COLLAGE CITY; Rowe and Koetter 1978. A summary of the five chapters intended for presentation to an Architecture and Urbanism MA group. Manchester 26 November 2013.

1. COLLAGE CITY
Colin Rowe + Fred Koetter
MIT Press 1978

2. The first double page presents the argument of the book as an
enigmatic pictogram; from Francesco do Giorgio Martini’s UTOPIAN
city c. 1490 designed for the Duke of Milan to the revolutionary
Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning 1911 -12.
This is a true binary which is resolved on page 140

3. Even before we start reading R+K offer the reader a playful new vision of
a collaged architecture which will get the name “contextualist” in later
critical thought; a graphic designed by Griffin and Kolhoff called
“City of Composite Presence”.

4. Introduction

5. a summary: page 181:
“The disintegration of
modern architecture
seems to call for …a
strategy… an enlightened
pluralism… and possibly
even common sense”

6. By page 4 we are made aware that we should embrace a
liberal political reading of the failures of post war Utopian
city planning as it had been interpreted in the United
States. There is also an implication that these grand
schemes were segregating sectors of city population, in
particular black and Hispanic groups who were already
rejecting the planners’ high rise blocks by trashing them.

7. TRAGEDY
“impoverished banalities of public housing which stand
around like the undernourished symbols of a new world
which refused to be born”
P. 4
P. 4 “the
city of modern architecture has been rendered
tragically ridiculous”
PRUITT- IGOE video debate + demolition
1956 -1971
Providence Journal August 30 2012

8. The proposal
R+K suggest “a constructive dis-illusion” (The
“illusionist” will turn out to be Le Corbusier and his school of
post war adherents)

9. Introduction: the problem of contemporary urban thinking;
binary oppositions, contradictory positions, paradox
naïve idealism
sterile scientific rigour
P.5 modern architecture.... both repulsive......two polarised positions neither of which offer the
solution to the problem
Despotism of
science:let science build
the town
The tyranny of
the majority :let people build
the town

10. NATURE
CUSTOM
IN DOUBT
“the authenticity of the new”
the
architect who is seen as a “a human Ouija
board”
(conducts a sort of communion with the dead architects of the past and possesses
a supernatural power to see the future)
Meanwhile...
“The rape of the cities of the
world proceeds”

11. Chapter 1: Utopia:
Decline and Fall

12. MODERN ARCHITECTURE IS A THINLY DISGUISED ALIBI
Its ideal was to exhibit the virtues of an apostolic
p.11
poverty:
“a kingdom of heaven on earth”
FINSTERLIN: HYSTERICAL ecstatic GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM seen here in
the illustrations of BRUNO TAUT’S fairy tale mountain communities

13. Chapter 1:
UTOPIANISM is the “the highly volcanic species of psychological lava which is the
substratum of the modern city”
Frank Lloyd Wright saw the architect as the saviour
of the culture of modern American society
or
Le Corbusier the great machine to be put in
motion...the exact prescription for its ills
These architects display messianic passion:-
“they want to end the world and begin it anew”

14. MORE UTOPIAN fallacies
By the 18th century ARCADIAN activist
Newtonian rationalism = society could be
explained like physics
Henri de Saint Simon
proposed universal ruling body/authority of the learned; the golden age is not
behind us but in front and to be realised by the perfection of the social order
-the activist / blueprint for utopia was born
The science of man: politics would be a branch of physics all knowledge was to act
in concert
artistic avant gardes were crucial to the destiny of the human race
All this led to“Utopian inflammation”

15. Science rules; Boullee ; Cenotaph to Newton c.1784
Even in 1914
Antonio di Sant’Elia
also can be traced back
to the Saint-Simon
Utopian school

16. Fourier ; PHALANSTERY; 1829 based on Versailles
and a model for a sort of Marxist proletarian mega
palace where the workers occupy the
simulacrum/archetype of aristocratic privilege

17. So if utopian plans were limited maybe society could
change as a natural man who is a sort of utopian construct;
the mythical noble savage enters here. He lives in a pastoral
arcadia leading us to a widest variety of performances –
never a convincing possibility 1844 Darley ‘Scenes from
Indian Life’ or Le Corbusier ‘ The Natural Man’ c 1929
p17

18. Chapter 2:
After the
Millennium

19. “A certain aimlessness has
afflicted the modern architect”
p. 33
Two opposing cults have emerged:
townscape
science fiction
townscape Cubism and townscape are
linked
“beer and yachts”.
Ref: Gosling, D., 1996, Gordon Cullen,
Visions of Urban Design, AD Academy
editions, London
science fiction.
THIS IS A REVIVAL process; hyper
rationalization

