Kevin Lynch — he’s been on my list of folks to read forever on architecture and cities and space, and with reason as The Image of the City is rather brilliant. He writes: Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. City design is therefore a temporal art At every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surrounding, the sequences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences. (1) I love this nod to the overwhelming — and mostly pleasurable — nature of the city, the ways it works in both space and time, and like,,, and others, he is clearly writing as someone with an appreciation for city life. It is a life that is in many ways collectively constructed: Not only is the city an object which is perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of widely diverse class and character, but it is the product of many builders who are consonantly modifying the structure for reasons of their own No wonder, then, that the art of shaping cities is an art quite separate from architecture or music or literature.

(2) In The Image of the City, Lynch’s focus is primarily looking at what he calls the ‘legibility’ of the cityscape — how we read cities and how understanding that can help us (re)build better cities. Why is legibility key? Software Hp Scanjet 2400. A good environmental image gives its possessor an important sense of emotional security. He can establish an harmonious relationships between himself and the outside world(4) I love this quote even more a distinctive and legible environment not only offers security but also heightens the potential depth and intensity of human experience. Although life is far from impossible in the visual chaos of the modern city, the same daily action could take on new meaning if carried out in a more vivid setting.

Camillo Sitte's treatise is available in many languages and editions. The most recent English language edition is Camillo Sitte, The Art of Building Cities: City Building According to its Artistic Fundamentals (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1979). The Art of Building Cities.by Camillo Sitte; Charles T. Download The Art of Building Cities: City Building According to Its Artistic Fundamentals Full E-Bo.

(5) This is not to go against the many authors who write about the unknown, Lynch emphasises that this not to deny the value of labyrinth or surprise, but under two larger conditions — where there is no danger of losing basic orientation, of never coming out. The surprise must occur in an over-all framework; the confusions must be small regions in a visible whole.

Complete chaos without hint of connection is never pleasurable. (6) Another important qualification, the power of human beings to shape the urban environment: The observer himself should play an active role in perceiving the world and have a creative part in developing his image. He should have the power to change that image to fit changing needs what we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, capable of continuous further development. Driver Web Camera Hp Pavilion Dv6000 there. (6) So to understand how this all works, he book tries to get at the ways people understand and read cities, the ‘public images,’ the common mental pictures carried around by large numbers of a city’s inhabitants (7) I love maps, and so found this a fascinating way to examine people’s relationships to the urban form, splitting it into useful divisions to be examined: The mental maps that are shared of streets and landmarks. These are analyzed in terms of identity (its recognition as a separable entity), structure (the spatial or pattern relation of the object to the observer and other objects) and meaning (for the observer, whether practical or emotional). (8) Above all in understanding legibility is this: imageability: that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer.