles to furniture design. She didn’t decorate a room, she equipped it for living. Her furniture addressed fundamental human needs and desires. Her interiors embraced space, light and flexibility. And she recognised the huge importance of storage. Critically, with experience she evolved her approach: she learned from her travels; she synthesised traditional craftsmanship with industrial production. She responded to ‘transient times.’

'Dwellings should be designed not only to satisfy material specifications; they should also create conditions that foster harmonious balance and spiritual freedom in people’s lives.'

Here are some lessons derived from Perriand’s full and fascinating life.

1. Better Design Creates a Better Society

Born in Paris in 1903 to a tailor and a seamstress, Perriand studied furniture design at the École de L'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs. Two years after graduating, she renovated her loft apartment, turning it into a compact modernist dream. Her Bar sous le Toit (‘Bar under the roof’) had a built-in cocktail-bar of aluminium and glass, with nickel-plated copper stools; a chrome-plated table with a fitted gramophone; a leather banquette.

In 1927 Perriand applied to work at the studio of modernist architect Le Corbusier. She was rudely rejected.

‘We don't embroider cushions here.’

A month later however, Le Corbusier saw a recreation of Perriand’s Bar sous le Toit at an exhibition, and promptly offered her a job in furniture design.

Working alongside Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, Perriand designed three chairs for three different tasks - all employing highly functional tubular steel: the Fauteuil au dos basculant, a light chair with canvas back and seat, ideal for conversation; the Fauteuil grand confort, an easy chair with square leather cushions, for relaxation; and the Chaise longue, a futurist machine for sleeping. They all became classics.

Perriand imagined that her tubular steel furniture could be mass-produced by Peugeot, the bike manufacturer. They didn’t quite share her vision.

'Our attempts at talks with the Peugeot bicycle company resulted in half an hour of total incomprehension.'

Perriand believed that better design helped create a better society. She worked with modern materials in bold colours; experimented with movable, foldable functionality; valued space, fresh air and light.

‘Hygiene must be considered first: soap and water.
Tidyness: standard cupboards with partitions for these.
Rest: resting machines for ease and pleasant repose.’
The Studio, 1929

There are a number of photographs of Perriand around this time. She sports a close-cropped bob, wears a dress with a bold print and a self-made necklace of industrial ball-bearings. She looks confident, playful, thoroughly contemporary.

2. ‘Adapt to Transient Times’

'Everything changes so quickly, and what is state-of-the-art one moment won’t be the next. Adaptation has to be ongoing – we have to know and accept this. These are transient times.'

In the 1930s Perriand was heavily involved with left-wing politics. To this end she designed a dwelling for low-income families for which each individual was allocated 14 square metres. And as the modernist machine aesthetic became increasingly associated with militarism - cold and inhumane - so she set aside expensive chrome. Instead she embraced natural forms and handcrafted techniques; affordable materials that could be mass produced and easily constructed.

On weekend expeditions with friends to the Normandy beaches Perriand took inspiration from found objects.

'We would fill our backpacks with treasures: pebbles, bits of shoes, lumps of wood riddled with holes, horsehair brushes—all smoothed and ennobled by the sea.’

3. ‘Choose Life’

At the exhibition you can see Perriand’s notebooks and plans. She began designing her chairs by reviewing current models and then she explored what was possible from first principles. Her sketched ideas were detailed, vibrant and thoughtful. When she worked on a building, she spent time visiting the site alone, absorbing its natural qualities.

'In every important decision there is one option that represents life, and that is what you must choose...Life is something in motion.’

4. ‘Better to Spend a Day in the Sun than to Spend it Dusting our Useless Objects’

Le Corbusier had not given Perriand due credit for her designs and, after working with him for a decade, she ‘stepped out of his shadow.’

In 1940 she travelled to Japan (before it entered the War) as an official advisor for industrial design. She fell in love with the country’s open, flexible interiors; with their simplicity, harmony and emptiness.

As a result, Perriand developed a fascination with storage. She determined that an ordered environment decreased anxiety and increased quality of life.

'What is the crucial element in domestic equipment? We can answer that immediately: storage. Without well-planned storage, it is impossible to find space in one’s home.’

And so Perriand set about designing affordable storage systems with simple plastic drawers; modular shelving that liberated space.

‘Better to spend a day in the sun than to spend it dusting our useless objects.’

Perriand worked on many projects after the War: corporate offices, mountain shelters and student housing. In 1951, having patched up her differences with Le Corbusier, she created the interiors and kitchens for the famous Unité d'habitation. She designed the League of Nations building in Geneva, the remodelling of Air France's offices in London, Paris and Tokyo.

Proposition d'une synthèse des arts, Takashimaya department store, Tokyo, 1955

5. ‘Keep Morally and Physically Fit’

Perriand was an outdoor enthusiast, and she had a special interest in ski resorts.

‘We must keep morally and physically fit. Bad luck for those who do not.’

At Les Arcs in Savoie she led a group of architects: designing a complex that nestled into the mountain; arranging the apartments in a series of staggered terraces cascading down the hillside; integrating prefabricated bathrooms and kitchens. Since guests would spend most of their time outdoors, the rooms were minimal in scale, but they looked out onto nature.

'I love the mountains deeply. I love them because I need them. They have always been the barometer of my physical and mental equilibrium.’

Perriand died in 1999. She had designed furniture as equipment for the machine age. But her modernism was not cold and clinical. Rather it was people-centred and collaborative; warm and humane. And it changed with the times. She recognised that the West could learn from the East; and that nature had a critical part to play in the future.

'Everything is linked, the body and the mind; mankind and the world; the earth and the sky.’

'Find a well-known hard man and start a fight.
Wear your shell suit on bonfire night.
Fill in a circular hole with a peg that's square.
But just don't sit down 'cause I've moved your chair.’

Arctic Monkeys, ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’ (A Turner)

No. 332

Robert Moses, ‘Trapped in a Dream’: How a Leader Can Go from Hero to Villain

Charlotte Perriand: ‘The Art of Living’