PRINCETON UNIVERSITY School of Architecture Arc 304  Spring 1998 Urban Form: -2000 to +2000 M. Christine Boyer 11:00 - 11:50   W-F

Insurance Map -- 19th century New York City

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

We comprehend a city through representational forms such as city plans, views and maps. They become ways of thinking about a city, of organizing knowledge about a city, of perfecting its form in the future. Urban order is generated out of chaos: it can be self-organizing, purpose driven, or imposed. A city may be designed for defense, as a market place, an administrative center or the seat of government. There are cosmological, symbolic and empirical methods for defining the form and function of cities. At times myth and religion dominate the constructed form of cities, at other times Cartesian rationality and utopian thinking generate urban form, and still other moments complexity erupts into nonlinear dynamic systems of representation. The city is a ideal projection of society and ideology onto space. Such ideal forms simultaneously reflect a manner of living together and of thought. Spatial figures, social structures and mental images correspond and become embodied in cognitive maps and representational forms of a city.

This course will study a range of urban spatial types, city plans and maps taken from the history of Western Cities. It will question the purpose, system of knowledge, and method used for representing urban form. It also will focus on a series of legacies: questioning how inherited models have been used to discuss future forms of the city so that the course moves in time from the record of the historical past to influences in the present. Examples are taken from the foundation of cities in archaic, pre-literate times to the impact of telecommunication on contemporary urban agglomerations. Since the term ‘urbanism' was formed in the 1870s, the course will also examine the manner in which urban representational forms have been developed by modern architect/planners in the 20th century.
 

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

1. Attendance at all lectures, precepts, and participation in all precept discussions on assigned readings.

2. Precept Requirements:
 - two students to make summary notes on the lecture every week
 - two students to summarize the precept discussion every week
 - each student to bring two questions based on the assigned readings to precept every week

3. There will be three group workshops: March 3rd and 5th Workshop #1 URBAN SIGNS and SYMBOLS; April 7th and 9th  Workshop #2 CITY MAPS, PLANS and VIEWS; and May 5th and 7th Workshop #3 TERMINAL CITIES. These are to be te am projects ---  visual presentations to be reviewed in class on assigned presentation day..Class time will be extended on those days and students are required to attend all workshops.

4. There will be a final take-home examination covering the reading and lecture materials of the class.
 
 
 

READING ASSIGNMENTS: [All readings with * before them are required. The background readings are helpful for clarification of lecture topics and for help in workshop preparation. Assigned reading for each week is divided between 1. readings and 2. legacies. There is approximately one hundred pages of reading each week.]

Feb. 3rd, 5th
Week 1: Introduction to Mapping Urban Form -2000 to +2000

 *Umberto Eco, "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1" How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (New York: A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, 1994): 95-106.

 *Kevin Lynch, Image of the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960): 46-90.

Feb. 10th, 12th
Week 2: THE BIRTH OF THE CITY in the Near East -- the city of Ur  2000 B.C.
 Myth and Religion dominate City Form:
  The Cosmic axis = sign of the cross and the omphalos
  Perfect Unity =  sign of the circle
  Sacred Trinity = sign of the triangle/pyramid [heaven, earth, state]
  Stability and equality = sign of the square
  Mandala (circle of friends) = sign of circle contained in a square, or vice versa
  The orthogonal Grid:= sign of land measure or land survey

 1. READING:

 *Sigfried Giedion, "The Origins of Monumental Architecture: Mesopotamia" and" Ziggurats: Stairways of the Gods," The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Architecture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) 175 - 262.

 *Sigfried Giedion, "The First Architectural Space Conception," The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Architecture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) 522-526..

 2. LEGACY: Monumentality

Think about the year 2000

 *José Luis Sert, Fernand Leger, Sigfried Giedion, "Nine Points of Monumentality," in Joan Ockman (ed.) Architecture Culture 1943 - 1968 (New York: Rizzoli, 1993): 27-30.

