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The Concise Townscape

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Cullen’s skill as an architectural illustrator was greatly admired and he received many illustrative commissions such as the 1943 County of London Plan; Kynoch Press’s 1940 diary and the 1955 Cambridge Christmas Book, as well as some studies of the State Apartments at Windsor Castle. buildings. Cover up each alternatelywith the hand and the impression isgiven that the dark building is muchfurther away from us than the lightmodern building. This is due to thedifference in scale between the two And yet ... if at the end of it all the city appears dull, uninterestingand soulless, then it is not fulfilling itself. It has failed. The fire has beenlaid but nobody has put a match to it.

First, streaming the environment. It is difficult to fight for a generalprinciple, easier to protect the particular. By breaking down the environ­ment into its constituent parts the ecologist can fight for his national No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to personsor property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any useor operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the materialherein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independentverification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made nettingLike truncation, this serves to linkthe near with the remote. Just as thecarefully handled net held in the handcaptures the remote butterfly, so thedevice of framing brings the distantscene forward into the ambience ofour own environment by particulari­zing, by making us see in detailthrough having such detail broughtto our attention through the act ofnetting. The applications of this willbe obvious in bringing the distantland or townscape to life, in selectingand rejecting to a purpose. Onethinks of the view of the Duke ofYork's column with the towers ofWestminster behind, the whole scenebelow eye level, netted by the archesof Regent Street. Behind this andsimilar cases lies the central fact thatthe environment is one whole andthat all these devices are part of theart of linking and joining that wholeinto a significant pattern rather thanallowing it to remain a disjointed andpetty chaos.His archive, consisting of 125 boxes, is a very diverse and rich collection, and includes records of projects he worked on, his work with The Architectural Review and his time in other countries including Barbados, France and India. example in India, where this introduction is being written: the approachfrom the Central Vista to the Rashtrapathi Bhawan1 in New Delhi.There is an open-ended courtyard composed of the two Secretariatbuildings and, at the end, the Rashtrapathi Bhawan. All this is raisedabove normal ground level and the approach is by a ramp. At the topof the ramp and in front of the axis building is a tall screen of railings.This is the setting. Travelling through it from the Central Vista we seethe two Secretariats in full, but the Rashtrapathi Bhawan is partiallyI The President's Residence, latelv Vicere~a1 Lodge. Here is an example. Suppose you are visiting one of the hill towns inthe south of France. You climb laboriously up the winding road andeventually find yourself in a tiny village street at the summit. You feelthirsty and go to a nearby restaurant, your drink is served to you on averanda and as you go out to it you find to your exhilaration or horrorthat the veranda is cantilevered out over a thousand-foot drop. By thisdevice of the containment (street) and the revelation (cantilever) thefact of height is dramatized and made real. Cullen’s concerns with visual literacy have been well defined in this book with its extensive bibliographies and relevant illustrations. Not only does Engler provide a valuable insight into ‘Mr Townscape’ and his place in the history of urban design and planning, she also shows his continuing influence on imagining planned landscapes." change of levelAny account of one's emotional re­actions to position must include thesubject of levels. Below level pro­duces intimacy, inferiority, enclosureand claustrophobia, above level givesexhilaration, command, superiority,exposure and vertigo; the act ofdescending, implies going down intothe known and the act of ascendingimplies going up into the unknown.There is the strange correspondenceof similar levels across a deep gap,near but remote, or the functional useof levels to join or separate the activi­ties of various road users. Thisillustration shows the graveyardbelow Liverpool Cathedral, a quiet,meandering footpath beneath theimmense weight of cliff and tower.

This explosion resembles nothingso much as a disturbed ant-hill withbrightly enamelled ants movingrapidly in all directions, toot-toot,pip-pip, hooray. Another traffic island, at Melksham, set in what is really a square; instead of the houses, cross and floor forming a ROOM, the sea of tarmac has blown this conception sky high and we are left with the devices of garden craftsmen. The paradox of the scene is that this is a cul-de-sac, believe it or not there is no through traffic. Having lost the day to the road engineer the amenity committees decide they must hot up the immediate vicinity of the cross with the kind of motifs that warm the heart of the modern municipal officer (and placate his conscience he’s artistic really, you see)-the gardenscape in all its contemporary inappropriateness- crazy-paving, dry-stone walls, triangles of lawn and idiot chains. The lowest ebb of the great English tradition of gardening. This is a very rare example of thedirect relationship between twocategories, village and countryside.The unequivocal character of both isbrought sharply together, there is nofluffing. On the one side the windsoughs through the trees and on theother the hollow tread of boots re­ First among these cases is anticipa­tion. These two pictures clearly arouseone's curiosity as to what scene willmeet our eyes upon reaching the endof the street.Anything that may be occupied eitherby oneself or by one's imagination,which here lifts us into a carved stoneaedicule (in Valencia), becomes tothat extent of interest a warmcolour in the greys "f the inhospitable.Porticos, balconies and terraces havethis ability to communicate. Theydraw us outwards. precinctsLeft, in this significant picture, canbe seen the whole urban pattern as itwas and to some extent still is. Insideis the tightly built-up pedestrian townwith its enclosures and no doubt areasof viscosity, its focal points and en­claves. Outside are the expresswaysfor car and lorry, train and shipwhich exist to serve and vitalize theprecincts. This is the traditionalp~ttern at its clearest. The smallphotograph below shows some ofthese elements at their most dis­organized, the chaotic mixture ofhouses and traffic in which bothpedestrians and traffic suffer a dimi­nution of their proper character. Concerning OPTICS. Let us suppose that we are walking through atown: here is a straight road off which is a courtyard, at the far side ofwhich another street leads out and bends slightly before reaching amonument. Not very unusual. We take this path and our first view isthat of the street. Upon turning into the courtyard the new view isrevealed instantaneously at the point of turning, and this view remainswith us whilst we walk across the courtyard. Leaving the courtyard weenter the further street. Again a new view is suddenly revealed althoughwe are travelling at a uniform speed. Finally as the road bends themonument swings into view. The significance of all this is that althoughthe pedestrian walks through the town at a uniform speed, the scenery oftowns is often revealed in a series of jerks or revelations. This we callSERIAL VISION. In the context of the post-war era and the end of Empire, Townscape reinterpreted the picturesque as symbolising an English allegiance to freedom and liberty, an alternative to the monumentalism of the Beaux Arts tradition. However, as Williams notes, the AR’s egalitarianism existed simultaneously and in tension with a conservative ‘aristocratic world-view’, where the city as an aesthetic object acted as a source of spectacular pleasure for the privileged observer. environment: buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements andso on, and to weave them together in such a way that drama is released.For a city is a dramatic event in the environment. Look at the researchthat is put into making a city work: demographers, sociologists, engineers,traffic experts; all co-operating to torm the myriad factors into a work­able, viable and healthy organization. It is a tremendous human under­taking.

