1. Didem Zeynep Ödemiş Hi everyone,
In this presentation I will talk about Collage City written by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in The book has a critical approach to Modern urban/architecture theories. Authors are rejecting “total planning” vision of utopians. Instead they propose “Collage City”.
Didem Zeynep Ödemiş

2. Frederick Rowe American architect Architectural Historian Critic
Therotician
Frederick Colin Rowe was an American architect and an architectural historian, critic and theoretician. He studied architecture in Liverpool School of Architecture. Later he made his degree on history of architecture at Warburg Institute in London. Rowe invited to join Cambridge University in 1958 ; where he adopted a formalist approach to architectural analysis.Then he returned to US and worked in Cornell University. This time he focused on urban theory. He studied city form and social interactions with city.

3. Fred Koetter British architect Architectural historian
Fred Koetter is a British architect and architectural historian. He studied architecture in University of Oregon in 1963 and later made his masters degree in Cornell University in He taught lectures in Yale University, Harvard University. Cornell University, Kentucky University.

4. MATHEMATICS OF IDEAL VILLA
Rowe published The Mathematics of Ideal Villa in In the Mathematics of Ideal Villa he focused on intellectual similarities between Renaissance and Modernism. The book compares Le Corbusier’s works with Palladio and interestingly found outs many similarities between two. He criticizes Modernist’s claim to be completely new. Two years later with Fred Koetter, Collage City is published. The book was about changes in urban planning with the modernist theory. They opposed to "total planning" and introduced "collage city" as a collection of all utopias.

5. CRISIS OF THE OBJECT
Le Corbusier Saint – Die figure ground plan compared with the city of Parma’s figure plan.
The city that used to be made up from continuous solids now transformed into voids. The reasons underlying are new rationalized form of housing and vehicles.  
But if one compares old cities and new cities from a Gestalt  diagram their divergence can be understood more visibly. Text compares Le Corbusier Saint –with the city of Parma. Traditional city is almost black  'accumulation of solid in largely unmanipulated void' , while modern one is almost all white as being 'accumulation of voids in largely unmanipulated solid.
Cities used to be considered as solid continuous texture

6. SOLID & VOID Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitiation
Vasari's Uffizi in Florence
If we think of figure ground relationship of Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitiation and Vasari's Uffizi in Florence, size of the Unite'd Habitation almost same with void of Uffizi.
Exteriors of modern buildings determined by their function without considering public figure. Modern architecture tended to see buildings a beatiful objects detached from its context. If a building , a attraction point of internal expression, is given a universal offer it destroys public realm.

7. UTOPIA AND TRADITION Classical utopia Activist utopia
In this chapter authors introduces early Utopian visions. There are two city utopias: "classical utopia" and "activist utopia". First one inspired by critical rational morality and ideas of justice which in those days merely an argument. Second one is stimulated by Newtonian rationalism. They believed that society should be explained like how Newton explained physics.  They argue  that morality should be interpreted and society should be transformed into an ideal city.
Frontispiece from Thomas More’s Utopia

8. Andre: a mid 19th century project for and ideal community
Utopians were claimed to the change the society but they failed to go far from classical images. When we look at the ideal city of Andre we see that it is a prototype of La Saline Chaux of Ledoux. Chaux was designed for service production and circular form referring to traditional image.
Claude-Nicholas Ledoux: project for La Saline de Chaux

9. Charles Fourier: Phalanstery, 1829
Utopian socialists also followed this tendency. In 1829 Karl Marx's choose Fourier's Phalanstery, as proletarian mega palace to designate Utopian socialism, which was a imitation of Versailles. This place was a great example of archetype of aristocratic privilege and conflicting with all their virtues. Rowe and Koetter point out that all ideal city designs and Utopian designs were taking references from traditional images instead of creating something new. Then authors arrives to 20th century and examines why they were so influenced by the past although they claimed to be new.
Versailles ariel view

10. COLLUSION CITY AND POLITICS OF “BRICOLAGE”
“The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Colin Rowe inspired by Isaiah Berlin's distinction between hedgehog and the fox. "The fox knows many things but a hedgehog knows one big thing" said Oxford historian and philosopher.
He divides people into two groups. Hedgehogs are only interested in one idea. They simplify complexity into one organizing idea and derive to a principle that regulates everything. While the fox includes rich variety of inputs and see the world in all its complexity.

