Conformity, from the point of view of the planner, is difficult to avoidbut to avoid it deliberately, by creating artificial diversions, is surelyworse than the original boredom. Here, for instance, is a programme torehouse 5,000 people. They are all treated the same, they get the samekind of house. How can one differentiate? Yet if we start from a much Cullen is therefore closely associated with the three decades-long Townscape campaign, initiated and promoted by the prestigious London-based magazine The Architectural Review, which espoused a visual modern-picturesque approach to city design. Though Cullen is well known, he is little studied and--owing specifically to the malleability of and contradictions in his legacy--even less understood. In examining his urban ideas, most scholars have placed him in the history of urban design. An in-depth study of Cullen's printed image and modus operandi, however, is conspicuously missing. This study fills this gap. It provides a structural understanding of Cullen's massive popularity and influence through his image-making trade--its professional status, income sources, clients, norms of success, production modes--and through his drawings. These influences work palpably beyond urban design and Townscape: they signal a major shift in the role of image makers and the status of the image in the production and consumption of popular architecture in the postwar era.

enclosureEnclosure sums up the polarity oflegs and wheels. It is the basic unitof the precinctual pattern; outside,the noise and speed of impersonalcommunication which comes and goesbut is not of any place. Inside, thequietness and human scale of thesquare, quad or courtyard. This isthe end product of traffic, this is theplace to which traffic brings you.Without enclosure traffic becomesnonsense. as a physical barrier; the very simpiest perhaps the oldest and yet still themeans will suffice to give this warn_ most effective form of fence with itsConcerning OPTICS. Let us suppose that we are walking through atown: here is a straight road off which is a courtyard, at the far side ofwhich another street leads out and bends slightly before reaching amonument. Not very unusual. We take this path and our first view isthat of the street. Upon turning into the courtyard the new view isrevealed instantaneously at the point of turning, and this view remainswith us whilst we walk across the courtyard. Leaving the courtyard weenter the further street. Again a new view is suddenly revealed althoughwe are travelling at a uniform speed. Finally as the road bends themonument swings into view. The significance of all this is that althoughthe pedestrian walks through the town at a uniform speed, the scenery oftowns is often revealed in a series of jerks or revelations. This we callSERIAL VISION. A view of Leicester Square in the eighte Between 1944 and 1946 he worked in the planning office of the Development and Welfare Department in Barbados, as his poor eyesight meant that he was unfit to serve in the British armed forces. He later returned to London and joined the Architectural Review journal, first as a draughtsman and then as a writer on planning policies. There he produced a large number of influential editorials and case studies on the theory of planning and the design of towns. Many improvements in the urban and rural environment in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. He was also involved in the Festival of Britain in 1951. One of the few large scale Cullen works on public display is the mural in the foyer of the Erno Goldfinger designed Greenside Primary School in west London, completed in 1953. [4] His 1958 ceramic mural in Coventry, depicting the history of the city and its post-war regeneration, is on a much grander scale though now relocated away from its original central location. [5] Illustrations [ edit ] Cullen’s concerns with visual literacy have been well defined in this book with its extensive bibliographies and relevant illustrations. Not only does Engler provide a valuable insight into ‘Mr Townscape’ and his place in the history of urban design and planning, she also shows his continuing influence on imagining planned landscapes."

Here is an example. Suppose you are visiting one of the hill towns inthe south of France. You climb laboriously up the winding road andeventually find yourself in a tiny village street at the summit. You feelthirsty and go to a nearby restaurant, your drink is served to you on averanda and as you go out to it you find to your exhilaration or horrorthat the veranda is cantilevered out over a thousand-foot drop. By thisdevice of the containment (street) and the revelation (cantilever) thefact of height is dramatized and made real. And yet ... if at the end of it all the city appears dull, uninterestingand soulless, then it is not fulfilling itself. It has failed. The fire has beenlaid but nobody has put a match to it. exist side by side: the busy shoppingand traffic route full of bustle, whichis carried by the bridge over thecanal, whose basin is silent anddeserted, a secret town.

Took a call during a shift at Boots to hear that they had been successful

Shortly afterwards Cullen was commissioned to paint a mural in the reception area of Westville (now Greenside) Primary School in Shepherd’s Bush. The new rules of the emerging consumer economy radically reconfigured both the discourse and practice of architecture during the postwar era. Architecture became a commodity whose products were sold through mass media to mass audiences, via images that performed as advertising. In this world, image makers, rather than theorists, stood at the forefront of the architectural production, performing as "visual marketers." Thomas Gordon Cullen (1914-1994), the subject of this dissertation and one of the best-known twentieth-century architectural draftsmen to emerge from Britain, flourished during this visual consumerist push. Cullen gained widespread acclaim in the 1960s and 1970s following the publication of his book Townscape (1961) and its abbreviated edition, The Concise Townscape (1971).