Feb. 17th, 19th
Week 3: THE GREEK CITY and the foundations of DEMOCRACY
 The Plan of Athens: an acropolis, an agora, a polis
 The Gridded City of Hippodamos of Miletus: logic and reason order the space of the city
 The Ideal Cities of Aristotle and Plato
 Alexandria: of monuments and maps

 1. READING:

 *James E. Vance Jr. "The Gods Look Down: The Classical City" The Continuing City: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990): 41-78. [read to 58 for week 3]

 *R. E. Wycherley,"Greek Town Planning," and ""The Agora"  How the Greeks Built Cities (New York: WW Norton, 1962): 15-35, 50-86.

 *Paul Zucker, "Town and Square in Antiquity," Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1959): 19-62.[to p 44 for Week 3]

 2. LEGACY:  The Tabula Rasa of Modernity -- the image of pure creation

 *Didier Laroche, "The Discovery of Pre-classical Antiquity"  Rassegna 55, 3 (Sept., 1993): 68-73.

  BACKGROUND READING:

  " Sergei M. Eisenstein Montage and Architecture"  Assemblage 10 (1989): 110-131.

Feb. 24th, 26th
Week 4: THE ROMAN CITY: The founding of a city and its mapping
 The Roman Axis: east-west decumanus and the north-south cardo, and the process of centuriation
 The City of Monuments

 1. READING:

 *Christopher Hibbert, Rome: The Biography of a City (New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 1985): 3-63.

 *James E. Vance Jr. "The Gods Look Down: The Classical City" The Continuing City: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990): 41-78. [read from 58 to 78 for week 4]

 *Paul Zucker, "Town and Square in Antiquity," Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1959): 19-62.[from p  44 to 62 for Week 4]
 

 BACKGROUND READING

  Diane Favro, "Structure: Building an Urban Image," The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 143-216, 311-324

 2. LEGACY: Forma urbis Romae c. 203-211, the Nolli map of Rome, 1748 and Piranesi's reconstruction of the Campo Marzio plan, 1761- 1762.

 BACKGROUND READING:

  P. D.A. Harvey,"The Earliest Scale-Maps,"  The History of Topographical Map, Symbols, Pictures and Surveys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980): 122-132.

   Manfredo Tafuri, "‘The Wicked Architect': G. B. Piranesi, Heterotopia, and the Voyage," The Sphere and the Labyrinth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987): 25-54.

  R. Wittkower, "Piranesi's Architectural Creed," in Studies in Italian Baroque (Boulder: Westview Press, 1975):???
 

March 3rd, 5th [class time will be extended as needed]
Week 5: Workshop --- URBAN SIGNS and SYMBOLS:  The representational images of ancient cities form a template or a set of master themes. They are steeped in storytelling: myths of foundation, of cosmic order, of civic responsibilities. Taking one of the signs/symbols that were presented in lectures, construct a graphic analysis [i.e. drawings and slides] showing how this particular sign/symbol has been used to represent different urban forms from archaic to late Roman or early Christian times. [Note: examples can also be taken from Medieval Cities]

What stories, myths, legends does this  city form signify?  What form of knowledge does it represent?  Is the city-symbol connected to a deity, or to a ruler?  Is it a temporal symbol dealing with origins and ends? Is it a cosmic symbol dealing with the order of the universe, the relationship between man and god(s)? Is it a symbol of dwelling here on earth?  Does the sign encompass dualistic notions such as : day/night, sky/earth, fire/water, destruction/renewal, order/chaos, life/death, male/female, town/country? How does this sign relate to known systems of  writing such as  geo-graphy, topo-graphy, cosmo-graphy?

These are to be team projects ---  slide presentations of  projects to be reviewed in class on Wednesday Feb. 25th and Friday Feb. 27th. Written documentation must accompany presentations: a list of  group members, bibliographic references, explanation of images and identification of slides.
 

