The Concise Townscape

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Improved human experience: Serial vision lets you envision how a space will look from different angles, viewpoints and times of day, fostering the creation of designs that deliver a sense of discovery and delight, with a deeper emotional connection. This material is written by Dr Ben Guy, a civil planner who examined Cullen’s ideas during his doctoral studies and has over 20 years of experience using modern technology to illustrate serial viewpoints in urban infrastructure projects. CONTENTS: Serial vision definition | The importance of serial vision | The benefits of utilising serial vision | Gordon Cullen's urban design principles | Serial vision examples | Skyline, rhythm, and grain | Thresholds, transitions, and permeability | Light and shadow | The digital simulation of serial vision | Dynamic viewsheds What does serial vision mean? Simulating views at speed is critical for planning railways, highways, and other transportation systems. It is also useful for ascertaining whether reflective façades and other architectural details cause visual disturbances or interfere with the safety of nearby drivers. Serial vision simulation is also beneficial when assessing a new design proposal’s visual impact on the surrounding landscape.

Serial Vision - University of Manchester

Seen from above the whole layout shows the outdoor room through which traffic might pass. The traffic has to slow down (a good thing) while crossing the square; the flow is not impeded otherwise. The street is more friendly, the church becomes a real place of meeting, the cross a genuine focal point and a ribbon town gains a centre. In articles in the Architectural Review and in books such as Townscape and The Concise Townscape, Cullen outlined these ideas. He spent a lot of time and space analyzing the buildings, streets, lanes and squares of towns, old and new, to demonstrate how they worked and what was good about them visually. With the aid of photographs and his own clear and evocative drawings, he showed how our experiences of urban spaces change as we move through them.

Townscape: Diss, Norfolk

Naturally, a lot of this is a direct response to Le Corbusier , whose work I’m now reading and just became aware of because of how he declared war on all of these concepts.

Townscape: cross as focal point - Architectural Review Townscape: cross as focal point - Architectural Review

A definition: Serial vision refers to the changing perspectives and sequential views experienced as you move through space. It is often explained as the unfolding visual experience – the way our perception alters and morphs as we journey across a landscape. A street may turn and reveal new geometries; a sudden vista may open up; a scenic landmark might appear over the horizon; emerging views and visual stimuli are revealed and concealed. This continually evolving visual experience is what is known as serial vision. Gordon Cullen’s serial vision A city is more than the sum of its inhabitants. It has the power to generate a surplus of amenity, which is one reason why people like to live in communities rather than in isolation. wider point of view we will see that tropical housing differs from tem­'It was the cause of bitterness between Lutyens and Baker.

Townscape and the AR: Humane Urbanism in the 20th Century

Increased ROI: Spaces that offer visual satisfaction and perceptual delight tend to foster well-being and are more likely to be revered, protected, and desired. Such harmonious environments contribute to physical, social, and economic sustainability, boosting return on investment and benefiting society for generations. Suppose, however, that we take over this linking as a branch of the art of relationship; then we are finding a tool with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into a coherent drama. (9) It is sometimes astonishing howfragile can be the means of estab­lishing enclosure or space. A wirestretched from wall to wall like apencil stroke, a square of canvasstretched out overhead. In Chandi­garh I saw a bustee, or collection ofmud and thatch dwellings, arrangedin the shade of three large trees alonein the plain. The space thus enclosedby the three trees became the civicspace of the tiny community. Inthese pictures of the French Rivieraand a restaurant at the Festival ofBritain we see how bamboo is usedto establish enclosure and space andhow it achieves that evocative charmof containing whilst revealing whatis beyond. An important application of our CGI technology is visualising a landscape or environment from a moving viewpoint, such as from within a vehicle. Unlike traditional viewshed analysis, which involves a fixed viewpoint, dynamic viewsheds represent the changing perspective of an observer in motion. [viii]

Gordon Cullen: Serial Vision in Urban Design Gordon Cullen: Serial Vision in Urban Design

This sketch shows the centre as seen from point ‘A’ on the previous drawing. It shows the view at right angles to the direction of the street and is made from an already existing but derelict yard. A vista at right angles to the main road it makes the one accent in the street and one that all town, but particularly the linear town, need. And there is always a 'here', where you are, and a 'there', it is fascinating to think how we might shape these feelings, make people want to move and explore, fill them with wonder, excitement, peacefulness.iv] David Gosling, Urban Design and Townscape, Gordon Cullen Tribute, Urban Design Quarterly (1994) The Concise Townscape author draws three conclusions at the end of the book: Urban environments can be categorized in two ways. The first is the city as an object made up of subjects that are outside planners. Second, the city is built, and then it is populated with activities. Both provide a sustaining complement. Townscape serves as a city in this scenario, providing the framework and fostering action. The inhabitants of the urban setting should be able to live comfortably. The urban environment impacted the physical and psychological evolution of civilization . Therefore, it is essential to emphasize the art of the surroundings in urban planning.

Book Review: The Concise Townscape by Gordon Cullen Book Review: The Concise Townscape by Gordon Cullen

Physics-based precision: This enables accurate modelling of sightlines, lighting and weather conditions, vehicle and pedestrian flow, vegetation, and surrounding infrastructure. Getting the balance of enclosure, mystery, concealment, and openness right is difficult – hence why digital simulations that combine all these different factors are so valuable. This is the city as collective enterprise, a collective that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Like Capra's theories of connection, a city is not just a collection of discrete things like streets and buildings, but rather embodies the art of relationship: how things fit together, the spaces created between them, how people use and live in buildings, but also move between them. The illumination halfway up thestructure draws our attention outwardand upward. What is this mystery ofthe commonplace? At least it takesour eyes off our toe-caps. Even themost ordinary means can be harnessedto the task of arousing in us the senseof otherness through the use of light,through pointing the finger. It is notthe thing pointed out but the evoca­tive act of pointing that arouses theemotions. Possession: (and here he is talking about possession from a positive standpoint, a Lefebvrian standpoint where people creatively occupy space and make it their own through their daily lives) ... Occupied territory, advantage, enclosure, focal point, indoor landscape, and so on, are all form of possession... (21)The term ‘townscape’ dates from a 1949 AR article by Hastings. Over the years that followed, Cullen’s artistic work for the magazine - including the monthly Townscape column and many other articles - provided rich material for the dense assemblage of photos, plans and free-hand illustrations that characterised the book. The collective gathered around Hastings sought to revive the picturesque, an aesthetic mode of regarding the world that was cultivated in the 18th century by an elite with a taste for foreign travel. While often associated with landscape, as Richard Williams points out in his study on the origins of townscape, the picturesque has also long been accepted as a mode of perceiving the city, with its visual power acting as a means of assuaging urban anxieties. if at the end of it all the city appears dull, uninteresting and soulless, then it is not fulfilling itself. It has failed. The fire has been laid but nobody has put a match to it.” Gordon Cullen, The Concise Townscape Learning from the past Place: When buildings come together, the spaces between the buildings can take on a life of their own. This is the genius loci – which may be considered the “guardian spirit of a place” (Conzen 1975; Norberg-Schulz 1980). Cullen’s concept of ‘Place’ relates to our constant awareness of our position in the environment, and involves distinct, identifiable areas within the city that have their own unique character and atmosphere. Placelessness emerges when there is no defined space, when no beginnings and endings occur, and there is no structure to the outdoor public room.