Rowe is known for making unconventional comparisons between cultural events and ideas, a practice that is evident in Collage City.
Collage City was published in During the 20th century, architecture and planning went through a shift. Growth in cities skyrocketed after the 19th century industrial revolution, and new models of cities began to be considered to deal with the effects of this growth. One of these views w Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter were both influential architects and theorists. One of these views was modernism, which began to arise in the s. Collage City is a critical re-evaluation of the modernism movement.
Rowe and Koetter discuss the fallacies of the modernist movement and note that while Modernist utopian visions were influential, they would ultimately result in uninhabitable cities. Although the argument of Collage City can at times be difficult to discern in the thickness of the writing, the argument is ultimately successful because of the large amount of examples, comparisons, and representations put forward by the authors to support their ideas.
Following an introduction, the book is divided into five sections. The middle three sections each discuss an idea of compromise in order to combat the monocular utopian visions discussed in the first section. These compromises include looking both forward and backward, balance between the planned and the unplanned, and compromise between scientific reasoning and bricoleur architecture.
In the last section, the authors bring together all of these compromises in the proposal of a city of collage. An additional sixth section, an Excurses comprised of examples of what pieces of a collage city might look like, neatly ties off the book. Overall, Collage City is an influential book in the field of urban planning and architecture. The proposals in Collage City are thoughtfully put forward and well backed up with examples. View 1 comment. Mar 16, Elizabeth Ginger rated it really liked it.
You have to keep looking up in a dictionary and keeping research otherwise it will be mass. Jun 13, Louis rated it liked it Shelves: wtfery , architecture , philosophy. Wow; I didn't think collages were that complicated to explain.
A fascinating read by a brilliant mind that doesn't dumb down his thoughts at all. Picked this book up when I was done a drafting program because I felt like I had no idea what architecture was.
This didn't help much but was a challenging read for the sake of it. Not sure who the intended audience for this book is? Graduate students in Urban Planning?
Kids in the 5th grade looking for words that might come up in a spelling bee? I don't think it is self-indulgent - this is actually how the authors think and they are simply that focused on this one area.
Sep 08, Lisa rated it liked it. Having read Rowe's three volumes of "As I Was Saying" and being generally comfortable with architectural theory at an amateur level as a practising landscape architect, I was more optimistic about this book at the beginning and disappointed by the end.
Rowe will often reward your efforts in reading his text, which requires research or knowledge of other texts and understanding well known architectural sites, with profound and meaningful insights on design or theory. For whatever reason those see Having read Rowe's three volumes of "As I Was Saying" and being generally comfortable with architectural theory at an amateur level as a practising landscape architect, I was more optimistic about this book at the beginning and disappointed by the end.
For whatever reason those seemed to be missing here. The value of reading the work, which is its historical importance in arguing against modernism at a critical juncture, may not be worth the effort for many readers. May 16, Pablo Lopes rated it really liked it. The disintegration of modern architecture seems to call for such a strategy; an enlightened pluralism seems to invite; and, possibly, even common sense concurs.
But in this analyse, he handled that on the contrary of thought, the works and structures involved tradition and new idea. Rowe explains that both of the villas have some strong similarities in the aspect of plan, ratios, and volumes. In the other words, it does not mean that modern architecture rejects history of architecture and modern design is not just new. While improving the idea of the collage city, Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter were influenced by the ideas of Karl Popper, especially his ideas about the utopias.
Popper was prominent name in the philosophy of science. He criticizes utopias, which views as designed and very firmly isolated models of society. He thought that utopias are despotic and lack tolerance. But Rowe and Koetter did not reject utopia entirely.
They believed that modern and tradition, fantasy and real should be combined. Just as science advances though hypothesis being examined and being replaced with new ones. Architecture and society also can advance with traditions being examined and being revised and being replaced with newer ones.
In fact, the tradition is a critical tool that provides advancement, even thought it seems like a contradiction. Colin Rowe believes that we can of course take strength from novelty and fantasy, but this strength certainly have to be connected to the existing and the familiar, and it should be put into a frame that consists of memories.
Under these circumstances, it is absurd to separate nostalgia from prophecy, remembrance from expectation, arcadian from utopia with precision. According to Colin Rowe, ideal city should be both a theatre of memory and a theatre of prophecy. Isaiah Berlin was British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas. Berlin categorizes people or their way of thinking in two general classes. The first class is hedgehog that knows only one great subject and links everything to that universal and dominating subject.
The second class is the fox that knows many things and that are capable of pursuing many diverse goals, which can sometimes be contrasting. Based on this definition, Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter defined Le Corbusier as a fox posing as a hedgehog from time to time. And this illustrates that the hedgehog and the fox can not be separated with precise lines.
He reminds the famous contrasts, us vs. Because the reality is complex, diverse, slippery, uncertain, indefinable. Unfortunately unclear definitions are not preferable. Collage city proposed that cities could be improved through the collaging of variety of urban elements including shaped, figural open space into the continuous fabric of a city.
Also they defined the city as a museum like Rome and the city of Composite Presence, which was mentioned in Collage City. It is formed by either sole objects or events pilling up in an eclectic way. It is a choice, which has to be considered against altogether designs and the disaster cities resulting from social engineering.
A city of fragments, which originated from a monumental effect of objects from the farthest places and times, objects that met through the most improbable ways. The idea of bricoleur architecture makes a whole out of thrown away objects and it creates new uses.
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