TOWNSCAPE

By Gordon Cullen (1961)

Introduction

"Townscape" is the art of giving visual coherence and organization to the

jumble of buildings, streets and spaces that make up the urban environment.
(Cullen, The Architectural Review).

CITY bring people together collective surplus of enjoyment

bring buildings collective visual pleasure
together

Art of relationship than art of Architecture

its purpose to take all the elements that go to create the environment:
buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements and so on, and weave
them together in such a way that drama is released.

A city is a dramatic event to the environment.

The aim is not to dictate the shape of the town or environment, but to manipulate
within the tolerances through faculty of sight and the elements of town so that an
impact on the emotions is achieved.
Townscape

• Faculty of sight, for it is almost entirely through vision that the environment
is apprehended.
• It evokes our memories and experiences, those responsive emotions inside
us which have the power to disturb the mind.
• The environment produces an emotional reaction in three ways:

Concerning Optics

Concerning Place

Concerning Content
Concerning Optics Serial vision

To walk from one

end of the plan to
another, at a
uniform pace, will
provide a
sequence of
revelations.
Serial Vision is a tool with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into
a coherent drama.
The human mind reacts to a contrast, to the difference between things, and when two
pictures with a vivid contrast is felt, the town becomes visible in a deeper sense.
Two elements of serial vision: existing view and emerging view

4 3 2 1

Here what could simply have been one picture reproduced four times
Serial vision as a means of comprehending, enjoying and designing the public spaces
of a city by creating memorable visual contrasts and images.
Ipswich; a modest archway performs
the office of dividing the prospect
into two things, the street you are in
and the place beyond, into which you
emerge so that you move out of one
ambience into another.
Concerning Place

Concerned with our reactions to the position of our body in its environment.

“I am “I am “I am in HERE
outside entering the middle and
IT” IT” of IT” THERE

At this level of consciousness we are dealing with a range of experience

stemming from the major impacts of exposure and enclosure.

“It is an instinctive and continuous habit of the body to relate itself to the environment,
This sense of position cannot be ignored; it becomes a factor in the design of
environment (it should be exploited)”

We design our towns from the point of view of the moving person (pedestrian or car-
borne) it is easy to see how the whole city becomes a plastic experience, a journey
through pressures and vacuums, a sequence of exposures and enclosures, of
constraint and relief.
 Concerning Place: Possession

Place related to Possession: the state of having, owning or controlling something

Occupied territory Possession in movement Advantage

Enclosure Indoor Landscape Outdoor room

Concerning Place: Hereness
Concerned with the person’s sense of position, his unspoken reaction to the environment
The outdoor room and enclosure embodies the idea of HERENESS: multiple enclosure, block
house, defining space and looking out of enclosure.

Relationship of HERE and THERE : a known here and a known there

Looking into enclosure, pinpointing, truncation, change of level, netting, silhouette, grandiose
vista, division of space, screened vista, handsome gesture, closed vista, deflection, projection
and recession, incident, punctuation, narrows, fluctuation, undulation, closure and recession.
 Concerning Place: Here and There

Relationship of HERE and THERE : Here is known but the Beyond is unknown
Anticipation, infinity, mystery, the maw, linking and joining: the floor, pedestrian ways, continuity
and hazards
Concerning Content

Examination of the fabric of towns: colour, texture, scale,

style, character, personality and uniqueness and creation THIS
of symmetry, balance, perfection and conformity. This and
section concerned with the intrinsic quality of the various THAT
subdivisions of the environment.
Concerning Content: This and That

Within a commonly accepted framework-one that produces lucidity and not anarchy-
we can manipulate the nuances of scale and style, of texture and colour and of
character and individuality, juxtaposing them in order to create collective benefits. In
fact the environment thus resolves itself into not conformity but the interplay of This
and That.
The quality are ‘secret town, urbanity, intricacy, propriety, bluntness and vigour, entanglement,
nostalgia, the white peacock, exposure and, intimacy’.

This section try to establish the idea of typicality, of a thing being itself through seeing in detail
and find the quality of ‘thisness’.
This phase bring together This and That to find out what emotions and dramatic situations can be
liberated out of the various forms of relationship. The examples are: illusion, metaphor, the tell-
tale, animism, noticeable absence, significance objects, building as sculpture, geometry and
multiple use.

The relationship of This and That, will produce its own form of drama which will exist inside the
overall spatial framework (This is good for That). Including foils, relationship, scale, distortion,
trees incorporated, calligraphy, publicity and taming with tact.
We discovered that the human being is constantly aware of his position in the
environment, that he feels the need for a sense of place and that this sense of
identity is coupled with an awareness of elsewhere.