Notes: Gordon Cullen’s Concise Townscape Theory

Gordon Cullen (1914-1994) was an English architect,. an urban designer who carried on the of
the Townscape movement theme. Later on he wrote and published the “Townscape” book in
1961. He was a key motivator and activist in the development of British theories of urban design
in the post-war period. After his death, David Gosling & Norman Foster collected various
examples of his work and put them together in the book ‘Visions of Urban Design’.

Gordon Cullen get famous by the Concise Townscape Theory. The “Townscape” book, one of
Gordon Cullen’s masterpiece, illustrated with over 300 works selected from the drawings Gordon
Cullen made during his lifetime, this anthology documents his influential career as an Urban
Theorist, artist and illustrator from 1930 to 1990. The majority of his drawings have never been
published before except in professional reports, and this book contains numerous drawings
executed for the pleasure of observation as well as the product of his many consultancies.

Serial Vision Serial Vision is 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 opposite, reading
from left to right.

Place Place description is in a world of black and white the roads are for movement and the
buildings for social and business purposes.

Content Content concerned with the intrinsic quality of the various subdivisions of the
environment, and start with the great landscape categories of metropolis, town, arcadia, park,
industrial, arable and wild nature.

Focal Point Focal point is the idea of the town as a place of assembly, of social intercourse, of
meeting, was taken for granted throughout the whole of human civilization up to the twentieth
century.

Closure Closure, may be differentiated from Enclosure, by contrasting ‘travel’ with ‘arrival’.
Closure is the cutting up of the linear town system (streets, passages, etc.) into visually digestible
and coherent amounts whilst retaining the sense of progression. Enclosure on the other hand
provides a complete private world which is inward looking, static and self-sufficient.

Street Lighting Here we are concerned with the impact of a modern public lighting installation on
towns and not, primarily, with the design of fittings. Naturally it is impossible to disassociate the
two since, as in all townscape, we are concerned with two aspects: first, intrinsic design and
second, the relationship or putting together of things designed.

Outdoor Publicity One contribution to modern townscape, startlingly conspicuous everywhere

you look, but almost entirely ignored by the town planner, is street outdoor publicity. This is the
most characteristic, and, potentially, the most valuable, contribution of the twentieth century to
urban scenery. At night it has created a new landscape of a kind never before seen in history.

Here and There The practical result of so articulating the town into identifiable parts is that no
sooner do we create a HERE than we have to admit a THERE, and it is precisely in the
manipulation of these two spatial concepts that a large part of urban drama arises.
Man-made enclosure, if only of the simplest kind, divides the environment into HERE and THERE.
On this side of the arch, in Ludlow, we are in the present, uncomplicated and direct world, our
world. The other side is different, having in some small way a life of its own (a with-holding).
From the book “Concise Townscape”, (the architectural press, 1971)