URBAN DESIGN

THE BEGINNINGS
SETTLEMENT DESIGN
Agricultural Societies
Rectilinear Plotting

LAYOUT
Grid (or Rectilinear) product of the farmer
Circular (Fencing) product of the herdsman
-- defensive role
Radiocentric when circular settlements enlarge
-- fortress cities (i.e. Paris)

ANCIENT GREECE

THE ACROPOLIS
THE AGORA
GREEK TOWNS

LANDSCAPE powerfully assertive

HIGH PLACES fortified hilltop
-- sacred precinct

TOWN DESIGN = SENSE OF THE FINITE

-- Aristotles ideal size of city = 10,000 20,000 people
-- never attempted to overwhelm nature
-- buildings give a sense of human measure to landscape

THE STREET not a principal element but as a leftover space for circulation
PLACE OF ASSEMBLY market (agora)
THE REPUBLICAN FORUM
THE IMPERIAL FORUM

ANCIENT ROME
URBAN DESIGN Greek:

sense of the finite

Romans: political power and organization

USE OF SCALE Greek use of scale is based on human measurements

-- Romans used proportions that would
relate parts of building instead of human measure

MODULE Greek use of house as module for town planning

-- Roman use of street pattern as module
-- to achieve a sense of overpowering grandeur
-- made for military government

THE STREET Greeks:

as a leftover space for circulation

-- Romans: street are built first; buildings came later

PLACE OF ASSEMBLY Greeks:

market (agora)
-- Romans: market, theater, and arena

MEDIEVAL ERA

PIAZZA DEL CAMPO, SIENA

DECLINE OF ROME Dark Ages, but not for urban design

URBAN SETTINGS Military strongholds, castles, monasteries, towns
MILITARY STRONGHOLDS Acropolis and Capitoline Hill
CASTLES built atop hills, enclosed by circular walls; radiocentric growth
MONASTERIES citadels of learning, laid out in rectilinear pattern
MEDIEVAL TOWNS
-- like Greek towns, small and finite in size
-- lacks geometry
-- became parts of larger territorial states
-- growth and population created the need for marketplaces

MEDIEVAL ERA TOWN DESIGN

VISIBLE EXTERIORS suit the viewing conditions of small spaces

VISTA considerations and HUMAN SCALE fine accents in landscape
STREET LAYOUT is functional, although with no logical form
MEDIEVAL ERA sets the stage for RENAISSANCE
-- skill of builders
-- wealth of bourgeoisie and nobility
-- organization of the military and new force in gunpowder
-- development of political powers and expertise
-- new organizations
-- scholarly knowledge of the church

3 MAJOR EVENTS MARKING TRANSITION FROM MEDIEVAL TIMES

-- Dawn of science
-- Fall of Constantinople
-- Discovery of the New World

FROM MEDIEVAL ERA TO RENAISSANCE ERA

MEDIEVAL URBAN DESIGN were to be discarded
-- sense of scale
-- intimate relation between house and street

MEDIEVAL SYSTEM OF TOWN DESIGN

-- truly livable; humanist basis

RENAISSANCE SYSTEM OF TOWN DESIGN

-- the role of the individual as builder of his town was lost

RENAISSANCE EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

IDEAL CITIES
-- 1440 (beginning of Renaissance)
-- Leon Battista Alberti foremost theoretician
-- Albertis De Architectura treats architecture and town design
as single theme (just like Vitruvius)

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF EARLY RENAISSANCE

-- Public Works
-- Civic improvement projects

REBUILDING FERRARA
-- Palazzo Diamenti most famous structure
-- Biaggio Rossetti architect and town planner regarded as
one of the worlds earliest modern urban designers

-- Rossettis plan:
1. Street widening, new buildings, wall improvement
2. Enlarge the town
3. Carry on with the plan

LESSONS FROM ROSSETTIS EFFORT

-- Repair an existing city
-- Plan for enlargement
-- Decide which to concentrate effort
-- Lay down a plan that is logical and realizable
-- Provide framework for others to build upon

