This Looking@Cities entry will explain the first-year exercises that were issued by Rowe as an introduction to his then Urban Design studio, and the transition to my thesis written during my second year at Cornell, which ultimately led to the text, “The Genealogy of Cities.”
In 1977 I began my two-year program studying urban design at Cornell University with Colin Rowe. My introduction to Rowe though began before my arrival at Cornell. In 1974 Fred Koetter was a guest professor at the University of Kentucky College of Architecture. I was a student in the college and enrolled in Koetter’s 5th year thesis design studio. During the academic year of 1974-75 Fred Koetter invited Colin Rowe to lecture. Throughout my time in Koetter’s studio, and Rowe’s lecture, I first heard the terms “collage” and “typology.”
In the architecture Cornell Journal, Issue #2 Steven Hurtt writes an article titled “Conjectures on Urban Form.” In the introduction for his article the following is written,
“…Steven Hurtt examines the methods and theories of the Cornell Urban Design Studio. The author correlates studio projects with the evolution of the theories of
• Contextualism
• Collision City, and
• Collage City.
[Hurtt] notes that these theories emerged in parallel and that no particular project represents one or all of these theories in a pure form. Thus, interpretive analysis of the Cornell studio work relates it to the major concepts subsequently propounded by studio members and especially by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in their book, Collage City.” Upon my arrival Rowe was focused on his third theory, Collage City.
Colin Rowe was finalizing two of his personal projects when I arrived at Cornell. Projects that encompassed his theory of collage; his book coauthored with Fred Koetter, Collage City, and the invitational project, Roma Interrotta.
Both projects were discussed during my first academic year at Cornell.
Also, during this period it’s important to note that Leon Krier’s design for the Parc de la Villette in Paris was published in A.D. vol 47, #3, 1977.
As well as James Stirling & Michael Wilford’s Nordrhein-Westfalen Museum in Düsseldorf, Germany project.
Both projects encompassed Rowe’s theory of collage, and both were circulated around the design studio.
Another concept which was new to me was the use of the figure/ground drawing as a tool for investigation. (To understand the development and use of the figure/ground in Rowe’s studio please refer to my article “The Legacy of Colin Rowe and the Figure/Ground Drawing.” )
Prior to the introduction of the use of the figure/ground drawing the typical town planning drawing was represented as a series of diagrams as shown in the image below.
The Three Urban Design Studio Projects, Academic Year 1977-1978
To comprehend the design methodology of the early design exercises issued by Rowe, and the concept of collage, refer to the article titled Urban Design Tactics, by Steven K. Peterson, originally published in Architectural Design Magazine 1978.
In Urban Design Tactics Peterson defines Urban Design as
“…a synthetic, inventive mapping of physical conditions that establishes and explores whole areas of the city. In other words, it is architecture – but encompassing more in scale, intention, and technique. Three basic questions of morphology are connected with the discipline of urban design in its examination of the city as a physical entity:
First – What is the essential prerequisite medium of urbanism itself?
Second – What are the constituent urban elements of the city?
Third – What are the formal strategies and tactics available to provide coherence and relationships among the elements?”
Peterson goes on to answer the three questions by discussing
• Space: The Medium of Urbanism
• Urban Elements: The Field, and Its subsidiary elements of Texture, Street and Square, Block and Block unit
• Strategies and Tactics: The Strategy of Fragments, The Strategy of Lines, and The Tactics of Connections
These were the foundations for the design approach of Colin Rowe’s design studio. Archetypally though these concepts weren’t discussed during the studio hours. These discussions occurred via his lecture course, which we were all required to take, and the weekly evening meetings at Rowe’s home in Ithaca, New York.
Fall semester 1977 – Exercise #1
The first project issued was the figure/ground plan of the city of Wiesbaden, Germany and ran around 3 weeks. We were given an 8.5” x 11” (A4 size) photocopy of Wayne Copper’s 1967 Wiesbaden thesis plan,
… along with the figure/ground pieces shown above.
The only instructions from Rowe, “Use the pieces to redesign the plan of Wiesbaden.” The only typological pieces that looked familiar to me were the pentagram shape with the circle in the center, and the crescent. When I was still in high school my family and I traveled to Italy and England. While in Rome we took a tour of Castel Sant’Angelo, and visited Bath England, where I toured the Royal Crescent.
The following are the images I presented at the review for project #1.