Far too often in recent years the pro­gressive architect's attention has beendirected to the big idea, the townplan, the national plan, the cosmicplan, to the exclusion of more localand particular interests. The resulthas been that he has begun to losehis ability to see other than with themind's eye. In many ways he is like achild who, after an earlier period ofuninhibited pleasure in simple visualexperience, finds his interest in seeingatrophied by his preoccupation withlearning (that is, his growing in­tellectual development), with disas­trous effect on his creative faculties.The burden of technical awarenesshangs heavily on the practising archi­tect, and the sense of social responsi­bility often assumes the proportionand character of an incubus as well asa stimulant. A wholly satisfying andvirile architecture cannot flourishunless in its practice social justifica­tion is lavishly compounded withpersonal pleasure, a wholesome de­light in the creative process itself aswell as an appreciation of the end inview. There is no need to regard suchnaive delight as almost sinful, since Firstly we have to rid ourselves of the thought that the excitementand drama that we seek can be born automatically out of the scientificresearch and solutions arrived at by the technical man (or the technicalhalf of the brain). We naturally accept these solutions, but are notentirely bound by them. In fact we cannot be entirely bound by thembecause the scientific solution is based on the best that can be made of According to Gordon Cullen, the layout of the city’s structures, including its streets, trees, and other natural elements, is known as Townscape. One approach to identifying a city’s physical shape using physical images is through the Townscape. The layout of the buildings and roads, which elicits a range of emotions in the viewer, may also be used to identify a townscape. The townscape idea is a foundation for architects, planners, and anyone concerned with the city’s appearance. The structure’s shape and mass impact and affect the physical form of urban space. The relationship between the physical condition of the urban environment and the body of the building mass is sensed by the spectator on a psychological and physical level. Additionally, the link between urban space’s size, form, and configuration and a city’s quality may be observed aesthetically. In a town we do not normally have such a dramatic situation to mani­pulate but the principle still holds good. There is, for instance, a typicalemotional reaction to being below the general ground level and there isanother resulting from being above it. There is a reaction to beinghemmed in as in a tunnel and another to the wideness of the square. If,therefore, we design our towns from the point of view of the movingperson (pedestrian or car-borne) it is easy to see how the whole citybecomes a plastic experience, a journey through pressures and vacuums,a sequence of exposures and enclosures, of constraint and relief. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval systemor transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher

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In2015the University of Westminster acquired the archive of Gordon Cullen, an alumnus and renowned illustrator, draughtsman and urban theorist. Cullen left the AR in 1959 - a wise move since prolonged exposure to H de C. tended to have an unsettling effect on men made of even the sternest stuff. This intellectual detachment paid off for it was during the next decade or so that Cullen produced a series of articles in the AR which first laid down the framework for Townscape and which then developed its ideas. These articles had a profound influence on the way towns were perceived and, gradually, on the way more sensitive planners and architects attempted to remake town centres in the architecturally troubled decade of the 1960s.

All that remains is to join them together into a new pattern created bythe warmth and power and vitality of human imagination so that webuild the home of man. Or, to continue the interplay, Thisand That can co-exist. Ever sincepeople got really serious about plan­ning one of the main endeavours hasbeen to put people into sunny,healthy homes away from dirty,smelly and noisy industry. Whilst noone will seriously quarrel with this,the principle of segregation and zoninggoes marching on, with the resultthat we are in danger of losing thegreat unities of social living. TheWest End gets more and more officesto the exelusion of theatres andgrandiose vistaOf the gambits used to exploit Hereand There the vista is, of course, oneof the most popular. The Grandiosevista does just what the whitewashedwall did in Scotland, p. 34, but in itsown expensive way. It links you, inthe foreground at Versailles, to theremote landscape, thus producing asense of power or omnipresence. This is the Environment Game and it is going on all round us. Youwill see that I am not discussing absolute values such as beauty, perfec­tion, art with a big A, or morals. I am trying to describe an environmentthat chats away happily, plain folk talking together. Apart from a handfulof noble exceptions our world is being filled with system-built dumbblondes and a scatter ofIrish confetti. Only when the dialogue commenceswill people stop to listen. Gordon was a key member of a dominant circle of architects, journalists, historians and poets who formed architectural opinion in post-war Britain. His contribution was to develop an eye for seeing the obvious, but invariably overlooked, architectural qualities in British town and cities.