Ferrara is the first MODERN city in Europe

Jacob Burckhardt, 1860

RENAISSANCE LEONARDO DA VINCI

SKETCHED A CITY STRADDLING A RIVER

RIVER STREAMS supply water and carry away waste
MULTILEVELS for multiple functions
PROPOSED MOVABLE HOUSES anticipated the greenbelt concept
SATELLITE TOWNS for workers
LESSONS: Growth or functional improvement is not necessarily an advantage
POPES IN ROME the real say in urban design at that time

RENAISSANCE REBUILDING ROME

PROBLEMS: Circulation, defense, water supply, sanitation
SOLUTION: Popes have to undertake civic improvement projects
PILGRIMAGE St. Peters Cathedral improved
Campidoglio (Romes city hall) improved

DOMENICO FONTANA architect commissioned by Pope Sixtus V

FONTANAS PLAN streets were visually accented using OBELISKS
OBELISKS - as stakes, as GUIDEPOSTS for the whole city
- as SCALE REFERENCE POINTS for successive designers

DESIGN PRINCIPLE architecture of ancient Rome

-- new design of early Renaissance

RENAISSANCE BUILDING GROUPS

ST. PETERS CATHEDRAL Bramante

TEMPIETTO miniature version of St. Peters Cathedral
CARLO FONTANA basilica inside the Colosseum
BORROWED DESIGN Renaissance from Medieval, Romans from Greeks
ANDREA PALLADIO developed precise theories of proportion and module
PALLADIOS PROTOTYPES - Roman country villa (rural)
- Roman Forum (urban)

PALLADIAN INFLUENCES George Washington and Thomas Jefferson

FOUR BOOKS OF ARCHITECTURE
examples of plazas (the modern forum)

COLOSSAL or GIGANTIC ORDER Palladios San Giorgio Maggiore

RENAISSANCE THE CAMPIDOGLIO

One of MICHELANGELOs finest works
Seen at a distance as a whole composition
EQUESTRIAN STATUE of Marcus Aurelius
-- Serves as Centerpiece or Guidepost
ENTRANCE RAMPS widen toward the top
-- perspective effect and stairs appear shorter
-- similarly, SIDE BUILDINGS are not parallel
Significance of a REMODELLING JOB

RENAISSANCE URBAN PLAZAS: FRANCE & ENGLAND

JACQUES ANDROUET DU CERCEAU
-- French architect who visited Rome
-- Brought plaza idea to Paris, France

INIGO JONES English architect, brought the Renaissance plaza to London

-- Bedford Square started in 1631
-- Covent Garden modeled after Livorno

OTHER PLAZAS IN LONDON

-- Leicester Square started in 1635
-- Bloomsbury Square 1665
-- Six more plazas were built before 1700

RENAISSANCE PLAZA
one of the elements of urban design par excellence
-- but did not tie whole city together
-- Rossettis Ferrara (street system); Fontanas Rome (guidepost system)

RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

PARKS and GARDENS tie the city together
-- connecting the palace and the town

VILLA & GARDEN

rural counterpart of PALACE & PLAZA

ITALY gardens are never too large

-- built as TERRACES because of hilly land

FRANCE elaborate system of landscape design

-- roots from large HUNTING FORESTS
-- ROND POINTS high ground intersections

RICHELIEU

application of rond points idea

-- 1630, landscape design of palace started
-- Jacques Lemercier architect

ANDRE LENOTRE -- landscape architect of Richelieu

-- Western worlds master of landscape architecture

RENAISSANCE FRENCH, ENGLISH & ITALIAN LANDSCAPE

FRENCH

Regarded natural landscape as barbaric

-- Man-made, preferably geometric creations
-- PHILOSOPHY absolute command of nature