The Concise Townscape author draws three conclusions at the end of the book: Urban environments can be categorized in two ways. The first is the city as an object made up of subjects that are outside planners. Second, the city is built, and then it is populated with activities. Both provide a sustaining complement. Townscape serves as a city in this scenario, providing the framework and fostering action. The inhabitants of the urban setting should be able to live comfortably. The urban environment impacted the physical and psychological evolution of civilization . Therefore, it is essential to emphasize the art of the surroundings in urban planning.

‘I’ll have stories for the pub till the day I die’

suffice to demonstrate the charms ofthis immediacy. A somewhat similareffect is produced in those caseswhere a structure is separated fromthe viewer by a featureless plane,a great empty stretch which has nogrip on the eye, such as the view ofthe Horse Guards from St James'sPark or the view of the SupremeCourt in Chandigarh across thewide lake. personality and uniqueness. Accepting the fact that most towns are ofold foundation, their fabric will show evidence of differing periods in itsarchitectural styles and also in the various accidents of layout. Manytowns do so display this mixture of styles, materials and scales. In considering vistas or any linearextension it is interesting to note thatthe optical division of such a lineinto here and there should be doneby bisecting the angle of vision intotwo roughly equal parts and not bydividing the line into two equallengths. This is demonstrated in thediagram. parks, local authority for its green belts, antiquarians for conservationareas and so on. This is already happening. There is a further observation to be made concerning Serial Vision.Although from a scientific or commercial point of view the town may bea unity, from our optical viewpoint we have split it into two elements:the existing view and the emerging view. In the normal way this is anaccidental chain of events and whatever significance may arise out of thelinking of views will be fortuitous. Suppose, however, that we take overthis linking as a branch of the art of relationship; then we are finding atool with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into acoherent drama. The process of manipulation has begun to turn theblind facts into a taut emotional situation.

As soon as the game or dialogue is understood the whole place beginsto shake hands with you. It bursts all through the dull business of whodid what and when and who did it first. We know who did it, it was a chapwith a twinkle in his eye. He was famous as a writer, artist, planner and urban designer and his book, Townscape, remained in print for over fifty years. Many planning students from the 1970s might still have their copies of this seminal work (the author included)! Over the last five years, the work we have done on the collection has significantly increased its accessibility.We have embedded the collection into teaching on the University of Westminster’s MArch and BA Designing Cities degrees.We have also facilitated use of the collection by other institutions and are always keen to encourage researchers to access the collection. Shwetank, K., 2022. Book Review: The Concise Townscape by Gordon Cullen . [online] Academia.edu. Available at: [Accessed 20 July 2022]. A reminder to civic gardeners iscontained in the picture of a seat atBidston Hill, which carries with it nohint that the land is occupied ormunicipally digested. Here is a seatwhich might have been left by atraveller.The parallel of foliage and traceryin this Spanish scene, below, producesa momentary and transient synchroni­zation which asserts a community ofinterest beyond the normal and is tothat extent remarkable. There is awhole field of study of the texturesand habits of growth of trees whichcan be exploited. For just as treeshave different characteristics, fasti­giate or drooping, geometric or fluffy,polished or velvet, so these qualitiesmay be used in dramatic conjunctionwith buildings, either to extend theconception or to offset it as a foil. as a physical barrier; the very simpiest perhaps the oldest and yet still themeans will suffice to give this warn_ most effective form of fence with its Concerning CONTENT. In this last category we turn to an examina­tion of the fabric of towns: colour, texture, scale, style, character, Now turn to the visual impact which a city has on those who live init or visit it. I wish to show that an argument parallel to the one putforward above holds good for buildings: bring people together and theycreate a collective surplus of enjoyment; bring buildings together andcollectively they can give visual pleasure which none can give separately. the average: of averages of human behaviour, averages of weather,factors of safety an": so on. And these averages do not give an inevitableresult for any particular problem. They are, so to speak, wandering factswhich may synchronize or, just as likely, may conflict with each other.The upshot is that a town could take one of several patterns and stilloperate with success, equal success. Here then we discover a pliabilityin the scientific solution and it is precisely in the manipulation of thispliability that the art of relationship is made possible. As will be seen, theaim is not to dictate the shape of the town or environment, but is amodest one: simply to manipulate within the tolerances.

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