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What makes a city alive? What did 20th century design dreams leave behind?
Along with a series of critical commentaries, this book unveils for the first time
Townscape in USA, a previously unpublished manuscript written by Gordon Cullen in the early 1960s.
Best known for
Townscape (1961), Cullen brings his incisive, visually attuned, and often wry perspective to six American cities-New York, Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.-providing splendid, semi-prophetic visions of the cities' destinies, and foreshadowing the inevitable consequences of uncontrolled building development. Cullen constantly reminds us of how urban designers should focus on people and creating a sense of place, and critiquing the rigid visual codes of Beaux-Arts planning and offering a counter-vision rooted in texture, contrast, and surprise. Through expressive sketches and spatial observations, he reveals how cities could, and should, offer not only efficiency but delight, not only order but encounter. These visions are supported by a series of magnificent sketches and photos taken from Cullen's archives.
This book is an essential read for architects, planners, and dreamers alike. Addressing today's debates about human centred design, the - until now - forgotten manuscript,
Townscape in USA is a passionate plea to rethink what a city is, and who it is for.
List of contents
Part One. The Urgent West 1. Precis and Nota Bene 2. New York 3. Philadelphia: The Expanding City 4. Pittsburgh: Involvement 5. Chicago: The Visual Structure 6. Washington 7. Boston: The Freedom Trail
Part Two: Essays 8. Cullen's America. Fragments of a Journey 9. Text and Texture in
The Urgent West. Assembling the Grammar of Cullen's Urban Drama 10. The Gordon Cullen Archive 11. Townscape at the Global Scale. Assessing the international Fame of the Townscape Editorial Campaign and Gordon Cullen's Book
About the author
Thomas Gordon Cullen (1914-1994) was an architect, illustrator, urban designer, and editor of
the Architectural Review. One of the most significant figures in the urban design panorama of the 20th century, Cullen developed numerous urban regeneration projects during his long career and was a key thinker of the Townscape movement.
Carla Molinari is Senior Lecturer in Architecture and BArch Programme Director at Anglia Ruskin University.
Marco Spada is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Suffolk.