The first row shows the final design. The center series, the process. The final images, possible views in specific areas. The last series of images represent a process that appeared in all three first year exercises; perspectival views of possible urban and architectural typologies. At times I’d also manipulate the images to better represent my design ideas. As shown in the image below.
Exercise # 1 was basically an introduction to Rowe’s design theories and teaching methods. He’d arrive in studio, lit cigarette in mouth, grab a stool and proceed to go from desk-to-desk. If you had anything worth discussing on your desk he’d pull out a sharpie pen and create what he called ‘scribbles’ on your trace paper drawings, while describing a possible precedent as he drew, “You know…… this reminds me of the Galleria Umberto, and its relationship to the Teatro San Carlo.” Colin would assume you knew he was referring to the arcade in Naples Italy, and how it connected to the theater. Of course, the chances were low you had any idea as to what he was referring to, but by the next class you knew both urban architectural pieces inside and out.
As a side note on Rowe’s teaching methods, when I arrived my research and writing skills were atrocious. During one of Rowe’s weekly gatherings, we were discussing the architect, Edwin Lutyens. Colin turned to me and said, “Charles, do you know about Mary Lutyens, the daughter of the Edwin? You know….. her mother Lady Emily, she was deeply influenced by Theosophy , which ultimately effected Edwin’s architecture. Do me a favor, research all of that and write it up for me, ok? Go see Judith Holliday, she’ll get you started.” I spent about a month researching and writing a paper and presented it one day to Colin in his office. Colin thanked me and then without even looking at the first page handed it back to me. Of course, I was speechless, Colin then looked at me and said, “What, you thought the paper was for me?” and smiled. He never berated us, he just assumed we’d either get it, or we wouldn’t. Those who didn’t tended to just not be there from one day to the next.
Fall semester 1977 – Exercise #2
The second project issued was the figure/ground plan of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and ran around 12 weeks. The area in red was the given site. We were also asked to incorporate the Harvard Kennedy School building into our designs. The aerial view is from 1974 and doesn’t show the Harvard Kennedy School.
I began the design process and at some early point presented this design to Rowe.
At the desk crit Rowe sketched the following, and during the critique mentioned the phrase “Fat City.” I took this to mean ‘designing with subtraction’ instead of just ‘designing with addition,’ and the process led to this next drawing, Ciudad Gorda.
In Steve Peterson’s article, Urban Design Tactics, he displays to illustrations when discussing urban fields. He describes the fields as overlapped and interwoven. An important aspect of collage and the above “fat city.”
The following are the images I presented at the final review for project #2.
The first series illustrate the design process prior to the final review. The sketches with the red dots are sketches Rowe drew during the desk crits. The images in the center are perspectival views produced during the design process. The plan views illustrate the final design. There are also two pages from the Cornell Journal #2, bottom right, that demonstrate proposals by three of my classmates for the same site.
Spring semester 1978 – Exercise #3
The third project was issued in the spring of 1978 and ran for the whole 15 weeks. We were issued a figure/ground plan of a portion of midtown Manhattan along the east river. The site began just south of the UN building and continued for 12 blocks long, by roughly 2 blocks wide.
Unfortunately, I do not have all the final drawings from the studio project. Below are what I could locate of the project; a series of “design Process Drawings” which were a combination of set collage urban precedents and designs.
The two images with the red dots were sketches on trace paper by Rowe, with the final design represented below.
The pieces collaged are … (starting from the top),
• Piazza San Marco, Venezia
• Piazza San Pietro with the Cathedral and the Cortile del Belvedere, Roma
• Castel Sant’Angelo, Roma
• Hofburg, Vienna
The urban pieces I used for collaging were found in Michael Dennis & Klaus Herdeg’s. 1974. Urban Precedents. Ithaca, New York.
I recall my initial concept for collaging the existing set pieces occurred after reading an early draft of Urban Design Tactics, by Steven K. Peterson. It was a quick method for generating design ideas and understanding the scale of the site. Note the similarities to the design pieces given in the first semester exercise.
Master Thesis, Academic Year 1978-1979
The practice of collaging the four pieces shown above is important because it eventually led to what I produced for my master thesis during my second year at Cornell.