ENGLISH -- Characterized by an attitude of sympathy with nature

-- PHILOSOPHY practice of taming nature

ITALIAN Terraced garden is best model of gardening in limited space

RENAISSANCE LENOTRE AND VERSAILLES

LENOTRES MAJOR CLIENT Louis XIV, the Sun King of France
VERSAILLES Lenotres greatest work, Started in 1670, completed by 1710
-- Goose Foot/ patte doie -- three roads in a single view

PIAZZA DEL POPOLO patte doie entrance to Rome

-- appeared accidentally as result of Fontanas plan
-- not formally finished until early 19 th century, by a French architect, incidentally

RENAISSANCE REBUILDING LONDON

GREAT PLAGUE 1666 GREAT FIRE OF LONDON 1667
SEVERAL DESIGNERS PROPOSED PLANS
-- Christopher Wren -- Robert Hooke -- John Evelyn -- Valentine Knight

1707-1709 laws banning use of combustible matls, led to extensive use of bricks
JOHN GWYNN produced plan for London 1766

London & Westminster Improved

-- heralded the Golden Age of building

GOLDEN AGE

encompassed a 30-year period

-- ADELPHI TERRACE-- work of the Adam brothers; built along the River Thames

-- BATH created by architects John Wood, Sr. and Jr.

-- 1702, discovered by the aristocrac -- 1727, rectangular plaza (Queens Square)
-- 1754, great circle (Kings Circus) -- 1767, Royal Crescent

-- EDINBURGH 1767, Scottish architect James Craig

END OF LONDON PLAZA ERA coming of industrial era

RENAISSANCE DEVELOPMENTS IN PARIS

REBUILDING OF THE LOUVRE 1667, Lorenzo Berninis designs rejected
-- Claude Perrault a court physician
-- Viewing conditions same as Palladios San Giorgio Maggiore
and Michelangelos Campidoglio

BEAULEVARDcity is enlarged, old walls torn, creating broad, long streets

-- term derived from Dutch word bulwark

1748

proposals for new plazas

-- Place de la Concorde 1757, finished by 1770

1789
1793

French Revolution
new plan for Paris called Plan des Artistes
-- 1748, emphasis on plaza 1793, emphasis on street

NAPOLEON I
NAPOLEON III

Champs Elysees improvement -- Arch of Triumph

assigned Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann
-- Jean Charles Adolphe Alphand, landscape architect

MODERN CONCEPTS IDEAL TOWNS & WORKER TOWNS

CLAUDE NICOLAS LEDOUX French architect
-- late 18th and early 19th century, a new era in urban design
-- CHAUX, France (1776) principal work

LEDOUXS DESIGN an ideal plan where everything is motivated by necessity

Architecture Ledouxs book published in 1804

ROBERT OWEN

English social reformer

-- NEW LANARK, Scotland (1799)

OWENITE COMMUNITIES

England and United States

New Harmony in Indiana, by Owens son
Brook Farm in Massachusetts by New England transcendentalists
Icarus in Red River, Texas, by Frenchman named Cabet
Icarus failed, Cabet joined theMormons in search for the
promised land and helped lay out Salt Lake City

FRANCOIS FOURIER French social reformer

-- Phalanstery
-- The New World of Industry and Society published in 1829

JAMES SILK BUCKINGHAM Victoria

-- National Evils and Practical Remedies published in 1849

ROBERT PEMBERTON Happy Colony in New Zealand

DR. BENJAMIN RICHARDSON Hygeia in United States
THOMAS JEFFERSON Jeffersonville

MODERN CONCEPTS PLANNED INDUSTRIAL TOWNS

FRANCIS CABOT LOWELL Georgiaville, RA (1812)
-- Waltham, Massachusetts -- Harrisville, NH (1816) -- Lowell, Massachusetss (1822)

OLIVE

French architect, anticipated the 20th c. Garden City

Vesinet, France (1859)

OTHER INDUSTRIAL TOWNS

-----

Essen, Germany (1863), Krupp factories called Siedlungen (worker colonies)

