URBAN DESIGN

HISTORY
AND
THEORY
 INTRODUCTION TO TOWNSCAPE 
• "Townscape" is the art of giving visual coherence
and organization to the jumble of buildings,
streets and spaces that make up the urban
environment.
• Its concepts were first developed by Gordon
Cullen in The Architectural Review and were
later embodied in the book TOWNSCAPE (1961)
which instantly established itself as a major
influence on architects, planners and others
concerned with what cities should look like.
• Gordon Cullen (1914-1994) was an English
architect,. an urban designer who carried on the
of the Townscape movement theme. Later on he
wrote and published the “Townscape” book in
1961. He was a key motivator and activist in the
development of British theories of urban design
in the post-war period. After his death, David
Gosling & Norman Foster collected various
examples of his work and put them together in
the book ‘Visions of Urban Design’.
Gordon Cullen describes three primary ways in which our environment
produces an emotional reaction key to the planner or architect:

1. Concerning Optics
- How we see the environment.
 Serial Vision
- To walk from one end of the plan to
another, at a uniform pace, will
provide a sequence of revelations
which are suggested in the serial
drawings.
- Movement through space
 2. Concerning Place
This second point is concerned with our reactions to the position of our
body in its environment.
Here and There
- The “here” is known, the “there” can be
known or unknown and revealed in the
sequence of the serial vision. Usually in an
enclosed entity the “here” remains the same
and the “there” is unknown. With a high
archway or a proper perspective the “there”
can be revealed from the enclosed ”here”.
And when the object building is deflected
away, you expect that it is doing for a reason:
that there is a new place at the end.
  Deflection
A variation on the closed vista is
deflection, in which the object
building is deflected away from the
right angle

 Narrow
The crowding together of buildings
forms a pressure, an unavoidable nearness
of detail, which is in direct contrast to the
wide plaza, square or promenade, and by
the use of such narrows it is possible to
maintain enclosure without forbidding the
passage of vehicles and pedestrians.
 Space Continuity
 Functional Space
Space Continuity. Similarly but on a larger What better way of
scale, this view of Greenwich market, emphasizing an event
produces the effect of spatial continuity, a
in the street such as a
complex interlocking of volumes in which
the quality of light and materials denies
theater, than by giving
the concept of outside and inside. this function its own
space, which becomes
alive and informed by
sparkle and
conversation and
tension.
 3. Concerning Content

In this last category we turn to an examination of the fabric of towns: color, texture,
scale, style, character, personality and uniqueness.

• Public and Private

– Emphasizing this difference are the
various qualities attached to parts of
the environment, qualities of
character, scale, color, etc. In this case
the change is from a public Here
(Victoria Street) to a private or
precinctual There (Westminster
Cathedral).
 URBAN
 INFRASTRUCTURE
 INFRASTRUCTURE
• Infrastructure is the fundamental facilities
and systems serving a country, city, or other
area, including the services and facilities
necessary for its economy to function.
Infrastructure is composed of public and
private physical improvements such as
roads, bridges, tunnels, water supply,
sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications
(including Internet connectivity and
broadband speeds).
The Team 10 primer
This article indicates the development of the Smithsons’ ideas of urban structuring via
circulation systems, alongside the work of Jacob Bakema, Giancarolo de Carlo, Aldo van Eyck,
Ralph Eskine, Shadrach Woods and others who loosely identified themselves as Team 10.

Alison and Peter Smithson

Alison Margaret Smithson (22 June 1928 – 14 August 1993)

and Peter Denham Smithson (18 September 1923 – 3 March
2003) were English architects that together formed an
architectural partnership, and are often associated with the
New Brutalism (especially in architectural and urban theory.
• The community subdivisions might be
thought of as “appreciated units”—an
appreciated unit is not a “visual group” or
a “neighborhood.” but an in-some-way
defined part of a human agglomeration.
The appreciated unit must be different
for each type of community. For each
particular community, one must invent
the structure of its subdivision (Fig. 1).
• The road system was devised to be simple and to give equal ease of access to all parts. This theme of
the road system as the basis of the community structure was further explored in the Cluster City idea
between 1957 and 1959, in the Haupstadt Berlin Plan 1958, and in the London Roads Study 1959 (Figs.
2 and 3).
• Urban motorways thus designed form the structure of the community. In order to work they must be
based on equal distribution of traffic loads over a comprehensive net, and this system is by its nature
apparent all over the community, giving a sense of connectedness and potential release (Fig. 4).
• The idea of relating the architecture to the type of movement can be shown most easily in
examples uncomplicated by existing conditions, as in projects by Candilis, Josic, and Woods
(Figs. 6–8).
• Robin Hood Gardens
Is a residential estate in Poplar, London designed in the late 1960s by architects Alison and Peter
Smithson and completed in 1972. It was built as a council housing estate with homes spread across 'streets
in the sky': social housing characterized by broad aerial walkways in long concrete blocks.
The aim of urbanism is comprehensibility, i.e. clarity of organization. The community is by definition a
comprehensible thing. And comprehensibility should therefore be a characteristic of the parts.
In general, those town-building techniques that can make the community more comprehensible are:

• 1. To develop the road and communication systems as the urban infrastructure. (Motorways as a
unifying force). And to realize the implication of flow and movement in the architecture itself.
• 2. To accept the dispersal implied in the concept of mobility and to re-think accepted density patterns
and location of functions in relation to the new means of communication.
• 3. To understand and use the possibilities offered by a ‘throw-away’ technology, to create a new sort
of environment with different cycles of change for different functions.
• 4. To develop an aesthetic appropriate to mechanized building techniques and scales of operation.
• 5. To overcome the ‘cultural obsolescence’ of most mass housing by finding solutions which project a
genuinely twentieth-century technological image of dwelling - comfortable, safe and not feudal.
• 6. To establish conditions not detrimental to mental health and well-being.