March 10th, 12th
Week 6: WALLED CITIES OF THE  MIDDLE AGES
 The Episcopal City and the roads of pilgrimage: the heavenly city of Jerusalem
 Concentric Circles: thresholds and boundaries, order and chaos, town/country dichotomy
 The Organic unity of cells: zones of the city and curvilinear streets
 The market city of exchange

 1. READING:

 *Janet Abu-Lughod, "Studying a System in Formation", "Restructuring the Thirteenth-Century World System," Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989): 3-40, 352-373.

 *P. D.A. Harvey,"Town plans and bird's-eye views,"  The History of Topographical Map, Symbols, Pictures and Surveys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980): 66 - 83.

 *Ludwig Hilberseimer, The Nature of Cities (Chicago: Paul Theobold & Co., 1955): 78-104.

 BACKGROUND READINGS:

  James Dougherty, "Heavenly City, Earthly City," The Fivesquare City," (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980): 23-53, 154-156.

  Chiara Frugoni, A Distant City: Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991): 3-29. And figs 1-29.

  Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, The Matrix of Man: An Illustrated History of Urban Environments (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1968):

  Lewis Mumford, "Principles of Medieval Town Planning," "Civic Nucleus and Neighborhood," "Control of Growth and Expansion," "Christianopolis --- Shadow and Substance," "Venus versus Utopia," The City in History (New York: A Harvest Book, 1961): 299 -328.
  James E. Vance Jr. "The Expression of Liberalism: The Face of the Medieval City" The Continuing City: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990):111-170.

  Paul Zucker, "The Medieval Town and Square," Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1959): 63-98.

 2. LEGACIES: Camillo Sitte's Art of City Building and Michel Foucault's  disciplinary city

 *George R. Collins and Christiane C. Collins (eds.), Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning (New York: Rizzoli, 1986): 151-184.

 BACKGROUND READINGS:

  Michel Foucault, "Panopticism," Discipline and Punish (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977): 195-228, 316-317.
 

March 17th, 19th SPRING RECESS

March 24th, 26th
Week 7: PERSPECTIVE AND THE RENAISSANCE CITY
 Brunelleschi's Florence and geometrical space
 Utopia and The Ideal City
 Leonardo da Vinci: The Body and the Map
 Bird's Eye City Views and topographical maps: Philip II and the art of  'description'
 The Rome of Sixtus V
 London 1666
 Utopian Cities

 1. READING:

 *Siegfried Giedion ,"The New Space Conception: Perspective", Perspective and Urbanism", "Perspective and the Constituent Elements of the City," and "The Organization of Outer Space," Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962): 41- 106, 133-160.

 *P. D.A. Harvey,"Sixteenth-Century Europe," and "The Pictorial Inheritance",  The History of Topographical Map, Symbols, Pictures and Surveys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980): 153-185.
 

 BACKGROUND READING

  Norman J. Johnston, "Renaissance Circular Cities: Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," Cities in the Round (Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1983):31-61, 130-31.

 2. LEGACIES:  Law of the Indies and Spanish towns in the New World

 *Graziano Gasparini, "The Law of the Indies: The Spanish-American Grid Plan: The Urban Bureaucratic Form,"  and "The Law of the Indies,"   The New City 1 (Miami: University of Miami School of Architecture, 1991): 6-33.

  BACKGROUND READING

  Walter D. Mignolo, "The Movable Center: Ethnicity, Geometric Projections, and Coexisting Territorialities," The Darker Side of the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995): 219-258, 369-377.

  Barbara E. Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996).
 

March 31st, April 2nd
Week 8: EMBELLISHING THE ROYAL CITY  AND THE ILLUSION OF EXTENSION.
 Cartesian
  Space and Spectacles of Power
 Fortifying the Boundaries of a Nation

 1. READING: Fortifying the Boundaries of a Nation

 *Hilary Ballon, "The Image of Paris: Maps, City Views, and the New Historical Focus,"  The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991): 212-249.

 BACKGROUND READING

  Paul Hirst, "The Defense of Places: Fortifications as Architecture" AA Files 33 (Summer, 1997): 13-26.
 

