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Tracing urban design's ‘Townscape’ origins: some relationships between a British editorial policy and an American academic field in the 1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

CLÉMENT ORILLARD
CLÉMENT ORILLARD*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire ACS, École nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris-Malaquais, 19 rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris, France
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Abstract

In the 1950s, ‘urban design’ was born in American debate thanks partly to the import of foreign discourses in a new context. Among others, was the fragmented and erratic translation of the British Architectural Review's ‘Townscape’ discourse. This article traces carefully this translation not only to describe another key moment in the Anglo-American dialogue on planning but also to give a more complex portrait of the foundation and early development of the field of urban design. Involving some American universities, Fortune magazine and the Rockefeller Foundation, these lines of exchange also exemplify variations on the translation of a militant discourse into an academic one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 36 , Special Issue 2: Transnational Urbanism in the Americas , August 2009 , pp. 284 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

The footnotes reference different archives using the following abbreviations:

MIT: MIT Archives and Special Collections (manuscript collection/box/folder)

RF: Rockefeller Foundation Archives (record group/series/box/folder)

RIBA: Royal Institute of British Architects Archives (collection/box/folder)

TGC: Thomas Gordon Cullen Personal Archives (unprocessed)

1 See the special issue ‘The origins and evolution of “urban design”, 1956–2006’, Harvard Design Magazine, 24 (2006); Mumford, E. and Sarkis, H. (eds.), Josep Lluis Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, 1953–1969 (New Haven and Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar; and Mumford, E., Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects and a Formation of a Discipline, 1937–69 (New Haven, 2009)Google Scholar.

2 See Laurence, P.L., ‘The death and life of urban design: Jane Jacobs, the Rockefeller Foundation and the new resarch in urbanism, 1955–1965’, Journal of Urban Design, 11 (2006), 145–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Sert, J. L., Can Our Cities Survive? (Cambridge, 1944), 243Google Scholar.

4 About this discourse and its evolution, see Mumford, E., The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge, 2000)Google Scholar.

5 About the MARS Group, see Gold, J.R., The Experience of Modernism: Modern Architecture and the Future City, 1928–1953 (London, 1997)Google Scholar.

6 For a short account on the organizational history of CIAM see Kouriati, M., ‘L'auto-dissolution des CIAM’, in J.-L. Bonillo, C. Massu and D. Pinson, La modernité critique. Autour du CIAM 9 d'Aix-en-Provence (Marseille, 2006), 62–75Google Scholar.

7 In 1943, Sert, Giedion and the painter Fernand Leger wrote ‘Nine points on monumentality’ which remains unpublished. See a bilingual version of this text in X. Costa and G. Hartray, Sert, arquitecto en Nueva York (Barcelona, 1997), 14–17. But it grounded the article of S. Giedion, ‘The need for monumentality’, in P. Zucker, New Architecture and City Planning (New York, 1944), 549–68.

8 See Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 168–79.

9 For biographical elements about Cullen see Gosling, D., Gordon Cullen: Visions of Urban Design (London, 1996)Google Scholar, which is unfortunately often too idiosyncratic, and de Maré, E., ‘Gordon Cullen’, Architectural Review, 200 (1996), 81–5Google Scholar.

10 For more on Hastings see Lasdun, S., ‘H. de C. reviewed’, Architectural Review, 200 (1996), 68–72Google Scholar.

11 Cullen, Gordon, Townscape (London, 1961)Google Scholar.

12 For more on Nairn, see Cullen, G., ‘Ian Nairn (1930–1983)’, Architects’ Journal, 178 (1983), 29Google Scholar; and Hurst, C., ‘Ian Nairn: 1930–1983’, Architectural Review, 174 (1983), 4Google Scholar.

13 See in particular Erten, Erdem, ‘Thomas Sharp's collaboration with H. de C. Hastings: the formulation of townscape as urban design pedagogy’, Planning Perspectives, 24 (2009), 29–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Cullen, Townscape, 10. About the articulation of the ‘Townscape’ editorial policy and the planning debate in the UK, see Bullock, N., Building the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain (London, 2002), 39–60Google Scholar.

15 See Gordon Cullen's proposals: ‘Westminster regained: proposals for the replanning of Westminster precinct’, Architectural Review, 102 (1947), 159–70; Carline, T.H., Macdonald, E.W., Boston, P.S., Gass, A.G., Trew, J.K.O., Cullen, G., ‘A precinct for Liverpool Cathedral’, Architectural Review, 104 (1948), 280–6Google Scholar; Bailey, C.H.P., Winteringham, G. and Lee, M., ‘A scheme for the centre of Birmingham’, Architectural Review, 109 (1951), 90–7Google Scholar, etc., and the studies Cullen, G., ‘Hazards’, Architectural Review, 103 (1948), 99–105Google Scholar; Cullen, G., ‘Legs and wheels’, Architectural Review, 104 (1948), 77–80, etcGoogle Scholar.

