The Concise Townscape

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The first category of relationships(pinpointing, change of level, vistas,narrows, closure, etc.) is concernedwith the interplay between a knownhere and a known there. The secondcategory, starting on p. 49, will be con­cerned with a known here and anunknown there. The pedestrian network links thetown together in a viable pattern: itlinks place to place by steps, bridgeand distinctive floor pattern, or byany means possible so long as con­tinuity and access are maintained.The traffic routes sweep along im­personally but the tenacious andlight-hearted pedestrian networkcreates the human town. Sometimesbrash and extrovert, it may syn­chronize with the great traffic routesor with shops and offices, at othertimes it may be withdrawn and leafy;but it must be a connected whole.

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buildings for social and businesspurposes. Yet since most people dojust what suits them when it suitsthem, we find that the out-of-doorsis culonized for social and business 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 Like many generations before them the architects of the modern movement had clear ideas of their perfect city. For most it was a city built from scratch, full of modernist towers and planned in zones—an area for work, another for play, another for housing. For most, it was also an ideal in which traffic was separated from pedestrians, a place of urban freeways and soaring overpasses. Reconstruction In writing an introduction to this edition of Townscape I find little toalter in the attitude expressed in the original introduction written tenyears ago.Up to now we have emphasized thecategories and moods of the environ­ment, the quality of thisness. Thenext phase is to bring together Thisand That to find out what emotionsand dramatic situations can beliberated out of the various forms ofrelationship. The first example,illusion, is based on the bluff thatThis is That. We know that it is inthe nature of water to be level inrepose and yet, by cunningly rampingthe retaining walls of the pool, re­taining walls which, as everyoneknows are always level, the illusion iscreated that the water is sloping.Levelness is sloping, This is That.

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How to explain? Example: the nearest to hand at the time of writing isSees cathedral near Alen'Y0n,p.I4. The Gothic builders were fascinated bythe problem of weight, how to support the culmination of their structures,the vault, and guide its weight safely down to earth. In this buildingweight has been divided into two parts. The walls are supported bysturdy cylindrical columns: the vault itself, the pride of the endeavour,appears to be supported on fantastically attenuated applied columnswhich act almost as lightning conductors .of gravity between heaven andthe solid earth. The walls are held up by man, the vault is clearly heldup by angels. 'I understand weight, I am strong', 'I have overcomeweight, I am ethereal'. 'We both spring from the same earth together, weneed each other'. Through the centuries they commune together inserenity. Buildings, rich in texture and colour,stand on the floor. If the floor is asmooth and flat expanse of greyishtarmac then the buildings will re­main separate because the floor failsto intrigue the eye in the same waythat the buildings do. One of themost powerful agents for unifyingand joining the town is the floor, asthese two pictures so effectivelydemonstrate. In enclosure the eye reacts to thefact of being completely surrounded.The reaction is static: once an en­closure is entered, the scene remainsthe same as you walk across it andout of it, where a new scene is sud­denly revealed. Closure, on the otherhand, is the creation of a break inthe street which, whilst containing the Cullen was born in Calverley, Pudsey, near Leeds, Yorkshire, England. He studied architecture at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, the present day University of Westminster, and subsequently worked as a draughtsman in various architects' offices including that of Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton, but he never qualified or practised as an architect. room can change a chattering, rest­less and giggling group of jollychildren into a serious and concen­Second, the time scaling of these streams. Change, of itself, is oftenresented even if it can be seen to be a change for the better. Continuityis a desirable characteristic of cities. Consequently while planning con­sent in a development stream might be automatic one may have to expecta built-in delay often or even twenty years in an important conservationarea. This is not necessarily to improve the design but simply to slowdown the process. This also is happening, if grudgingly, in the case ofPiccadilly Circus. Cullen lived in the small village of Wraysbury (Berkshire) from 1958 until his death, aged 80, on 11 August 1994, following a serious stroke. After his passing, David Gosling and Norman Foster collected various examples of his work and put them together in the book "Visions of Urban Design". 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. here as an accessible place or roomout of the main directional stream,an eddy in which footsteps echo andthe light is lessened in intensity. Setapart from the hurly-burly of traffic,it yet has the advantage of com­manding the scene from a positionof safety and strength. The position may indeed have deteriorated over the last ten years forreasons which are set out below.