11. HEDGEHOG AND FOX Palladio Guilio Romano Frank Lloyd Wright
Walter Gropius
Mies van der Rohe
...
Guilio Romano
Hadrian...
Le Corbusier
Rowe used this to classify different architectural temperaments. Frank Lloyd Wright is a hedgehog, Palladio is a hedgehog, but Guilio Romano is a fox. However when it comes to modern architecture definition of a  hedgehog a bit changes. Rowe and Koetter observed that Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Hannes Meyer and Buckminster Fuller and many others being hedgehogs. Since they advocated one big idea like functionalism or organicism or technological determinism. Though, Le Corbusier is a exception. He designed houses of great diversity and richness like a fox but when it comes to cities he acts a kind of fox who acts like a hedgehog for his public appearance.

12. “Bricoleur is Jack of all trades or a kind of professional do-it-yourself person.”
According to Rowe and Koetter good society should rest upon necessary conflicts between freedom with justice.  This requires evaluation  of opposites: tradition and utopia, rational science of engineer or spontaneous or savage mind against bricoleur.
Claude Levi Strauss defines "Bricoleur" as someone who works with his hands. Then explains that;
"Bircoleur" includes many diverging tasks, but he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project.
Today bricloeur introduces itself as an engineer.  But unlike engineers he does not subordinate raw materials and tools to their limit of availability. Their world is limited with what is in the hand.

13. BRICOLAGE science architect bricoleur
Today bricloeur introduces itself as an engineer.  But unlike engineers it does not subordinate raw materials and tools to their limit of availability. Their world is limited with what is in the hand.
Artist(architect) must be a combination scientist and a bricoleur. They represent different functions. Scientist creates event with structure and bricoleur creates structure with events. But one should not think which one comes before. To create a project one needs not only bricoleur's savage mind and engineers domesticated mind, but also needs interaction of their combination. Bricolage and science are both ways to address problems.
Rowe and Koetter suggest a mid-way between civilized and savage mind.  They believed that architect must adopt science and bricolage together.
science
architect
bricoleur

14. COLLAGE CITY
“ The tiger of today from the beginning as if none had existed before him... Breaking the continuity with the past, is lowering of man and a plagarism of the orangutan.”
For Rowe and Koetter collage was the most appropriate aesthetic concept for bricolage and science discourse. In this chapter they come to  a conclusion what they talked about in previous chapter and propose their "Collage City" solution.
Collage City aims to take attention to the problems of Modernism Movement. It started as a rational and scientific effort.  However, in reality it was dogmatically searching ways to change city. What they achieved was cold and impoverished environment. Authors found the reason in dense influence of classical utopias.

15. Picasso: Bull’s Head 1944
“You remember the bull's head... out of the handlebars an the biycycle seat. I made a bull's head which everybody recognized as a bull's head. ... Suppose my bull's head is thrown on the scarp heap. Perhaps some day a fellow will come alone and say: 'Why there's something that would come in very handy for the handlebars of my bicycle...' and so a double metamorphosis would have been achieved. “
Still life with chair caning
Usefulness of collage technique is better understood with Picasso's comment on his Bulls Head and Still life with chair caning.

16. Hadrian Hadrian’s Tivoli Pantheon’s Oculus Radiant City Villa Stein
When we think of Hadrian, we immediately remember Tivoli's private and public space relation. Then we started to think his iconic buildings in their metropolitan locations. Pantheon recall itself with its oculus.  It makes us think the publicity of singular intention and privacy of personal interests. This relation cannot be established between Radiant City and Villa Stein.  
Radiant City
Villa Stein

17. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE
“ Utopia as metaphor and Collage City as prescription:
these opposites, involving the guarantees of both law and freedom, should surely constitute the dialectic to the future, rather than any social surrender either to scientific 'certainties' or the simple vagarities of the ad hoc. The disintegration of modern architecture seems to call for a such strategy...”
At the end of the book authors say about their proposal of Collage City idea
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE