 British architectural historian,critic,teacher,theoretician.

Graduated from COLIN ROWE

liverpool school of architecture.

 Taught at university of texas & cornell university.Influenced on d

world architecture & urbanism in 20th centuary.

 Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in the 1970’s developed their ideas of a
“Collage City” as an essay. Collage City was expanded and published as a book in 1979.

FRED KOETTER  British architect,critic,architectural historian

 Graduated from the university of oregon in 1963 &

m.arch from cornell university

 Founder of koetter, kim&assosiates in boston and london.

Taught in cornell university,Harvard univeristy,Yale university etc...
 In the case of Collage City, it can be told like the physical act
of combining plans of buildings to make a grouping, or urban
setting.

 At the beginning of the first chapter of Collage City is an image

titled City of Composite by David Griffin and Hans Kollhoff
@1977. The image is made up from a series of historic plans
and arranged to create a fictitious city plan.

 The highlighted plan in green is the upper acropolis

of Pergamon@turkey, while the highlighted plan in red is
the Uffizi in Florence@Italy.

 Anit-utopia has foundation of collage city:city could impove by

collaging variety of urban elements;bricoleur architecture
(Bricolage is considered the jumbled effect produced by the close proximity of buildings City of Composite by David Griffin
from different periods and in different architectural styles) makes the whole and Hans Kollhoff
 Collage City“ is a theoretical work of Collin on modern architecture and urban design, and the
author criticized modern architecture and urban design through philosophical discourse.

 Its most significant contribution is to advocate the architect are moving from the perspective from
the building block to the whole city. The author criticizes modernism that modern architecture,
although it is scientific, shows an entirely naive idealism(is a way of thinking -positive but not realistic).

 Despite the use of technology, behavioural science research and computer making modern
architecture, but still show a completely unacceptable, rigid scientific rigor.

 The post war utopian city planning in united states has

implications that these schemes were segregating the sectors of
City population particularly black and Hispanic groups who
were Regecting the planners high rise blocks by trashing them.
 In this article(THE MATHEMATICS OF IDEAL VILLA), Rowe compared
Villa Malcontenta designed by Palladio and Villa Stein designed
by Le Corbusier with analytic diagrams.

 Rowe explains that both of the villas have some strong similarities in
the aspect of plan, ratios, and volumes. However for the façades of
the villas, which creates the differentiation, while classical design
dominates The Palladio’s Villa, Le Corbusier’s Villa had a bold use of
modern design.

 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

Villa Malcontenta Villa Stein

• After a quick mention of modernism and a few of its protagonists, introduces the history of
Utopian visions.

• UTOPIANISM is the highly volcanic species of phycological lava which is the substratum of
modern city

• In this chapter Rowe demonstrates the contradictions of Modernist urban planners and
discusses why their visions were so highly influential but doomed.
• Flying through history and notable examples of ideal city designs, the authors eventually land
back in the early 20th Century, in the Ville Radieuse(Radiant City).
• Radiant City was an unrealised project designed by Le Corbusier in 1930. It represented a utopian
dream to reunite man within a well-ordered environment.The Ville Radieuse was a linear city
based upon the abstract shape of the human body with head, spine, arms and legs.

•The design maintained the idea of high-rise housing blocks, free circulation and abundant
green spaces proposed in his earlier work.

• New Urbanists such as James Howard Kunstler criticise the Ville Radieuse concept for its
lack of human scale and connection to its surroundings.
• Empire State Plaza, a complex of state office buildings in Albany, New York has
been criticized for its adherence to the concept There is no relationship at all
between buildings and site
• By 18th centuary and early 19th centuary activists insisted universal ruling
body of the learnt.And insisted golden age is not left behind but in front to
be realised by the perfection of social order ,thus blue print of utopia was Empire State Plaza
born.
• Saint-Simon correctly foresaw the industrialization of the world, and he
believed that science and technology would solve most of humanity's
problems.

• This emergence of science and technology leads to the inflamation of

utopia. Science began to rule which is prevelent in these examples of
cenotaph,saint elia,saint simon's utopian school.
• The classic utopia began in Plato and descended in the Middle Ages, evolved
in the Renaissance into an "ideal city“ that became visible in shape .
• The modern city is technically progressive, but from a historical point of
view is still in place.
 • After the millennium, two opposing cultures have emerged-
TOWNSCAPE & SCIENTIFIC FICTION. There came an
assumption that existing city will be made to go away.

• We live in townscape and we shop in futurism- we live in sub-

urban streets with little gardens but our commercial life is in the
Streets of Disney world@florida
modern city.

• Here he discusses of the first major reactions to Modernism after its stagnation through the
‘40s and ‘50s. He called them "worship of the urban landscape“ and "worship of the world of science
fiction.“

• The name "worship of the urban landscape“ comes from the book "Townscape“ by Gordon Cullen-{The
book argues that the large-scale construction of modern architecture has substantially damaged the
environment of small towns.

• Through comparisons of Disney World and the work of Superstudio, The hyper-rationality of
Superstudios egalitarian utopias and the picturesque artifice of Disney World both find themselves so
extreme that their theories do not make their way into reality.

• "Collage City“ needs to face both tradition and modernity.

 He criticizes utopias, thought that utopias lack tolerance. Popper’s idea
forms the basis of collage city concept. But Rowe and Koetter did not
reject utopia entirely.
 They believed that modern and tradition, fantasy and real should be
combined.

 According to Colin Rowe, ideal city should be both a theatre of Parma-figure ground plan
memory and a theatre of prophecy(PREDICTION OF WHAT WILL
HAPPEN IN FUTURE).

 Attempts to stimulate the quality of SOLID CITY with the elements of

VOID to emerge as a whole complete figure. Allow and encourage the
object to become digested in the prevelent texture and environment

Le Corbusier-project for saint die

 The situation should be recognised as one in which both the building
and spaces exsist in an equality that is SOLID-VOID relationship
which may me appreciable on joint existance . A figure-ground
illustrates a mass-to-void relationship, and analysis of it identifies a
"fabric" of urban structures.
 Colin Rowe’s and Fred Koetter’s concept of collage as it does a critique of modern utopianism
and a proposal for radical heterogeneity of appropriated form. And all these would seem to
summarize much of architectural post modernism.
 In this easy, he analysed that the history of architecture and the modern architecture are
in coherence.
 He claimed that the pioneer of the modern architects like Le Corbusier and their buildings, works
are more complex than thought. Because the modern architects claim that the modern
architecture is new and it has a pure form, and it is completely different from existing buildings.
But in this analyse, he handled that on the contrary of thought, the works and structures involved
tradition and new idea.
 Buildings should act as both space occupier and space definer. He gives a method of reading the
city – the map method- for better understanding of city
 The traditional city belongs to the "texture of the city,“ while the modern city is more
performance as "entity of the city.“

Plate eight the Nolli Plan. Rowe’s solution superimposed onto the Nolli Plan. Colin Rowe’s solution for Roma Interrotta