16 See Cullen, G., ‘Midland experiment: Ludlow’, Architectural Review, 114 (1953), 171–5Google Scholar; Mills, D. Dewar, ‘Midland experiment: Bewdley’, Architectural Review, 114 (1953), 319–24Google Scholar; Cullen, G., ‘Midland experiment: Evesham’, Architectural Review, 115 (1954), 127–31Google Scholar; Cullen, G., ‘Midland experiment: Shrewsbury’, Architectural Review, 115 (1954), 323–30; etcGoogle Scholar.

17 These special issues were converted into books by the AR publisher: I. Nairn, Outrage (London, 1956) – AR issue of June 1955 – and I. Nairn, Counter Attack against Subtopia (London 1957) – AR issue of December 1956.

18 The contributions collected for the volume CIAM 8: The Heart of the City (London, 1952) were underpinned with explicit historical references and an implicit discourse on aesthetics. See, in particular, J.L. Sert, ‘Centers of community life’, 3–16; and J.M. Richards, ‘Old and new elements at the core’, 60–5. About the work of Tyrwhitt, see Shoshkes, E., ‘Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and transnational discourse: on modern urban planning and design, 1941–1951’, Urban History, 36 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See J. Pearlman, ‘Breaking common ground. Joseph Hudnut and the prehistory of urban design’, in Mumford and Sarkis (eds.), Josep Lluis Sert, 117–27; and Pearlman, J., ‘Joseph Hudnut and the unlikely beginnings of post-modern urbanism at the Harvard Bauhaus’, Planning Perspectives, 15 (2000), 201–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a global view on Harvard Graduate School of Design's history, see Alofsin, A., The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

20 J.L. Sert, ‘Scope of the conference’ and ‘Introduction’, in J. Tyrwhitt, ‘The Harvard Urban Design Conferences 1956–1962’ (unpublished manuscript) (RIBA TyJ/25/5).

21 See Mumford, Defining Urban Design; and Shoshkes, E., ‘Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: a founding mother of modern urban design’, Planning Perspectives, 21 (2006), 179–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 David Crane, also graduated from the GSD, led a new programme in urban design at the University of Pennsylvania in 1957 (see later in this article). Fuhimiko Maki and Roger Montgomery, also graduated from the GSD, did the same at Washington University at St Louis in 1960.

23 The professional organizations were the Royal Institute for British Architects (RIBA), and the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Town Planning Institute (TPI) and the American Institute of Planners (AIP). This issue was so important that New York's CIAM Chapter was founded around Joseph Hudnut in 1943 as the American Society of Planners and Architects (ASPA) with the aim to compete with the other American organizations. See A. Shanken, ‘Between brotherhood and bureaucracy: Joseph Hudnut, Louis I. Kahn and the American Society of Planners and Architects’, Planning Perspectives, 20 (2005), 147–75. The US schools of architecture began to split in two departments, one of Architecture, the other in Planning, since the late 1940s.

24 About this end, see Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 225–65.

25 Lynch, K., The Image of the City (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar; and Tunnard, C. and Pushkarev, B., Man-Made America: Chaos or Control? (New Haven, 1963)Google Scholar.

26 Just after the end of the programme, Lynch participated in several plans for the implementation of John F. Collins and Ed Logue's urban-renewal programme. See Myer, J.R. and Myer, M.H., People and Places: Connections between the Inner and Outer Landscape (Hanover, 2006), 61–70Google Scholar; and Sturgis, R.S., ‘Urban planning: changing concepts’, in Floyd, M. Henderson (ed.), Architectural Education and Boston: Centenial Publication of the Boston Architectural Center 1889–1989 (Boston, MA, 1989), 109–18Google Scholar.

27 Lynch preferred the expression ‘City Design’. See Lynch, K., ‘The immature arts of city design’, Places, 1 (1984), 10–21Google Scholar. Lynch wrote in 1974 the article on ‘urban design’ for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

28 One third of the bibliography is composed from the ‘Townscape’ articles. K. Lynch, ‘Some visual references on the visual form of the city’, Sep. 1951 (MIT MC208/3/‘Early Steps’).