Pullman, Illinois (1879)
Port Sunlight near Liverpool (1887) W.H. Lever Soap Company
Bournville near Birmingham (1889) Cadbury Chocolate Company
Gary, Indiana (1906), laid out by a steel corporation, a made to order city

TONY GARNIER French architect, anticipated modern day zoning

-- Une Cite Industrielle (1901-04)
-- Plan is incredibly detailed
-- imaginary site (high plateau and level valley along a river)
-- residential on plateaufactories on valley
-- dam for hydroelectric power
-- hospital on high hill
-- smelting factories and mines at respectful distances
-- locations for sewage plant, abattoir, bakery, and civic center
-- testing grounds for cars and even airplanes!

MODERN CONCEPTS URBAN DESIGN AND MACHINES

DON ARTURO SORIA Y MATA Spanish businessman and engineer
-- created Madrids 1st streetcar and telephone system
-- La Ciudad Lineal Linear City
-- Stalingrad planned linear city

INVENTIONS INFLUENCING URBAN FORM

Electricity Peter Kropotkin (1899)
-- Railroad

OTHER VISIONARIES
Edgar Chambless, American vehicles running on rooftops
-- Motopia proposed in England
-- Eugene Henard, French, published Les Villes de lAvenir (1910)
may have influenced Le Corbusier

ANTONIO SANTELIA

Italian futurist
-- La Citta Nuova enormous metropolis
-- inspired by the complex plans for the New York Grand Central area

METABOLISM GROUP

Japanese architects
-- underwater cities, biological cities,cities changing their own forms,
cities built as pyramids

OTHER VISIONARIES
Edward Bellamy, published in 1887 Looking Backward, 2000-1887
-- H.G. Wells (1902-1911)

MODERN CONCEPTS RENEWED ATTITUDE TOWARD

NATURE
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES
not necessarily a sign of progress

CHIEF SPOKESMEN
- Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (French)
- John Ruskin (English)
- Henry David Thoreau (American)

ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT

- Led by William Morris, return to simpler
Christian virtues of the Gothic period
- Norman Shaw, created Bedford Park (1875-81)

GOTHIC REVIVAL IN 19TH CENTURY

Gothic period was the last original architectural era
- Frank Lloyd Wright

THE CONSERVATIONISTS AND THE PARK MOVEMENT

GEORGE PERKINS MARSH

American conservationist
-- the founder of modern conservation
-- Man and Nature published in 1862, an introduction to ecology

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

-------

pioneer of the American park system

also a social reformer, concerned w/ moral disintegration in large formless cities
also a farmer, landscape design as olution to social ills (i.e urban park)
Central Park of New York City won in 1859
San Francisco, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Montreal, Boston
Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns published in 1870
Cities planned for two generations ahead
-- maintain sufficient breathing space
-- design embraces the whole city

CHARLES ELIOT

completed Olmsteds Boston park system

GEORGE KESSLER -- layout of Kansas City park system

JENS JENSEN -- designed Chicagos original park system
ALPHAND -- Haussmanns landscape architect
-- the French Olmsted

DANIEL SCHREBER --

a physician and educator

-- Schrebergarten small gardens for children; later, used by elderly
-- popularized the idea of the urban playground in Europe

EXPLORATIONS INTO THE PAST

ARCHAEOLOGY became a science in 19th century
CAMILLO SITTE, Viennese architect
-- An Architects Notes and Reflections upon Artistic City Planning
published in 1889

THE GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT

EBENEZER HOWARD

An English stenographer
-- Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Social Reform published in 1898
-- Proponent of the Garden City concept

LETCHWORTH

the first garden city (1902), located 35 miles from London

-- architects Barry Parker and Raymund Unwin
-- became a satellite of London because factories did not materialize
the second garden city (1920), more successful than Letchworth
-- architect Louis de Soissons

WELWYN --

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

HOWARDS ANALYTICAL APPROACH city so large & operations so complex
-- Proper understanding can only be gained by full application of precise analysis