 2. READING: Princely Courts and Spectacles of Power: Paris and Versailles

 *A E.J. Morris, "France: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries," History of Urban Form: Before the Industrial Revolutions (London: George Godwin Ltd, 1979): 155-184.

 *Louis Marin, "The King and His Geometer," Portrait of the King (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988): 168-179.
.
 *Allen S Weiss,"Versailles: Versions of the Sun, The Fearful Distance,"  Mirrors of Infinity(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995): 52-77, 103-4.
 

 BACKGROUND READING:

  Wolfgang Braunfels, "Seats of a Princely Court,"Urban Design in Western Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988): 176-275

  Leonardo Benevolo, The Architecture of the Renaissance (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).

  Adrian Forty, "Versailles -- a political theme park?"  in Iain Borden and David Dunster (eds.) Architecture and the Sites of History (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1996): 53-64

  Louis Marin, "Classical, Baroque: Versailles, or the Architecture of the Prince," Yale French Studies 80 (1991): 167-182
 

April 14th, 16th  [class time will be extended as needed]
Week 9: Workshop on CITY MAPS, PLANS and VIEWS. Map, plans and views are representational forms that condense information. They are often accompanied by marginal notations, inscriptions, and  embellishments that verbally describe what mapping procedures can not explain. In other words there is a text/image relationship established. Maps along with city plans and city views offer a descriptive account of things visible in an urban world. They present a so-called 'objective' view, an organized 'vision'.

This workshop involves a library search -- to find atlases, maps, plans and bird's eye views of cities in the libraries of Princeton University. Selecting one such city map, or group of maps, plans and city views, each team is to present an illustrated talk about the methods used, purpose and graphic intentions of  these city maps, plans and views, including an analysis of written materials and supportive vignettes on the maps margins.

These are to be team projects ---  slide presentations of  projects to be reviewed in class on  Wednesday April 14th and Friday April 16th.  Written documentation must accompany presentations: a list of  group members, bibliographic references, explanation of images and identification of slides.
 

April 14th, 16th
Week 10: URBAN REFORMS AND THE INDUSTRIAL CITY

 The Birth of Modern City Planning: city surveys and urban pathologies:
 The City of Circulation: Haussmann and Henard
 The American Grid and the City Beautiful:

  1. READING:

 *David Jordan,"The Implacable Axes of a Straight Line," "Paris After Haussmann"  Transforming Paris: The Life and Labours of Baron Haussmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 185-210, 341-367, 397-8, 418-422..

 BACKGROUND READING:

  Leonardo Benevolo, "The age of reorganization and the origins of modern town-planning,", "Haussmann and the plan of Paris," "The American Tradition," and "Experiments in town-planning form 1890-1914," History of Modern Architecture Vol 1 (Cambridge: MIT, 1985): 38 - 95, 191-218, 342-367.

  Robin Evans, "Rookeries and Model Dwellings," Translations form Drawing to Building and other Essays (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997):93-117.

  Gareth Stedman Jones Outcast London (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1976).
  Peter Stallybrass & Allon White, The Politics & Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).

 2. LEGACY: The American Gird and The City Beautiful

 *Mario Manieri-Elia, "Towards an Imperial City," in Ciucci, Dal Co, Manieri-Elia, and Tafuri (eds.) The American City: From the Civil War to the New Deal (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973): [read 8- 64, 124-132.

  BACKGROUND READING:

  Mario Manieri-Elia, "Towards an Imperial City," in Ciucci, Dal Co, Manieri-Elia, and Tafuri (eds.) The American City: From the Civil War to the New Deal (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973): 1 - 142.

  George Wagner, "Freedom & Glue: Architecture, Seriality, and Identity in the American City," The Harvard Architecture Review 8 (1992): 67-91.
 