29 K. Lynch, Diary 3 Fulbright Visit in Italy, 19 Apr. 1953 (MIT MC208/13). Alternatively these sketches may have drawn upon Raymond Unwin's Town Planning in Practice.

30 On Tunnard in England see Neckar, L.M., ‘Christopher Tunnard: the garden in the modern landscape’, in Trieb, M. (ed.), Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review (Cambridge, 1994), 144–57Google Scholar.

31 Tunnard, C., Gardens in the Modern Landscape (London, 1938)Google Scholar.

32 Tunnard, C., ‘Scene’, Architectural Review, 107 (1950), 3453–59Google Scholar.

33 Letter from C. Tunnard to Edward F. D'Arms, 15 Feb. 1957, 12 (RF 1.2/200/472/4033).

34 For a short biographical account on Whyte, see Birch, E.L., ‘Whyte on Whyte: a walk in the city’, in Platt, Rutherford H. (ed.), The Human Metropolis: People and Nature in the 21st-Century City (Amherst, 2006), 25–31Google Scholar.

35 The articles were published in the following issues of Fortune: Sep., Oct., Nov. and Dec. 1957, Jan. and Apr. 1958.

36 For details on Jacobs during this period, see Laurence, P.L., ‘Jane Jacobs before death and life’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 60 (2007), 5–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Alexiou, A.S., Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary (Piscataway, 2006), 57–67Google Scholar.

37 All were renowned or would be renowned as skilled artists: Russell Hoban, illustrator and writer of children's books; Dong Kingman, famous watercolourist; William A. Garnett, photographer specializing in aerial views. Fortune was the first non-professional magazine to publish a portfolio of the latter who became a professor at Berkeley's College of Environmental Design in 1968.

38 Fortune, 57 (1958), 135.

39 Cullen, like many other journalists at the AR, used to take photographs, print them in a small size and glue them on leaves. Many of the sketches of Cullen's articles correspond to photographs from his archives. Nairn apparently used to make the same kind of leaves. See Elwall, R., Building with Light: The International History of Architectural Photography (London, 2004), 162–3Google Scholar. Cullen also was a very close friend of Eric de Maré, one of the most important photographers who worked for the AR and the Architectural Press after World War II. See Elwall, R., Eric de Maré (London, 2000)Google Scholar.

40 Whyte, W.H. (ed.), The Exploding Metropolis (New York, 1958), 186–99Google Scholar.

41 Blake, P., God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape (New York, 1964), 8Google Scholar. The two articles are ‘The ugly America’ published in May 1961 in the art magazine Horizon, and ‘The suburbs are a mess’, in the Saturday Evening Post, 5 Oct. 1963.

42 For a more detailed account about this transatlantic link between Jacobs and the ‘Townscape’ editorial policy see C. Klemeck, ‘Placing Jane Jacobs within the transatlantic urban conversation’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 73 (2007), 49–67.

43 Laurence, ‘Jane Jacobs before death and life’, 12.

44 Jacobs, J., The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York, 1961), 509nGoogle Scholar. See also another positive critique in Jacobs, J., ‘Do not segregate pedestrians and automobiles’, in Lewis, D. (ed.), The Pedestrian in the City. Architects’ Year Book 11 (London, 1965), 110Google Scholar.

45 de Wolfe, I., ‘The death and life of great American citizens’, Architectural Review, 133 (1963), 91Google Scholar.

46 See A.L. Strong, ‘G. Holmes Perkins: architect of the school's renaissance’, G.H. Perkins, ‘G. Holmes Perkins’, and Meyerson, M., ‘William L.C. Wheaton’, in A.L. Strong and G.E. Thomas, The Book of the School: 100 Years, the Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1990), 130–49, 156, 166Google Scholar.

47 Letter from W.L.C. Wheaton to C. Gilpatric, 26 May 1958, 1 (RF 1.2/200/457/3904).

48 Crane worked with Lynch on the orientation maps study that would result in the book The Image of the City. When he worked on the conference, he also was the mentor of Denise Scott Brown at the University of Pennsylvania, who would become his teaching assistant one year later. He became chief architect-planner at Ed Logue's Boston Redevelopment Authority between 1961 and 1965, before returning to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1972, he moved to Rice University. See Brown, D. Scott, ‘Urban design at fifty, and look ahead: a personal view’, Harvard Design Magazine, 24 (2006), 33–44Google Scholar; and C. Sullivan, ‘David A. Crane’, in Strong and Thomas, The Book of the School, 188.

