1. 11th and 12th Lecture on City Planning
Neo-Empiricists
K katedra sídel a regionů

2. Reventós, Folguera, Nogues and Utrillo
The possibilities for making a serious architecture on Empirical – Picturesque – lines were demonstrated by several of Sitte’s disciples and, particular, by the Barcelona architects Ramón Reventós and Fransesc Folguera working with (this is important) the painters Xavier Nogues and Miguel Utrillo
Collectively they designed the Pueblo Espaňol – a Spanish Village – for the Barcelona Exposition of 1929
There was Pavilion designed by Mies van der Rohe for the same exhibition
K katedra sídel a regionů

3. Reventós, Folguera, Nogues and Utrillo – cont.
The plazas of Pueblo are connected by a maze of streets (calles) with steps, arches, arcades and turnings-round-the-corner which, collectively, provide the kinds of urban surprise which Sitte, Gaudet and others found so enchanting – fig. 1,2
The urban spaces themselves are formed between, as it were, built collages, assemblages of photographically exact – rather lavish – vernacular detail measured from originals in various parts of Spain
K katedra sídel a regionů

4. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Fig. 1: Plan of the Pueblo Espaňol – Nogues, Reventós and Folguera 1939
K katedra sídel a regionů

5. Fig. 2: Typical Street of the Pueblo Espaňol
K katedra sídel a regionů

6. Reventós, Folguera, Nogues and Utrillo – cont.
These details are assembled, in more or less formal compositions to make houses, shops, palaces, churches and other buildings
Whilst Mies’s Pavilion was dismantled at the end of the exhibition, the Pueblo retained its original forms – and its original functions – uninterrupted over the decades
It still offers Spanish folklore and crafts: metalwork, ceramics, glassware, mosaics, furniture, (blown) glasswork, cork, shell-work, prints, printed and woven textiles, toys, lacework and crotchets, coats (and suits) of armour, ironmongery, not to mention records, food, drink, music and dancing, all in splendid reproduction vernacular settings
K katedra sídel a regionů

7. Reventós, Folguera, Nogues and Utrillo – cont.
They would have had to level a platform on Montjuich for contours are the enemy of symmetry
Instead of that they chose, as Bassegoda points out, to respond to the accidents of the terrain, turning their streets here with the contours, thus making them curve, and there against them thus requiring steep slopes or even steps
That process, by its nature, gave them basic, indeed fundamental, irregularities but these in themselves were not enough
K katedra sídel a regionů

8. Reventós, Folguera, Nogues and Utrillo – cont.
The designers had to make detailed decisions as to which houses should be grouped together, where they should be grouped, how a church might be set within a plaza, and so on
Sometimes such decisions derived from reality which had grown over the centuries, reproduced with all their accidents intact
Someone, clearly, had to take decisions of a different kind; how to make collage-like juxtapositions of given architectural forms: the distance one can see along a curving street, the vista one glimpses through an archway
K katedra sídel a regionů

9. Reventós, Folguera, Nogues and Utrillo – cont.
Which of course is the stuff of Picturesque composition
The Pueblo Espaňol shows quite clearly that, given skill and sensitivity, it is possible to assemble fragments of architecture from many places and to combine them during a single period of designing into a coherent, if very complicated whole
K katedra sídel a regionů

10. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen
Gordon Cullen began to develop the idea of townscape at the end of war in 1945 when he joined The Architectural Review as an assistant editor
Cullen’s beautifully illustrated essays of the subject were collected to form the book called Townscape (Cullen, 1961) and republished, in edited form, as The Concise Townscape (Cullen, 1971)
K katedra sídel a regionů

11. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
Cullen argued that just as there is an art of architecture, so there is an art of relationship, in which all the elements which go to the making of an environment, buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements and so on are woven together in such a way that drama is released
This cannot be achieved by scientific research or by the technical half of the brain, although Cullen accepts the need for demographers, sociologists, engineers, traffic experts and so on 
K katedra sídel a regionů

12. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
The result of their work according to Cullen is: “…that a town could take one of several patterns and still operate with success. Here then we discover a pliability in the scientific solution and it is precisely in the manipulation of this pliability that the art of relationships is made possible…the aim is…simply to manipulate within the tolerances.”
That manipulation will be a visual matter: “for it is almost entirely through vision that the environment is apprehended”
K katedra sídel a regionů

13. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
He goes on: “…vision is not only useful but it evokes our memories and experiences…. It is this unlooked-for surplus….”
We are dealing, he says, with this unlooked-for surplus, which we appreciate in three ways
These are matters of:
Serial vision which is stimulated when, in addition to the view which is immediately present, the existing view, there are also hints of a different, emerging view
K katedra sídel a regionů

14. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
Place – especially the sense of being in a particular place – a street or square – of being “here” with the equally strong sense that around and outside it there are other places which we may think of as “there”
Content which is a matter of architectural style, scale, materials, and layout. Cullen cites colour, texture, style character, personality and uniqueness
As Cullen saw it, the designer could take this (or his own) Scanner as a map of the design problem 
K katedra sídel a regionů

15. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
It could even be used as a check list against which the designer could ask himself “Have I considered…” or “Is there provision for…”
In particular it would force him to draw out of the environment those things which were unique and particular to a certain place
K katedra sídel a regionů

16. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
Cullen’s proposals for Maryculter, a new urban village near Aberdeen
This was prepared (1974) for Christian Salvesen (Properties) Ltd, with David Gosling as Planning Consultant and Kenneth Browne as co-Design Consultant
As we have seen, Cullen himself is perfectly clear that any design study should start with a proper scientific survey and the Maryculter study was a model of its kind, taking into account as it did location, land ownership, topography, landscape, existing development, services, geology and subsoil – fig. 3
K katedra sídel a regionů

17. Fig. 3: New Town of Maryculter
K katedra sídel a regionů

18. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
David Gosling’s team then worked out on this basis their proposals for the village’s overall form, circulation, population/employment/density, open space and recreation, community facilities, landscape, main drainage and phasing and it was within this framework that Cullen then presented his concept – fig. 4
He saw this in terms of a Habitat for Houses, a Townscape Plan, and the Way to the Heart, followed by the detailed treatment of four neighbourhoods: East Park, Kaleyards, The Wynds and Burnside
K katedra sídel a regionů

19. Fig. 4: Maryculter: Town Centre Perspective
K katedra sídel a regionů

20. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
Cullen: “the main purpose of this plan is to try to convert mass housing into an individual experience, to produce a sense of Identity, and Belonging”
More than any other scheme Maryculter shows that far from being a product only of time, picturesque effect can be generated from response to a particular situation; a certain site with its contours, its climate and other local conditions; views out, views in and other visual clues; above all, a desire on the part of the designers to respond to a place rather than imposing their own sterile geometry
K katedra sídel a regionů

21. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
The Maryculter report suggests a number of principles which could be applied to other places wherever a sense of identity is required
These include:
Fitting the development to the site
Providing a central nucleus with the necessary authority, scale and incident
Providing distinctive housing areas, each with its own identity, idiosyncrasy and individuality
Avoiding a vast, amorphous spread by separating the various developments so that each has recognizable edges or boundaries
K katedra sídel a regionů

22. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
Encouraging a sense of individual places, not to mention aiding navigation, by providing a network of recognizable landmarks, each of which may act as a rallying point for some particular function or some particular zone
Using the existing topography, and careful planting, to encourage a sense of drama, thus providing memorable situations
Using carefully planned enclosures to provide a sense of locality and place (I am here)
Leading people from one (enclosure) experience to another towards a climax, so that the unfolding drama itself will stick in the memory
K katedra sídel a regionů

23. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Gordon Cullen – cont.
These devices need not incur any extra cost; they can be achieved by simply reorganizing or regrouping the elements from which any development would have to have been made in any case
Maryculter was never built, but the precepts which Cullen described certainly could be applied in any environment according to the clues that environment offers
K katedra sídel a regionů

24. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kevin Lynch
One of the first coherent analysers of the urban scene in Empirical terms was Kevin Lynch in his The Image of the City (1960)
Lynch had been working with Georgy Kepes at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lynch was concerned, above all, with The Image of the Environment for, as he says, “Every citizen has had long associations with some part of the city, and his image is soaked in memories and meanings”
K katedra sídel a regionů

25. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kevin Lynch – cont.
As he also says: “Moving elements in the city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts”
Whilst he points out that “Nearly every sense is in operation” as we perceive the city, Lynch’s primary concern is with the visual quality of the (American) city, which he approaches “by studying the mental images of (the) city which is held by its citizens”
In particular he looks for clarity and legibility in the cityscape, “the ease with which its parts can be recognized and … ordered into a coherent pattern”
K katedra sídel a regionů

26. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kevin Lynch – cont.
Lynch is concerned with how we locate ourselves within the city, how we find our way around, and so on
Lynch’s definitions, paraphrased, are:
Paths – the channels of movement
Edges which for Lynch are linear elements which people do not use as paths. They perceive them, rather, as linear breaks or boundaries of some kind (“important organizing features”)
Districts which for Lynch are “medium to large sections of the city which people visualize as having two-dimensional extent. Not only do they form districts on the map, they are also recognizable, especially from within, as having some common, identifying character
K katedra sídel a regionů

27. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kevin Lynch – cont.
Nodes are strategic points within the city to or from which the observer travels. They may be crossings or convergences of paths, junctions, places where one changes from one mode of transport to another. Or they may be concentrations of some kind, which are important because of their physical form: such as urban squares, street corners…
Landmarks too are reference-points but the observer does not actually use them. They consist, rather, of “simply defined physical objects” such as a building, a sign, a store or even a mountain. A landmark in this sense will be a physical object which, because of its form, may be singled out from the surrounding environment. They may be distant mountains which serve a similar purpose
K katedra sídel a regionů

28. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kevin Lynch – cont.
Landmarks also occur at smaller scale; a tree within an urban square, a particular sign, a shop front, a door or even a doorknob. These, and other urban detail … fill in the image (for) most observers
As Lynch suggests we make frequent use of such clues in our search for the identity of elements within the city and even for our understanding of urban structure
K katedra sídel a regionů

29. Francois Spoerry – Port Grimaud
There were indeed two notable attempts at Picturesque design in the 1960s; Francois Spoerry’s Port Grimaud (from 1963) and Kresge College by Moore, Turnbull and Whitaker (1968)
Spoerry built his Port Grimaud on the Gulf of St Tropez on the Coast of Provence and within ten years it had become the third most visited monument in France after the Eiffel Tower and Mont-Saint-Michel
These days, presumably, it takes fourth place to the Centre Pompidou in Paris which of course has a far larger catchment area
K katedra sídel a regionů

30. Francois Spoerry – cont.
Other developers, looking for easy sites on the French Mediterranean Coast had thought the salt-marsh quite unsuitable for building but Spoerry made a careful survey, probing the subsoil, checking the flow of the river, the highest and lowest conditions of the tides, the impact of that most unpleasant of winds, the mistral
After which Spoerry bought the land cheaply because of its low agricultural – and potential for development – values
K katedra sídel a regionů

31. Francois Spoerry – cont.
Spoerry conceived the idea that concentric, if irregular rings of land could alternate with rings of water
Of course the rings would have to be broken – to allow boats to come in from the sea – and also connected by bridges so that pedestrians could cross the rings of water to reach the inner rings of land – fig. 5,6
Thus broken, of course, the rings of land are more like fingers projecting into the water but Spoerry worried that the water between them might become stagnant, given the small Mediterranean tide 
K katedra sídel a regionů

32. Fig. 5: Francois Spoerry – Port Grimaud: Air View
K katedra sídel a regionů

33. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Fig. 6: Port Grimaud Plan
K katedra sídel a regionů

34. Francois Spoerry – cont.
So Spoerry toyed with the idea of windmill-driven pumps to keep the water swirling between the fingers
But then he made a model of the fingers in which the tidal changes could be modeled
And he realized that if his fingers were to be cut where they joined the mainland, with bridges, the tiny swirl produced by tidal changes could indeed be quite adequate
K katedra sídel a regionů

35. Francois Spoerry – cont.
Having established the layout of his fingers at model scale Spoerry could also model the houses which were to line the fingers
For literally he had a Radburn layout with pedestrian routes between the houses along the fingers and vehicles
Port Grimaud is a pedestrian village with off-site parking for the cars
K katedra sídel a regionů

36. Francois Spoerry – cont.
Having provided at Port Grimaud basic, but highly varied “shells”, Spoerry encourages user-modifications
Port Grimaud indeed is a success, commercially and in many other ways
It has been extended three times
Among many other things, Spoerry proves that one need not rely on contours for the basic Picturesque irregularity of street line, urban open space and so on
For nothing, clearly, could be flatter than a swamp!
K katedra sídel a regionů

37. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kresge College ( )
William Turnbull had drawn up a Master Plan for the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1967
The Provost and his assistant believed that the fundamental unit of the social and learning environment should be the encounter-group, that is the “kin-group” of about 25 students who lived and worked together with faculty leader
K katedra sídel a regionů

38. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kresge College – cont.
Once the idea of kin-groups had been established, certain large facilities were broken into smaller units, thus the main dining-room was abandoned to be replaced by a co-operative food shop and “family” kitchens for the students in residence and a coffee shop for those who commute
There were defined the students’ environmental needs, using survey techniques; these included types of accommodation, furniture, attitudes towards public space and privacy, eating facilities and so on
K katedra sídel a regionů

39. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kresge College – cont.
Instead of the “dorms” which are the normal units of residence on American campuses, there ought to be a mixture of eight-person units, and four-person units in the various apartment buildings
Moore and Turnbull designed a college which, instead of being grouped around a conventional quad which in any case would have been difficult on this particular site, takes the form of a 1000 foot L-shaped street along which administrative, academic, residential and social accommodation are interspersed – fig. 7
K katedra sídel a regionů

40. Fig. 7: Kresge College Plan
K katedra sídel a regionů

41. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kresge College – cont.
They devised a highly flexible system of residential accommodation
As for the overall layout, the idea of a street, as distinct from an open quad, was adopted for a number of reasons
Firstly it provides a clear and understandable structure, within which the various components of the College might be organized
Secondly because its linear form established an easy link for pedestrians from one part to another of the College and to other parts of the University
And thirdly, because the street itself, like any village street, is a focus for communal activities
K katedra sídel a regionů

42. Fig. 8: Kresge College – Post Office and Administration Building
K katedra sídel a regionů

43. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Kresge College – cont.
As Turnbull himself puts it: “The street creates a center for the College, a place where people meet. It establishes a unique character and identity, setting the place apart from its traditional quadrangle-inspired neighbours. It is a space which organizes and enriches the life of the College in much the same manner that a street does for a village or a small town.”
K katedra sídel a regionů

44. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Piazza d’Italia ( )
Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans is quite a different matter for here
In a single four-month period during the middle 1970s some 100 buildings were demolished in the Central Business District
So the city decided to develop a single block it owned in that area as a “new symbolic focus – part gathering place and part memorial – for the Italian community”
Charles Moore had gained second place by concentrating on such a focus; 
K katedra sídel a regionů

45. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Piazza d’Italia – cont.
A fountain, designed as a map of Italy in relief, some 80 feet long, stepping up towards the Alps at the Swiss end and with Italy herself stepped according to her contours in slate, marble cobblestones and mirrored tiles with (small) cascades of water for the Arno, the Po and the Tiber
Italy is set in a Pool, representing the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian Seas and since most of New Orleans’s Italians come from Sicily, a rostrum in the form of Sicily is placed at the centre of a system of concentric circles from which the paving patterns and, more important, colonnades and walls, are generated in concentric circles – fig. 9,10
K katedra sídel a regionů

46. Fig. 9: Piazza d’Italia, New Orleans – Perspective Drawing
K katedra sídel a regionů

47. Fig. 10: Piazza d’Italia, New Orleans – Plan
K katedra sídel a regionů

48. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Piazza d’Italia – cont.
Where Italy steps up to Switzerland there is a Triumphal Arch – intended as the entry to a Delicatessen – for which Moore invented a Delicatessen Order, Corinthian
His capitals are stainless steel with tiny jets of water for leaves
Moore and his colleagues have manipulated water in ways that one scarcely would have thought possible
Filler describes the Fountain as “the richest expression of the historical revival in contemporary architecture”
K katedra sídel a regionů

49. Fig. 11: Piazza d’Italia, New Orleans
K katedra sídel a regionů

50. Rowe and Koetter – Collage City
Like Rossi, the Kriers and others before them they had been greatly disillusioned by the Utopian schemes of Le Corbusier, not to mention his many predecessors, from Sir Thomas More onwards
Two different oppositions were emerging: “the cult of townscape and the cult of science fiction”
They see townscape as “a cult of English villages, Italian hill towns, and North African casbahs … a matter of felicitous happenings and anonymous architecture”
K katedra sídel a regionů

51. K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů
Rowe and Koetter – cont.
Townscape itself could be seen, as it were, through collage-coloured spectacles
It could, in other words, be interpreted “as a derivative of the late eighteenth century Picturesque; and, as it implicated all that love of disorder, cultivation of the individual, distaste for the rational, passion for the various, pleasure in the idiosyncratic and suspicion of the generalized which may, sometimes, be supposed to distinguish the architectural tradition of the United Kingdom”
K katedra sídel a regionů