20. THERE IS THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE EXISTING CITY WILL BE MADE TO GO AWAY.
“WE LIVE IN TOWNSCAPE
AND WE SHOP
IN FUTURISM”
p.40
That is we live in
suburban streets
with little gardens
which make the
townscape but our
commercial and
economic life is in the
modern city

21. Later 20th century studios+ progressive modern architecture can be
summarised as :
“a bout with destiny (followed by) a
morning after nausea”
Here are the named ateliers which are accused of one of a kind projects that
fail to produce anything other than a series of prize winning exempla………..
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Superstudio
Friedman
Nakajima and GAUS
NER groupUSSR
Cumbernauld
Archigram
Team X
was “all this activity worth-while?”
Meanwhile popular preference is for a bijou sugar
coated munchkin land………………

22. Roberto
Venturi

23. But the real Main street……
“registers an optimistic desperation”
P46

24. FRANCES YATES:
memory and the
Gothic Cathedral
P.48 Frances Yates saw gothic cathedrals as
mnemonic devices - repositories of
memory that also seem to predict the future
“theatres of memory” (conservative) .
or
“theatres of prophecy” – (radicals)
“(There is a) failure to recognise the complementary
relationship of processes of anticipation and retrospection”

25. Chapter 3; Crisis of
the Object:
Predicament of
Texture

26. (TEXTURE=plan/matrix/pattern)
p.52”
“Visually oriented minded
architects and planners
occupied with the trophies
and triumphs of culture …
had for the most part
shamefully compromised
not only the pleasurable
possibilities but worse than
this the essential sanitary
bases of that more intimate
world within which ’real’
people … actually do exist”

27. The 3 questions
p.49
1 why are we compelled to prefer a nostalgia for
the future to that of the past?
2 could the imagined ideal city reflect /allow for
our psychological constitution?
3 could this ideal city behave as theatres of
memory (conservative) and theatres of
prophecy – (radicals)?

28. The return to nature:
“Great blocks of dwellings run through the town. What does it
matter? They are behind the screen of trees. Nature is entered
into the lease” 1948 Le Corbusier The Home of Man
Le Corbusier ;
Ville Radieuse
1930

29. 1
Interwar emphasis on honesty and hygiene; freedom ,
nature and spirit
DE STIJL: Theo Van Doesburg;s architecture will develop
in an all round plastic way; see Gropius’ 1929
development of rows of apartment blocks of
different heights……

30. THE FIXATION of modern architecture: the
building as interesting and detached object?
• Buildings are needed but also made to go away –
• a contradiction
• The positions of 1933 ATHENS CIAM to 1947 CIAM see an
acceptance that there is a city “core”
NEW TOWN eg HARLOW c.1959
p.61 “a foreign body interjected
into a garden suburb without
the benefit of quotation marks”

31. p.62-63
SOLID and VOID. Le Corbusier Saint–Die compared
with the city of Parma; A figure / ground plan gestalt
opposition: the “proliferation of objects”

32. from
diagnosis
to prognosis
p.66;
Vittoria, Spain
Plaza Mayor
OR
Le Corbusier
Plan Voisin 1925

33. Solid and void:
“The Uffizi is Marseilles turned outside in… a
jelly mould for the Unite”

34. VOIDS; the public realm as apologetic ghost
The city in the park became the city in the
parking lot
p.65
it is just possible that alternatives are
to be found………..
Tenet of modern
architecture 1;
Why must all outdoor
space be in public
ownership?

35. memory and prophecy continued
Gunnar Asplund (memory) compared to Le
Corbusier (prophecy).
“Asplund attempts to make of his buildings as
much as possible a part of the urban
continuum”
“we are concerned with their reconciliation”
(memory and prophecy).

36. S.M della CONSOLAZIONE at TODI can become Sant’ Agnese in
Piazza Navona ; “fluctuates between building as object and its
reinterpretation as texture”
Sant Agnese “simultaneously ‘compromised’ and intact”

37. “POCHE”; understood as the imprint of the plan upon
the traditional heavy structure…
“But building as infill! The idea can seem deplorably
passive…”
p.83
Allow for the
joint
existence of
the overtly
planned and
the
genuinely
unplanned
Wiesbaden c1900

38. Chapter 4:

39. p. 88 “The garden as criticism of the city…” has
its clearest expression at Versailles in the
planning of LeNotre; “ an aristocratic Disney
World”
Compare this autocratic plan with that of the
apparently disorganised Villa Adriana at Tivoli
constructed by the Emperor Hadrian based
on his understanding of the City of Rome.

