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    4 Townscape

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    frajo
    The document discusses Gordon Cullen's theory of "townscape" which is the art of giving visual coherence and organization to the urban environment through the arrangement of buildings, streets, and spaces. It examines townscape through three lenses: optics, place, and content. Regarding optics, it discusses the concept of "serial vision" where revealing views in sequence can create a dramatic experience for pedestrians. In terms of place, it explores how people relate to their environment based on their position of being inside, outside, or moving through an area. Finally, concerning content, it analyzes how manipulating elements like color, texture, and scale within a framework can create interesting relationships and drama.

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    4 Townscape

    Uploaded by

    frajo
    218 views21 pages
    The document discusses Gordon Cullen's theory of "townscape" which is the art of giving visual coherence and organization to the urban environment through the arrangement of buildings, streets, and spaces. It examines townscape through three lenses: optics, place, and content. Regarding optics, it discusses the concept of "serial vision" where revealing views in sequence can create a dramatic experience for pedestrians. In terms of place, it explores how people relate to their environment based on their position of being inside, outside, or moving through an area. Finally, concerning content, it analyzes how manipulating elements like color, texture, and scale within a framework can create interesting relationships and drama.

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    4.Townscape

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    The document discusses Gordon Cullen's theory of "townscape" which is the art of giving visual coherence and organization to the urban environment through the arrangement of buildings, streets, and spaces. It examines townscape through three lenses: optics, place, and content. Regarding optics, it discusses the concept of "serial vision" where revealing views in sequence can create a dramatic experience for pedestrians. In terms of place, it explores how people relate to their environment based on their position of being inside, outside, or moving through an area. Finally, concerning content, it analyzes how manipulating elements like color, texture, and scale within a framework can create interesting relationships and drama.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    218 views21 pages

    4 Townscape

    Uploaded by

    frajo
    The document discusses Gordon Cullen's theory of "townscape" which is the art of giving visual coherence and organization to the urban environment through the arrangement of buildings, streets, and spaces. It examines townscape through three lenses: optics, place, and content. Regarding optics, it discusses the concept of "serial vision" where revealing views in sequence can create a dramatic experience for pedestrians. In terms of place, it explores how people relate to their environment based on their position of being inside, outside, or moving through an area. Finally, concerning content, it analyzes how manipulating elements like color, texture, and scale within a framework can create interesting relationships and drama.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 21

    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.

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