PATRICK GEDDES

Scottish city planner. established tool for analytical approach

-- Cities in Evolution published in 1915 -- coined the term connurbation
-- laid out some 50 cities in India and Palestine

MARSH -- interrelationship between MAN and NATURE

GEDDES -- interrelationship between PEOPLE and CITIES
CONNURBATION - the waves of population inflow to large cities, followed
by overcrowding and slum formation, and then the wave of backflow

THE CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT

GOLDEN AGE OF URBAN DESIGN
From 1890 to the Great Depression (1930s), termed the City Beautiful Era

WORLDS FAIRS
as works of civic art -- application of latest technologies; faade architecture;
promise of America come to life
-- as urban renewal operations-- Jackson Park Chicago Worlds Fair,
San Francisco Marina, Treasure Island, SF

McMILLAN COMMISSION
-- AIA natl conference in Washington D.C. (1901)
-- Daniel Burnham, Augustus St. Gaudens, and Frederick Law Olmsted among present
-- plan for improvement of central Washington -- reviving the original LEnfant plan

CIVIC CENTERS
city hall, county court house, library, museum, opera house, and a plaza

PUBLIC WORKS

BRIDGES, designed as pieces of sculpture

-- RIVERS, made into classical garden terraces
-- COLLEGES and UNIVERSITIES, as visions of classical world
-- RAILROADS, built Roman basilicas and baths

CITY AS A WHOLE --

Daniel Burnham father of American city planning

-- plans for Chicago, San Francisco, Manila, etc.
-- Make no little plans they have no power to stir mens blood
-- last use of French Renaissance principlesapplied at the largest scale possible

PLANNED RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITIES

Roland Park, Baltimore (1892): start of commuter suburb
-- Country Club, Kansas City
-- Forest Hills Garden, L.I., New York: commuter suburb for Manhattan (1911)

MANY DEVELOPMENTS
American city planning profession -- Zoning introduced in 1916
-- Many lessons from abroaD -- England and garden city movement
-- English architect-planners lectured in US-- English books in city planning

SUMMARY: CITY BEAUTIFUL ERA--CIVIC CENTER and COMMUTER SUBURB

THE NEW COMMUNITIES MOVEMENT

PROPONENTS

Henry Wright Rehousing Urban America (1934)

-- Clarence Stein Towards New Towns for America (1951)

SUPERBLOCK CONCEPT

Answer to problem of through traffic

-- Island of green, bordered by houses and skirted by peripheral automobile roads
-- Best examples -- Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles; Chatham Village, Pittsburgh
-- Community-level development

RADBURN, NJ Series of superblocks, not completed due to Depression

-- One of the most important designs conceived for the modern residential community

RADBURN IDEA

Organization of town into cohesive neighborhoods

-- Clarence A. Perry -The Neighborhood Unit published in 1929; Community planning

TOWN COLONIZATION CONCEPT --

G. R. Taylor
-- Metropolitan growth through colonization, Reinforces Ebenezer Howards belief
-- Satellite Cities, A Study of Industrial Suburbs (1915)
-- The Building of Satellite Towns (1925)

REGIONAL PLANNING
ROOTS OF REGIONAL OUTLOOK Howard & Taylor: satellite colonization
-- Radburn demonstrated satellite colonization
-- Marsh and Geddes laid the groundwork
-- Henry Wright and Benton MacKaye: championed the regional outlook

HENRY WRIGHT AND PLAN OF NEW YORK

Worked under commission by Clarence Stein
Report of the Commission on Housing and
Regional Planning for the State of New York
-- Development of New York
-- Small trade centers for an agriculture society
-- Decline due to cheaper Midwestern farms
-- Industrialization took hold
-- Hudson and Mohawk valleys became spine
-- New York City became the financial heart
and core for a constellation of communities
-- Wrights plan one of finest models of regional planning
-- not officially adopted, but recommendations realized
-- led to formation of RPAA

REGIONAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK

22 counties, 500 municipal districts, 10 million people, NY state, NJ and Conn.
-- Thomas Adams Scottish planner
2-volume plan produced in 1928 most complete plan study ever done

BENTON MACKAYE
-----

Originally, a forester
The New Exploration, A Philosophy of Regional Planning published in 1928
Envisioned the townless highway and highwayless towns
Showed NY City as the entry and exit portal for the entire US industrial empire
New Exploration the exploration of the wilderness and conservation had
to be expanded to include cities

ACHIEVEMENTS IN EUROPE
ENGLISH NEW TOWN MOVEMENT
Sir Anthony Barlow headed commission
The Report of Royal Commission of Distribution of Industrial Population (1940)
-- Sir Patrick Abercrombie and J.H. Forshaw
The County of London Plan (1943)
-- New Towns Plan of Hook; Plan of Cumbernauld

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Londons Barbican area
-- Garden cities in France
-- Dourges 1st garden city in France (1919)
-- Longueau, Tergnier, Lille-le-Deliverance
-- Berlin, Germany Martin Machler
-- Baku in Russia
-- West Kungsholmen, Stockholm
-- Tapiola, Helsinki in Finland
-- Amsterdam South, Amsterdam in Holland
-- Other countries Italy, Switzerland, Israel

ARCHITECTS IN URBAN PLANNING

ELIEL SAARINEN

Prize-winning plan for Helsinki in 1911

-- Teaching of architecture and urban planning
-- The City published in 1943

WALTER GROPIUS Took same approach to architecture & urban planning

RICHARD NEUTRA Rush City Reformed
LE CORBUSIER -- Fused ideas of modern architecture and city form
-- Spokesman for the International Movement
-- Une Ville Contemporaine 1922, traceable to Henards and Garniers ideas
-- Plan Voisin (Neighborhood Plan) 1925; La Ville Radieuse 1935
-- Le Plan de Paris 1937 When Cathedrals Were White 1947
-- Chandigarh, India designed the entire city

-----

Concerning Town Planning 1948

Lewis Mumford critical of Le Corbusier
Helped organize the Congres International dArchitecture Moderne (CIAM
Conceived the CIAM grid graphic file system for recording pertinent
information in an urban study and for explaining a plan
-- CIAM grid four component sections: work, residence, circulation, leisure

MARS Group

The English CIAM organization

-- Proposed a plan for rebuilding London -- Sixteen finger corridors all connected
by a major circulation spine and encircling circulation loop

ARCHITECTS IN URBAN PLANNING

LOUIS KAHN Made important designs for central Philadelphia
KENZO TANGE Plan for Tokyo
-- Circulation as determinant of urban form
-- New Tokyo over Tokyo Bay, hung on bridges

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

-- Followed Howard, Geddes and social reformers
-- The Disappearing City published in 1932
-- Broadacres every family on an acre of land
-- Marin County Civic Center north of SF, Calif.
-- Changed scheme Full Mile High Superskyscraper

CONSTANTINE DOXIADIS
Addressed the urban problem on a worldwide scale
-- Major designs are made for countries where economy and productive system
can be coordinated by policy and decree
-- Best work is in newly developing nations of Africa and Middle East
-- Architecture in Transition (1963) explains Doxiadiss total view
-- Magazine Ekistics shows Dixiadiss many plans and programs
-- Ekistics grid system for recording planning data and ordering planning process
-- Town planning as a science which includes planning and design, and contribution
of sociologist, geographer, economist, politician, anthropologist, ecologist, etc.
-- EKISTICS the science of human settlements

CHARLES ABRAMS
Housing as one prime field of endeavor for solving urban problems
-- Mans Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World (1964)

BUCKMINSTER FULLER
-- Inventory of World Resources Human Trends and Needs (1963)

LEWIS MUMFORD
-- Authored some twenty books and innumerable articles
-- The City in History published in 1961, summary of Mumfords thought