40. Versailles / Villa Adriana; “which is the most useful model
for us?” “these are laboratory specimens” p. 93

41. fox + hedgehog
“The fox knows many things but a hedgehog knows
one big thing “ Isaiah Berlin
Versailles is of the hedgehog and Hadrian’s Villa is of the
fox…
Post world war II architects understandably had to operate the
hedgehog big idea to save humanity
There is the utopian promise of the new city to emerge from this
post war psycho-cultural context.
Against this is the freedom of vox populi; let the people decide
what they want; these are foxes attacking a hedgehog. The
“fantasy” of organic growth

42. WE NEED BRICOLEURS p.102
The key to “the prognosis” for R+K
Claude Levi-Strauss ‘The Savage Mind’ 1966 employed
the term as a way of understanding the complexity of customs
employed by primitive tribes “ the bricoleur is adept at
performing a large number of diverse tasks;……..the
contingent result of all the occasions there have been to
renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of
previous constructions or destructions….. There are different
kinds of projects… they are ‘operators’ …”

43. WE NEED BRICOLAGE
Rome; “a resiliant traffic jam of intentions”p.106-7
THE COLLISION CITY
“Rome is offered as some sort of model which
might be envisaged as alternative to the
disastrous urbanism of social engineering and
total design”
The theory of “politics and perception” is put
together in this chapter. Politics of black
segregation
We have an urgent need for the fox and the
bricoleur
R+K include 13 photos of the plan of Rome in this chapter

44. Examples of
architectural
bricolage

46. Chapter 5:Collage
City and the
Reconquest of
Time

47. TIME
an iconic,
cosmic,
dramatic
narrative
enigma page
repeated twice
by R+K
This can be
related to
“image”
“memory”
“prophecy”
“solid”
“void”

48. MODERNISM BETRAYED?
Tradition and “Traduttore” = Traitor
what is this betrayal?
The 20th century architect’s comparable
rejection of tradition… but maintains a tacit
affiliation to what is by now a distinctly
traditional body of attitudes and procedures
P125
This explains the aspects of tradition which explain the
20th century architect’s distaste for this element in
architectural design and by taking on tradition
“betrays” the profession

49. MUSEUM CITY
The city as museum + the “museum
predicament”
A positive concert of
culture and educational
purpose
Munich became
eclectic;
“ a supremely
conscientious
profusion of
references;
Florentine, medieval,
Byzantine, Roman,
Greek”.
A city of objects and
episodes
Its significance has
remained unassessed

50. MUSEUM = scaffold vs EXHIBITS =
demonstrations
structure
event
Which dominates? Structure or event
Modern architecture resolved this as an
all pervasive scaffold (structure)
SOLUTION
A two way commerce/dialogue/dialectic
is required between these two forces

51. Modern architectural ethics; the
tradition of modern architecture
always professing a distaste for art
Increasing poverty of
meaning and decline of
invention

52. Picasso + IMAGE
“I have never made trials or
experiments. Art is a lie which
makes us realize the truth, at
least the truth it is given to
understand”
“To me there is no past and no
future in art…”
•Bulls head or handlebars; art
or function. A metamorphosis.
•A dialectic between past and
future.
•What is antique and what is of
today?
Collage is simultaneously
innocent and devious. A
combination of dissimilar
things

53. Still Life with Chair Caning 1911-12
This painting is a cubist
collage
“DISPARATE
OBJECTS
HELD
TOGETHER
BY VARIOUS
MEANS”
P140

54. OBJECTS
• The objects introduced into the collage can be
either aristocratic or they can be “folkish”
• Collage accommodates both hybrid display
and the requirements of self determination

55. Le Corbusier is a collage maker!
• Nestle Pavilion 1928 + Marseilles Unite 1946

56. UTOPIA has been a
MANDALA ; device
for concentrating
and protecting
ideas.
“The government of
laws not men”
Liberty must exist…
IN THE ETERNAL
PRESENT

57. RE-SOLUTION
a collage technique insists on a balancing act
• “it is suggested a collage approach …. is at present the
only way of dealing with the ultimate problems of
either or both utopia and tradition”
•
p148
• Samuel Johnson;
“wit…… the discovery of some
occult relation between
images and appearance
remote from each other”