At the beginning of the fall semester 1978 I met with Colin Rowe to discuss ideas for my master thesis. During our conversation I told Colin I was very interested in historic urban fabric and historic city plans; having studied Wayne Copper’s thesis (see Cornell Journal #2), the Urban Precedents publication by Dennis and Herdeg, and having read early drafts of both Collage City and the article Urban Design Tactics. Rowe then suggested I study urban scale and recommended I use Manhattan and Central Park as the set ruler or scale device. (Later when I ran into Michael Dennis he commented, “Oh, so Colin has finally found someone to work on that idea of his.” It became obvious this wasn’t a new idea of Rowe’s.)
Rowe then took me to the architectural library and introduced me to two historic city plan sources, an atlas by Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (S.D.U.K.), and the Baedeker Travel Guides. Besides using S.D.U.K. and Baedekers as a plan source, I discovered a few plans in the Cornell map library. As an example, it’s worth noting that the plan for Beijing was originally a 1950’s CIA aerial photo. I then traced the plans and had them photographically enlarged or reduced to a comparative scale. Rowe also encouraged me to apply for a Graham Foundation grant to help produce the drawings, when awarded this allowed me to hire a few undergraduate students to help trace the plans.
After placing central park to the side as a scale comparison I then collaged central park onto a series of plans. An example, central park collaged onto central Paris. (Plate #37 – Collage of Paris and Central Park)
At the end of my second year at Cornell I exhibited 40 – 16” x 20” figure/ground plates.
On the last two pages, instead of using central park as a scale, I generated a figure ground of midtown Manhattan and, like the 3rd exercise in my first year at Cornell, collaged pieces of urban fabric into the plan of midtown. (Plates 39 & 40) Below is the existing figure ground of midtown Manhattan, and an image with parts of various urban pieces woven into the existing fabric, and a final image illustrating the urban pieces and where they were originally obtained.
At the final review the discussion of the plates by the committee focused on the comparative scale of cities, and the individual plates as frameable pieces. Ironically there was no dialogue of about Space, Urban Elements, or Strategies and Design Tactics. As to the written part of the thesis, when I recently read it I found it lacking in the actual understanding of the potential impact the drawings could have in understanding urban fabric and design schemes. It wasn’t until years later when I published The Genealogy of Cities did I fully understand the potential of studying historic urban plans. As an example, while writing The Genealogy of Cities I took the image of the Collage of Paris and Central Park and expanded on the concept, illustrating Le Corbusier’s proposal for central Paris, Plan Voisin, and exemplifying the impact his design would have had on central Paris.
Twenty years after my time spent at Cornell I began writing the Genealogy of Cities. Early on I came across two articles in two different journals, by Elbert Peets, and bothtitled “The Genealogy of L’Enfant’s Design of Washington,” In these two articles Peets traces the historic architectural and city scale fabric which he considers as a precedent for L’Enfant’s design of the USA’s capital city. Peets’ genealogy attributes L’Enfant’s direct influences as Versailles and John Evelyn’s plan for the re-building of London after the fire of 1666. Peets’ drawings compare streets, relationship and distances of triangles, and scale comparisons of building fabric and Peets further traces the genealogy of Washington D.C. outlining Roman legionary camps, hunting forests, and early French town plans. Through this means of genealogical analysis the observer can see a portion of the design process that may have influenced L’Enfant’s design for Washington D.C. Peets’ process of tracing the genealogy led me to consider the possibility of a pattern or typology for city designs, and eventually to the researching and writing of this book and a further understanding of collage at a city scale.
Left: The types of plans that E. Peets considered as precedents for L’Enfant’s design of Washington D.C.
Right: Elbert Peets’ “family tree” for Washington D.C.
(Left image from, “The Genealogy of the Plan of Washington” by Elbert Peets, Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, May, 1951, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 3-4)
(Right image from, “The Genealogy of L’Enfant’s Washington.” by Elbert Peets, Source: Journal of the American Institute of Architects. XV (April1927), 115-119; XV (May 1927),151-154; XV (June 1927),187-19)
During my tenure teaching at Kent State University, I eventually used the design pedagogy of urban typology and collage as exercises in my design studios. Examples of how this was executed can be found on my portfolio website, under Undergraduate Course Work; Intro to Urban Design. It’s my plan at a later date to write about this under graduate course, and explain how the studio was structured. Explaining how I wove several Colin Rowe’s design concepts into the course.
Until then, thank you for taking the time to read this blog entry. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.
C. P. Graves
Looking@Cities 