I.

GORDON CULLENS
urban designer]

Thomas Gordon Cullen

[English architect, an
(9 August 1914

2 August 1994)

Book :

The Concise Townscape

A book review of The Concise Townscape

,GORDON

CULLENS CONCISE TOWNSCAPE THEORY

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 gets famous by the Concise TownscapeTheory. The
Townscape book, one of Gordon Cullens masterpieces, illustrated with
over 300 works selected from the drawings Gordon Cullen made during his
lifetime, this anthology documents his influential career as an Urban
Theorist, artist and illustrator from 1930 to 1990. The majority of his
drawings have never been published before except in professional reports,
and this book contains numerous drawings executed for the pleasure of
observation as well as the product of his many consultancies.
Serial Vision: Serial Vision is 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 opposite, reading from left to right.
Place: Place description is in a world of black and white the roads are for
movement and the buildings for social and business purposes.
Content: Content concerned with the intrinsic quality of the various
subdivisions of the environment, and start with the great landscape

categories of metropolis, town, arcadia, park, industrial, arable and wild

nature.
Focal Point: Focal point is the idea of the town as a place of assembly, of
social intercourse, of meeting, was taken for granted throughout the whole of
human civilization up to the twentieth century.
Closure:Closure, may be differentiated from Enclosure, by contrasting
travel with arrival. Closure is the cutting up of the linear town system
(streets, passages, etc.) into visually digestible and coherent amounts whilst
retaining the sense of progression. Enclosure on the other hand provides a
complete private world which is inward looking, static and self-sufficient.
Street Lighting: Here we are concerned with the impact of a modern public
lighting installation on towns and not, primarily, with the design of fittings.
Naturally it is impossible to disassociate the two since, as in all townscape,
we are concerned with two aspects: first, intrinsic design and second, the
relationship or putting together of things designed.
Outdoor Publicity: One contribution to modern townscape, startlingly
conspicuous everywhere you look, but almost entirely ignored by the town
planner, is street outdoor publicity. This is the most characteristic, and,
potentially, the most valuable, contribution of the twentieth century to urban
scenery. At night it has created a new landscape of a kind never before seen
in history.
Here and There: The practical result of so articulating the town into
identifiable parts is that no sooner do we create a HERE than we have to
admit a THERE, and it is precisely in the manipulation of these two spatial
concepts that a large part of urban drama arises.
Man-made enclosure, if only of the simplest kind, divides the environment
into HERE and THERE. On this side of the arch, in Ludlow, we are in the
present, uncomplicated and direct world, our world. The other side is
different, having in some small way a life of its own (a with-holding).
From the book Concise Townscape, (the architectural press, 1971)

II. KEVIN LYNCH Kevin Andrew Lynch

planner and author]

[American urban

(1918 Chicago, Illinois - 1984)

Books:

The Image of the City (1960)

Site Planning, MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London 1962
What Time is this Place?, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1972
Good City Form, MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London 1981;
City Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch - London 1990

A book review of The Image of the City (1960)

KEVIN LYNCH
Introduced urbanities in Boston Jersey city and Los Angeles. Most
established ageneralized mental picture of the external world.
The mental picture was very similar. Their images emerged in a two way
process:
1. They made distinctions among the various physical parts of the city
2. They organized these parts in a personally meaningful way.
IDEAS OF KEVIN LYNCH

Concerned by the look of the cities and whether this look is of any
importance or this look can be changed.
Introduced the theory of Urban form.- An urban environment is a
complex system of interactions between people(users) and various
surrounding objects.
Described two things important for a subsequent explanation of the
whole theory:
First- Physical elements of the city
Second- The psychological, mental image of the city.

PHYSICAL ELEMENTS OF THE CITY

1. Image of the environment
2. Elements of the City
3. Dimension of performance
IMAGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT
1. Legibility Apparent clarity
2. Building the image- Way process
3. Structure and identity- Long familiarity, Identity striking features,
Structure new object & meaning
4. Image ability Well-formed distinct remarkable invite eye and
ear.
STRENGTHEN IMAGE DEVELOPMENT
1.
2.
3.
4.

Symbolic devices
Install machines
Reshaping one surrounding
Retraining the perceiver

ELEMENTS OF THE CITY

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Paths
Edges
District
Nodes
Landmark

Theories based on harmony between human life and built forms;

Understanding how people perceive their environments and how

design professionals can respond to the deepest human needs;

The Image of the City how people perceive cities; people structure
their perception of cities into recurring elements such as paths (along
which movement flows) and edges (which differentiate one part of the
urban fabric from another)

ELEMENTS OF PHYSICAL FORMS

1. Paths
Movement channels such as transit lines, railroads, walkways. People
observe the city while moving through it.
2. Edges
Linear elements used as lateral references
3. Districts
Medium to large sections of the city, identified from the inside
4. Nodes
Points, strategic spots, intensive foci to and from which one travels

5. Landmarks
External point of reference, usually a physical object
THREE MAIN CONCEPTS OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION
1. Imageability and Legibility
2. Environmental images and urban life
3. Bottom-up strategy
LEGIBILITY AND IMAGEABILITY

Legibility means the extend to which the cityscape can be read

People who move through the city engage in way-finding

Thus, they need to be able to recognize and organize urban elements

into a coherent pattern.
In the process of way-finding, the strategic link is the environmental
image, the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world
that is held by an individual. This image is the product both of
immediate sensation and of the memory of past experience, and
it is used to interpret information and to guide action (p.4) The
image of the urban-scape has to be perceived by the observer.

Imageability and legibility leads to identification of a structure and

therefore a precise identity;

This is necessary to analyse an urban system and its own elements;

Elements include: path, landmark, edge, node and district

ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGES AND URBAN LIFE

People perceive cities through their social experiences

Jersey City Experiment to make rapid description of the city

Common results from the experiment:

a. Common interest for panoramas and smaller landscape features noted

with care and attention;
b. Shapeless places, which although not pleasant, seem to be remarkable
and striking

From the experiment, what evidently arises is that each individual

image constitutes a connection between urban forms and what
is, on a more global extent, the public image. Each of those images is
constructed and relying on the 5 elements, which are:

paths: the channel of the observer; routes along which people move
throughout the city

edges: breaking in continuity with the surrounding areas

districts: areas characterized by common characteristics

nodes: strategic points for orientation like squares and junctions

landmarks: external references of orientation, usually a easily

identifiable physical object in the urban landscape
A clear mental map of the urban environment is needed to counter the
always looming fear of disorientation.
A legible mental map gives people:

important sense of emotional security

it is the framework for communication and conceptual organization

heightens the depth and intensity of everyday human experience

The city itself is thus a powerful symbol of a complex society.
An environmental image has three components:

1. Identity - the recognition of urban elements as separate entities

2. Structure -the relation of urban elements to other objects and to the
observer
3. Meaning - its practical and emotional value to the observer.
Urban inhabitants should be able to actively form their own
stories and create new activities.
This gives way/agenda for urban designers.
They should design the city in such a way that it gives room for three
related movements: mapping, learning, shaping.

First, people should be able to acquire a clear mental map of their

urban environment.
Second, people should be able to learn how to navigate in this
environment by training.
Third, people must be able to operate and act upon their
environment.
BOTTOM-UP STRATEGY
Bottom-up method starting from individual elements to reach
gradually the whole.
This strategy would be set to aim at continuity, regularity,
measurability and kinaesthetic quality, which is the first to provide
identity over a continuous experience through time.
In conclusion, we could say that in the image development process,
visual education is the basis for reshaping what surrounds us, and vice
versa.