Classic Book Review. Cullen, G. (1961). Townscape
Literature Review
| 2013-01-23 오후 10:25:19
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Cullen, G. (1961). Townscape, NY: Reinhold
In his Townscape (1961), Cullen pays an attention to the importance of human’s eyes in understanding physical environments, and emphasizes individual’s experience of the environments as the starting point of urban design.
Cullen argues that physical elements of the environments create emotion effects, which shape visual perception; furthermore, he develops the concept of serial vision, which demonstrates that individuals perceive spatial information by constantly experiencing an existing view and an emerging view alternately when walking through physical surroundings. To strengthen his concept of serial vision, Cullen explains individual’s reactions to the position of one’s body in its environment; and the content of the environment. His concept is exemplified through his casebook. He also considers the possession of space accommodating human needs, and furthers street activities.
The idea of townscape exerts a substantial influence on urban design. For example, the Preservationists of the early 1960s viewed the physical environments in visual terms; they advocated the preservation of old buildings or streets as important elements in the physical town settings. The principles of townscape implicate a negative response to suburban sprawl, which is characterized as homogeneous and sterile repetition of single-family housings. The townscape encourages different emotional responses and various dramas within the physical surroundings, and support urban designs to promote the uniqueness of place. This notion of anti-suburban sprawl is in accordance with the major theme of new Urbanism. Cullen’s concerns about possession of public space and occupied territory can be paralleled with Oscar Newman’s “defensible space”.
In reading Townscape, I admit I was almost neglecting Cullen’s concerns with human needs, because he put quite a great emphasis on the visual perception. The preponderant images over the text led me to underestimate the human need issues.