49 D. Crane, ‘A working paper for the University of Pennsylvania Conference on Urban Design Criticism’, 4 Sep. 1958, 12 (RF 1.2/200/457/3904). The other references show the same admiration: ‘Yet, if our urban environment is “dreary”, “corrupt”, “scrofulous”, “infantile”, and “hopeless”, we have to hear it from foreign publications like the British ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW’ (1); ‘Superficiality has sometimes been excused on the grounds that architects do not read, but many architects indicate an unfulfilled thirst by subscribing to foreign publications like the British ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW’ (11).

50 About the ‘Counter Attack Bureau’ proposed, see Crane, ‘A working paper for the University of Pennsylvania Conference on Urban Design Criticism’, 4 Sep. 1958, A-6, A-7.

51 Clay would become long-time editor of the professional Landscape Architecture Magazine from 1960 to 1985. He also wrote several books on the topic of urban design criticism. His first was Close-Up: How to Read the American City? (Chicago, 1973) in which Cullen's ‘Townscape’ articles remained a core source (see 29–30).

52 See McHarg, I., A Quest for Life: An Autobiography (New York, 1996)Google Scholar.

53 See Institute for Urban Studies, University of Pennsylvania, ‘Research proposal. History of town and country development and current trends in landscape design’ (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), attached to a letter from G.P. Harnwell to J. Marshall, 20 Jun. 1956 (RF 1.2/200/456/3899). At first reluctant because this topic seemed close to Lynch's research at MIT, the Foundation finally acknowledged it one year later with a $66000 grant for this programme and a bigger research project on the history of Town and Country development done by the English author E.A. Gutkind for the Department of City Planning.

54 Interviews: visit of C. Gilpatrick to Institute for Urban Studies, School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 7 May 1958, 1–2 (RF 1.2/200/456/3900).

55 Excerpt from C. Gilpatrick Diary, 9 May 1958 (RF 1.2/200/456/3900).

56 School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, ‘A proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation for research in the design of the urban environment, Institute for Urban Studies’ (unpublished manuscript, 2 Jun. 1958), 10 (RF 1.2/200/456/3901). Thanks to McHarg, Shepheard entered later the faculty and finally became dean.

57 He met Cullen in New Delhi when the latter worked for a new master plan granted by the Ford Foundation and directed by Albert Mayer. Excerpt from C. Gilpatric Asia Trip Diary, 9 Mar. 1959 (RF 1.2/200/456/3901). And he met Ian Nairn at AR's office in London. Letter from C. Gilpatric to I. Nairn, 24 Apr. 1959 (RF 1.2/200/456/3901).

58 Interviews: C. Gilpatrick with I. McHarg, 24 Jun. 1959. But he said to Gilpatrick ‘I think it can be said that the best qualified people have been obtained to write what can be a very valuable book.’ Letter from I. McHarg to C. Gilpatrick, 17 Jun. 1959 (RF 1.2/200/456/3901).

59 Letter from I. Nairn to G. Cullen, 7 Nov. 1959 (TGC).

60 Letter from J. Epstein to C. Gilpatric, 15 May 1963 (RF 1.2/200/457/3903).

61 This policy had a very strong influence on US planning and coined the expression ‘grey areas’. On Ylvisaker, see Esposito, V.M., ‘Paul Ylvisaker: a biographical profile’, in Esposito, V.M. (ed.), Conscience and Community: The Legacy of Paul Ylvisaker (New York, 1999), xv–xxixGoogle Scholar.

62 The board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation decided in April 1962 to fund this programme for one year, and then continued support for one additional year in July 1963. The members of the advisory committee were Otto L. Nelson, Jr, from the New York Life Insurance Company, I.M. Pei, James W. Rouse, William L. Slayton, from the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency, and Catherine Bauer Wurster. The evaluators proposed were Lewis Mumford, Crane, Jacobs, Barclay G. Jones and Lynch. Through this programme, the RF granted a study ‘on large cities in advanced industrial civilization’ by Allan Temco at Berkeley, a book ‘on the design of cities’ by Edmund N. Bacon at the University of Pennsylvania, a study of ‘voting behavior with respect to public expenditure issues in urban areas’ by Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson at Harvard and a study of ‘the urban design process in urban renewal’ by Roger Montgomery at Seattle's University of Washington (RF 3.2/911/11/59).

63 And to see how the ‘Townscape’ discourse was translated into the French context, see Pousin, F., ‘Du townscape au “paysage urban”, circulation d'un modèle rhétorique mobilisateur’, Strates, 13 (2007), 25–50Google Scholar.

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