58. An action plan?
p149;
“collage could even be a strategy which by
supporting the utopian illusion of
changelessness and finality might even fuel a
reality of change , motion, action, history.”
Plato; “ in heaven there is laid up a pattern of
such an (IDEAL- UTOPIAN) city.. But it is of no
importance for the individual will act according
to the rules of that city and no other”

59. 30 pages of “EXCURSUS” ; a sort of
appendix of their examples of
image/architecture that need to
inform this coming revolution that
they advocate
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Memorable streets
Stabilizers
Potentially interminable set pieces
Splendid public terraces
Ambiguous and composite buildings
Nostalgia producing instruments
The garden
Commentary

60. 1. Memorable
streets

61. 2.Stabilizers

62. 3. Potentially interminable
set pieces

63. 4. Splendid public
terraces

64. 5.Ambiguous and composite
buildings

65. 6.Nostalgia producing
instruments

66. 7.The garden

67. 8.Commentary

68. The disintegration of
modern architecture
seems to call for …a
strategy… an
enlightened pluralism…
and possibly even
common sense

69. Reviews of Rowe and Koetter
This group of pdfs offers the complete
download of Collage City and discusses
the book in context and some of its
subsequent debate

70. KEY REFERENCES
• CIAM The Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne – CIAM
(International Congresses of Modern Architecture) was an
organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959 28 European
architects organized by Le Corbusier, Hélène de Mandrot (owner of
the castle), and Sigfried Giedion (the first secretary-general). CIAM
meant to advance the cause of "architecture as a social art". saw
architecture as an economic and political tool that could be used to
improve the world through the design of buildings and through
urban planning principles of "The Functional City",
• Team 10 was active from 1953
• CIRPAC, the Comité international pour la résolution des problèmes
de l’architecture contemporaine (International Committee for the
Resolution of Problems in Contemporary Architecture).

71. R+K summarise and critically engage with a substantial body of theory to
demonstrate the way urbanism developed into the 1970s
•
•
BRUNO TAUT Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24 December 1938) was a prolific German architect, urban
planner and author active during the Weimar period.
Taut is known for his theoretical work, speculative writings and the buildings he designed. His sketches for the
publication "Alpine Architecture" (1917) are the work of an unabashed Utopian visionary. The Reform estate was
built between 1912-15 in the southwest of Magdeburg. The estate comprises one storey terrace houses for a
housing trust. It was the first project where Taut used colour as a design principle.
•
CHILIASM the doctrine of Christ's expected return to reign on earth for 1000 years; millennialism.
•
FOURIER Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist
born in Auxerre and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems
of heat transfer and vibrations. The Fourier transform and Fourier's Law are also named in his honour. Fourier is
also generally credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect.
•
Auguste comte (28 January 1794 – 21 September 1859), better known as Auguste Comte (French: [oɡyst t]),
was a French philosopher. He was a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism. He is
sometimes regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.[2]
Strongly influenced by the utopian socialist Henri Saint-Simon,
•
•
Henri Saint-Simon, (17 October 1760 – 19 May 1825) was a French early socialist theorist whose thought
influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and
the discipline of sociology.

72. R+K summarise and critically engage with a substantial body of theory to
demonstrate the way urbanism developed into the 1970s
•
•
•
•
ATHENS CHARTER proceedings went unpublished from 1933 until 1942, when Le Corbusier, acting alone,
published them in heavily edited form as the "Athens Charter."
Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism - 1928-1960, Cambridge Mass. and London 2000. (Foreword by
Kenneth Frampton).
Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture - The Growth of a New Tradition, Cambridge Mass. 2009, 5th
edition. (CIAM, summary in Part VI).
Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel (eds.), TEAM 10 - In Search of a Utopia of the Present - 1953-1981,
Rotterdam 2005. (TEAM 10 out of CIAM).
•
DANIEL BURNHAM FAIA (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. He
was the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He took a leading role in the creation
of master plans for the development of a number of cities, including Chicago and downtown Washington, D.C. He
also designed several famous buildings, including the Flatiron Building in New York City and Union Station in
Washington D.C
•
SANTAYANA Santayana was an early adherent of epiphenomenalism. He also influenced many of his prominent
students, perhaps most notably the poet Wallace Stevens
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", "only the dead have seen the end of war."
The Sense of Beauty
•
•
•
CASSIRER he developed a theory of symbolism, and used it to expand phenomenology of knowledge into a
more general philosophy of culture. He is one of the leading 20th century advocates of philosophical idealism.
The Myth of the State
Cassirer's last work The Myth of the State (1946) The book discusses the opposition of logos and mythos in Greek
thought