Urban Aesthetics

and Image
BARC 0703 Urban Design 13/08/13
•Senses to perceive Urban Quality
•Legibility : Lynch
•Townscape : Cullen
•Serial Vision
senses
We use all of our senses in communication
We use all of our senses 0-1 m

Smell
- short range
sense
We use all of our senses 0-1 m
Touch
- short range
sense
We use all of our senses 0-7 m

Hearing
- a little longer
range
We use all of our senses 0-100m
But you can also see the stars!

Seeing
- long range sense
The social field of vision
0-100m
The social field of
vision

….100m

- you can see it is a

person
The social field of
vision

70 (-100m)

- you can see gender,

maybe age and what
they are doing
The social field
of vision

30m

- you can see faces and

age
The social field of
vision

20m

- you can see feeling,

mood
The social field of
vision

7m (-0,5m)

– conversation and
contact
The social field of
vision

2m

– conversation and
contact
The social field of
vision

0,5 (-0m)

– intense human contact

– all senses are activated
In search of human scale
Amagertorv, Copenhagen 4,260 m2
From the other side
of the street
Some metres
away
Close up
Looking up
and down
Looking up
16th floor
and down
Looking up
13th floor
and down
Looking up
7th floor
and down
Looking up
5th floor
and down
Looking up
2nd floor
and down
Looking up
1st floor
and down
Looking up
Ground floor
and down
Looking up
Ground floor
and down
Looking up
1st floor
and down
Looking up
2rd floor
and down
Looking up
3rd floor
and down
Looking up
6th floor
and down
Looking up
8th floor
and down
Looking up
16th floor
and down
Looking up
and down
Kevin Lynch
• Interviewed urbanites in Boston
Jersey City, and Los Angeles
• Most established a “generalized
mental picture of the external
physical world”
• The mental picture was very similar
• Their images emerged in a two way
process:
• They made distinctions among the
various physical parts of the city
• They organized these parts in a
personally meaningful way
Kevin Lynch
• Paths: “channels along which
the observer customarily moves”
• Edges: “the boundaries between
two areas”
• Districts: “represent medium-to-
large sections of the city”
• Nodes: “points of intense
activity”
• Landmarks: “physical reference
points”
Informal tradition
Formal tradition
Townscape is:

“The art of giving visual coherence and

organisation to the jumble of buildings, streets
and spaces that make up the urban
environment…”

“take all the elements that go to create the

environment…and weave them together in such
a way that drama is released…”

“…the art of relationship…”

The Concise Townscape 1971

“One building standing alone in the countryside
is experienced as a work of architecture, but
bring half a dozen buildings together and an art
other than architecture is made possible…”

“…suppose that the buildings have been put

together in a group so that one can get inside
the group, then the space between the buildings
is seen to have a life of its own…”

Here and there

Qualities of townscape

• Enclosure/outdoor room
• Gateway
• Change of Level
• Closed vista
• Incident
• Punctuation
• Projection/Recession
• Corner
Content
“the fabric of towns: colour, texture, scale, style,
character, personality and uniqueness”
“most towns are of old foundation, their fabric
will show evidence of differing periods in [their]
architectural styles and also in the accidents of
layout…styles, materials, scales…”
Different types of content that give places character and make them distinctive
Paving materials
Boundaries
Serial Vision
Serial Vision
Serial Vision
Serial Vision
“…take all the elements that go to create the
environment…and weave them together in such
a way that drama is released…”