April 21st, 23rd
Week 11: THE MODERNIST CITY

 Volumes in Space: the civic space of modernity [CIAM]
 Figure/Ground inversions in the Modern City

 1. READING:

 *John R. Gold, The Experience of Modernism: Modern Architects and the Future City 1928-1953 (London: E & FN Spon, 1997): 19-77, 141-163, 237-247, 255-258.
 

 BACKGROUND READING:

  Leonardo Benevolo, "Approach to town-planning Problems,"  History of Modern Architecture  Vol 2 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985): 507-539.

  James Holston, 'Blueprint Utopia," and "The Plan's Hidden Agenda," The Modernist City (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989): 31-98.

  Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter,"Collage City", Architectural Review 158, 942 (August, 1975: 66 - 90.
 

 2. LEGACIES:  Plug-in Cities, Megastructures and the Metabolists

 *"Living City," Plug-In City," and "Walking City" in A Guide to Archigram 1961-1974 (London: Academy Editions, 1994): 72-80; 110, 114-117, 130-31.

 BACKGROUND READING:

  A Guide to Archigram 1961-1974 (London: Academy Editions, 1994).

  Reyner Banham, Megastructures: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New York: Harper & Row, Pub., 1976).

  Jos Bosman, "CIAMS After the War: A Balance of the Modern Movement" (The Last CIAM) Rassegna 52 (1992): 6-21.

  Dennis Crompton,(ed.) Concerning Archigram.... (London: Archigram Archives, 1998).

  Kisho Kurokawa, Metabolism in Architecture (Boulder: Westview Press, 1977).

  Alison and Peter Smithson Ordinariness & Light: Urban Theories 1952-1960 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970)

  Alison Smithson (ed.) Team 10 Meetings 1953-1984 (New York: Rizzoli, 1991).

  Alison and Peter Smithson, Without Rhetoric: An Architectural Aesthetic 1955-1972 (London: Latimer New Dimensions Ltd, 1973)
 

April 28th, 30th
Week 12: TERMINAL CITIES
 Cybernetics and Systems Theory
 Cognitive Mapping and the Image of the City
 Post-Cartesian Mapping

 1. READING

 *Rem Koolhaas,"The Generic City," (1994) S,M,L,XL (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995): 1238-1269.

 BACKGROUND READING

  Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960).

  Martin Pawley, "The Urbanization of the Sand-Heap", Terminal Architecture (London: Reaktion Books, 1998):153-177.

 2. LEGACIES: Post-Cartesian Mapping

 *Stan Allen "From Object to Field," Architecture After Geometry AD (1996): 22-29.
 BACKGROUND READING

  Architecture After Geometry AD (1996)

  Manuel De Landa "Geological History: 1700-2000 A.D." A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (New York: Swerve Editions, 1997): 71 - 99.

  "Diagram Work" Any 23 (1998): 14-57.

  Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Delinquent Visionaries (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1993).
 

May 5th, 7th FINAL WORKSHOP  [class time will be extended as needed]
Reading Period Workshop: TERMINAL CITIES ---  How did Archigram, Team X, or the Metabolists react to the first wave of modernist city planning in the 20th century? How did their work reflect the first computer revolution in the 1940s? Can Kevin Lynch's Image of the City and his call for cognitive mapping be related to Norbert Weiner's Cybernetics?  How did systems theory, feedback loops, dynamic open-ended growth theories produce images of  nonlinear, multi-dimensional space-time coagulations?  What were the urban forms they began to map out: from stem-web patterns to living cities?  And how is this reaction related to contemporary architects seeking to design a city "after geometry"?

This workshop is intended to allow students to explore city maps, plans and images produced by the first generation of architect/planners to face the Information Revolution, a generation that simultaneously was reacting against the first wave of architect/planners of the 20th century. How did they begin to transform the two-dimensional space of mapping into a multidimensional non-linear geometry of cyberspace?

These are to be team projects ---  presentations of  projects to be reviewed in class on Wednesday May 5th and Friday May 7th. Written documentation must accompany presentations: a list of  group members, bibliographic references, explanation of images and identification of slides.