Townscape Design

To understand the ways to experience a place: Concerning Optics,

Concerning Place, and Concerning Content through the Book -
The Concise Townscape by Gordon Cullen

Community living has many advantages over living in isolation. A single family is not able to
enjoy the amenities which are beneficial to a group of people like watching a movie in a
theatre, having a meal in a restaurant or browsing in a library. A little sum of money from
each house, when collected, results in the formation of a collective amenity.

“A city is more than the sum of its inhabitants. It has the power to generate a surplus of
amenities, which is one reason why people like to live in communities rather than in
isolation.” A city is capable of causing a visual impact on those who live in it or visit it. As
discussed above, when people are brought together, they create a collective surplus of
enjoyment; similarly, when buildings are brought together they give visual pleasure which
none can give separately.
One building standing alone may be experienced as a work of architecture but a group of
buildings together can create an experience that is an art other than architecture. We may
walk down a street and as a corner is turned, to our surprise, a unique unsuspected building
is revealed, making us feel surprised and astonished (a reaction generated by the composition
of the group and not by the individual building). Again, supposedly one is entering a cluster
or a group of buildings then the space created between the buildings is seen to have a life of
its own over and above the buildings which create it and one’s reaction is to say ‘I am inside
it’ or ‘I am entering it’.

In the group of buildings, we see, it may happen that one of them, through reason of function,
does not conform. It may be a school, temple or any other public building, whose function is
different from that of a house. The qualities of the building like size, color, texture, and
intricacy would seem apparent if one looks at it individually. The moment the building is
viewed in totality with other houses, its size appears to be more real and more obvious by the
comparison between the two scales. Instead of being a big building, it towers. “The difference
in meaning between bigness and towering is the measure of the relationship.”

The art of relationship is an aspect just like the art of architecture, whose idea is to seize all
the elements employed to create an environment: buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic,
advertisements and so forth, and to interlace them together such that drama is released; for
a city or a neighbourhood or a community, is a dramatic event in the environment. The drama
we seek cannot be born automatically out of the scientific research and solutions arrived at
by the technical man. “The scientific solution is based on the best that can be made of the
average: of averages of human behaviour, averages of weather, factors of safety and so on.”
But they don’t provide any solution for any particular problem. They are itinerant facts that
may or may not harmonize with each other. The outcome is that a town could take and follow
one of the several prototypes and still function with a feat. Here lies an undiscovered pliability
in the scientific solution, and in the exploitation of this pliability that the art of relationship
 Figure 2: Concerning Optics: Serial Vision

To walk from one end of the plan to another, at a uniform pace,

will provide a sequence of revelations which are suggested in
the serial drawings, reading from left to right. Each arrow on
the plan represents a drawing. The even progress of travel is
illuminated by a series of sudden contrasts and so an impact is
made on the eye, bringing the plan to life.

Figure 1: Sequence of Revelations

Figure 3: Concerning Place; Possession: Out-of-doors is Figure 4: Concerning Place; Occupied Territory: Shade, Shelter,
colonized for Social and Business Purposes Amenity and Convenience are the usual causes of Possession.
is achieved. “The motive is not to dictate the shape of the environment, but is a modest one:
simply to manipulate within the tolerances.” This means, a scientific attitude is not of any
further help so consequently other values and other standards should be brought into
consideration. We now bring into the picture the faculty of sight, for it is utterly through a
vision that the environment is apprehended. With vision, we often get more than we
bargained for; glance at the clock to see the time and you will see the picture frame or the
lizard hiding behind the clock. Vision apart from being useful is evocative of our memories
and experiences, those receptive emotions inside us which influence the mind when
stimulated.

“It is this un-looked-for surplus that we are dealing with, for clearly if the environment is going
to produce an emotional reaction, with or without our volition, it is up to us to try to
understand the three ways in which this happens.”

Concerning optics; the panorama of a place is often revealed in a series of jerks or disclosures
when a person moves through a place at a uniform speed. This is called serial vision. For
instance; there is a straight road leading to a square and from there in continuation,
transforming itself into a curved road before reaching a landmark. When we take this path,
the first view we get is that of a street. The next view we get is that of a square at the time of
entering it and it remains with us till we leave the square and walk through the curved road.
Again a new view is suddenly revealed although the speed is uniform throughout our travel.
Finally, as the road curves, the landmark suddenly comes into view. “This means our original
aim is to manipulate the elements of the town so that an impact on the emotions is achieved.”
If there are no twists and turns or other variety of spaces in a town like moving in a straight
road only for a long time, then the initial view is soon digested and it becomes droning. The
human mind reacts, when contrast is acknowledged; something that does not conform and
makes a striking statement. When the two images (the street and the square) are in the mind
at the same point in time, the town or the environment becomes observable in a deeper
sense because of the vivid contrast sensed. The drama of juxtaposition makes it come alive.
This excitement is important for the town, to not slip past us insipid and motionless.

