The Concise Townscape

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Arising out of this sense of identity or sympathy with the environ­ment, this feeling of a person in street or square that he is in I T orentering IT or leaving IT, we discover that no sooner do we postulate aHERE than automatically we must create a THERE, for you cannot haveone without the other. Some of the greatest towns cape effects arecreated by a skilful relationship between the two, and I will name an We have witnessed a superficial civic style of decoration using bollardsand cobbles, we have seen traffic-free pedestrian precincts and we havenoted the rise of conservation. His techniques consisted largely of sketchy drawings that conveyed a particularly clear understanding of his ideas, and these had a considerable influence on subsequent architectural illustration styles. He also illustrated several books by other various authors, before writing his own book - based on the idea of Townscape - in 1961. The Concise Townscape has subsequently been republished around 15 times, proving to be one of the most popular books on Urban Design in the 20th Century. 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.

grandiose vistaOf the gambits used to exploit Hereand There the vista is, of course, oneof the most popular. The Grandiosevista does just what the whitewashedwall did in Scotland, p. 34, but in itsown expensive way. It links you, inthe foreground at Versailles, to theremote landscape, thus producing asense of power or omnipresence. The new rules of the emerging consumer economy radically reconfigured both the discourse and practice of architecture during the postwar era. Architecture became a commodity whose products were sold through mass media to mass audiences, via images that performed as advertising. In this world, image makers, rather than theorists, stood at the forefront of the architectural production, performing as "visual marketers." Thomas Gordon Cullen (1914-1994), the subject of this dissertation and one of the best-known twentieth-century architectural draftsmen to emerge from Britain, flourished during this visual consumerist push. Cullen gained widespread acclaim in the 1960s and 1970s following the publication of his book Townscape (1961) and its abbreviated edition, The Concise Townscape (1971). This is the watetshed. Up to thispoint we have presented the environ­ment as occupied territory serving thelegitimate social and business needsof people and irrigated by trafficroutes. Now arises the natural corol­lary that if the outdoors is colonizedthen the people who do this willattempt to humanize the landscape injust the same way they already do forthe interiors. At this point we canfind little difference between the two,and the terms Indoor Landscape andOutdoor Room make sense. In thetop picture can be seen the patternedpavement (tloorscape) and arcade.Over this is a building in which aman lives whilst the vault of the skyspans over. To the right an avenueof trees leads out to the hills. Herein this picture of an interior is all thespatial quality of a landscape. Below,the diners are gathered togetherunder the ceiling lights and theHouses of Parliament sit on theperimeter like a model on the mantel­piece. To continue the Screened Vista,this example of St Paul's seen fromCheapside shows the use of foliage towithhold a view until one has pene­trated past the tree when, quitesuddenly, the great wall of thecathedral is revealed at close quarterswith the dome almost vertically above.This dramatic impact at close rangeis only possible by withholding thevIew.Cullen, T., 2022. The Concise Townscape By Gordon Cullen [PDF|TXT] . [online] Pdfcookie.com. Available at: [Accessed 21 July 2022]. Between 1944 and 1946 he worked in the planning office of the Development and Welfare Department in Barbados, as his poor eyesight meant that he was unfit to serve in the British armed forces. He later returned to London and joined the Architectural Review journal, first as a draughtsman and then as a writer on planning policies. There he produced a large number of influential editorials and case studies on the theory of planning and the design of towns. Many improvements in the urban and rural environment in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. He was also involved in the Festival of Britain in 1951. One of the few large scale Cullen works on public display is the mural in the foyer of the Erno Goldfinger designed Greenside Primary School in west London, completed in 1953. [4] His 1958 ceramic mural in Coventry, depicting the history of the city and its post-war regeneration, is on a much grander scale though now relocated away from its original central location. [5] Illustrations [ edit ] At the last CovSoc meeting we heard a presentation from Lesley Durbin about the restoration of the Cullen tile mural in the Lower Precinct. But who was Gordon Cullen and how did he come to be designing a mural in Coventry? Because the motor car demands first, a pedestrian-free permanent way; second, a smooth surface; third, vast open acreage for parking lots. The first neutralizes the space for use, the second destroys the character of the space by introducing a neutral floor, the third eats up all unfenced urban openings for car-storage. There is a fourth danger which has nothing to do with traffic and that is the deliberate attempt by what one might term the ‘eternal prefect’ mentality to prevent natural assembly. For over thirty years before his death in 1994, Cullen was a busy consultant completing influential studies, masterplans and urban design projects, such as for the new town for Alcan Industries (1964–68) and, later, the Isle of Dogs in London. His formative years, however, were spent as part of an influential group led by Hubert de Cronin Hastings, the eccentric proprietor of the Architectural Review (AR) where in 1946, Cullen was appointed Art Editor. From there he joined forces with luminaries such as painter John Piper, Hugh Casson, architectural director for the 1951 Festival of Britain, writer Nikolaus Pevsner, and iconoclast Ian Nairn, author of Outrage and scourge of ‘subtopia’, those places Nairn derided for their loss of individuality and spirit of place.

In Townscape, the environment is apprehended ‘almost entirely through vision’ and not only acts as a means of navigation but also evokes our ‘memories and experiences and emotions.’ The key components are Serial Vision - the experience of the city as an uninterrupted sequence of views that unfold like stills from a movie, Place - designing for experience according to the position of the body within the environment, and Content - the colour, texture, scale, style and character. Collectively they add up to the fabric of a place, with Cullen presenting a methodology for urban visual analysis and design based on the psychology of perception, the human need for visual stimulation, and notions of time and space. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval systemor transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisheronly do we experience the harmony released but, equally, the coloursbecome more truly themselves. In a large landscape by Corot, I forgetits name, a landscape of sombre greens, almost a monochrome, there is asmall figure in red. It is probably the reddest thing I have ever seen. seen in town and village. I t is a verysmall selection and is only intendedto stimulate the reader to discover