We may split our optical viewpoint into two elements: the existing view and the emerging
view, although the town may be a unity from a scientific or commercial point of view. There
may arise, a significance out of the connection of views, but it will be fortuitous as in the
normal way this is an inadvertent chain of events. Presume, however, that we are finding a
device with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into a logical drama. Now
the blind specifics (facts) will get transformed into a taut emotional situation through the
process of manipulation.

Concerning place; the experience gained due to the reaction of the human mind to the
position of our body in its environment. For instance: when we enter a room, we know and
sense our position like outside the room, entering the room, middle of the room and so forth.
At this stage of realization, we are dealing with a series of experiences stemming from the
major impacts of exposure and enclosure. In the design of the environment, the sense of
position is an essential factor which cannot be ignored as it is a natural and incessant habit of
the body to relate itself to the environment, rather it should be exploited. By the tool of
Examples of Concerning Place:

Figure 5: Enclave, Enclosure and Closure

Figure 6: Deflection, Here and There, and Punctuation

Examples of Concerning Content:

Figure 7: Significant Objects, Intimacy and Lettering

containment and revelation, the fact perceived is dramatized and made real. There are
variations in the types of emotional reaction; for instance, a typical emotional reaction to
being inside a cave and another to being on top of a mountain; to being over a staircase and
another to being below the staircase. To have a plastic experience of the city, we should
design our towns from the point of view of the walker or the moving person; i.e. a journey
through heaviness and emptiness, a sequence of revelation and enclosure, of restriction and
liberation.

“Arising out of this sense of identity or sympathy with the environment, this feeling of a
person in the street or square that he is in IT or entering IT or leaving IT, we discover that no
sooner do we postulate a HERE than automatically we must create a THERE, for you cannot
have one without the other.”

Concerning content; this category is concerned with the examination of the fabric of towns.
Evidence of differing periods in the architectural styles and also in the various accidents of
the layout of the town helps in accepting the fact that most towns are of the old foundation.
But at the same time at the back of our minds, we would like to get rid of this hotchpotch and
make everything new and perfect, if only there isn’t any kind of attachment or any specific
reason to strongly relate ourselves with the environment. An orderly scene with straight
roads and with buildings that conformed in height and style, also having symmetry, balance,
and perfection, would be created.

Let us know the meaning of conformity through an example. In a private party, amidst
gathered people, half of them would be strangers so to say. In the early part of the evening,
polite conversation on general subjects like weather and current news would go on as it
happens generally. Here it is a boring exhibition of manners, of how one ought to behave.
This is
conformity. Later on, the ice begins to break and they come out of their orthodox jackets and
start showing their actual images. Informal real talks begin to gear up. “Conformity gives way
to the agreement to differ within a recognized tolerance of behaviour.” From the point of
view of an architect avoiding conformity is difficult but avoiding it consciously by creating
artificial diversions, is worse than the original monotony. He should know the way to
differentiate by looking at the authentic grounds and all major and minor details that would
appreciate a difference. There is too much thoughtlessness in the building of towns, and too
much dependence on the tank and the armoured car where the telescopic rifle is required.

Manipulation of the shades of scale and style, of texture and color and character and
individuality, can be done, within the commonly accepted framework that produces
articulacy and not a disorder. They should be juxtaposed to generate collective remuneration.
The environment thus resolves into the interplay of this and that and not conformity. As
observed, the colors become more truly themselves when present amidst other contrasting
colors, making us experience the harmony released.

Statistics when converted into plans and the plans when converted into buildings would be
lifeless as statistics are abstracts and they are plucked out of the completeness of life at the
time of conversion. It will be no less than a three-dimensional diagram in which people are
asked to live. Difficult is the point of application or the gateway that will translate a wasteland
Examples of Concerning Content:

Figure 8: Steps, Fences, and Trees

Figure 10: Street Furniture and Seeing in Detail

Figure 9/10: Foils - In the complex world with its varying categories; varied character; buildings of diverse styles and
materials, the relation of these entities, create 'urban drama'
 i.e. the environment for walking stomachs into a home for the human being. Three gateways
are discovered, that of motion, that of position and that of content. Through the exercise of
vision, it was clear that the motion can be framed into two things, the existing and the
revealed view, and is not one simple assessable progression that is of use in architecture and
planning. It was discovered that a human being needs a sense of place and he is conscious of
his position in the environment. This sense of identity is united with an awareness of another
place. “Conformity killed, whereas the agreement to differ gave life. In this way, the void of
statistics, of the diagram city has been split into two parts, whether they are those of serial
vision, Here and There or This and That”. Now the home of man can be built by the union of
all the parts and forming a new pattern, created by the warmth and power and vitality of
human imagination.

The theory of the game is understood, but it’s the background. Difficult is the next step: the
art of playing. The way to participate is through charting, the gambits and moves built up from
experience and precedent.

POINTS TO BE CONSIDERED AT THE TIME OF ANALYSIS

To have a journey through the neighbourhood and to experience it with the help of three
gateways: that of motion, that of position and that of content:

• To manipulate the serial vision (series of revelations) so that the impact on the
emotions is achieved and to question it
• To note our reactions to different positions of the body in the neighbourhood
throughout the journey and to scrutinize it
• To explore the shades of character and individuality and of scale and style.