ACADEMIC BOOK REVIEW – COLLAGE CITY - COLLIN ROWE
(COLLAGUE CITY- COLLIN ROWE)
BOOK REVIEW COLLAGUE CITY
The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London England 1981, 1 , 185pg The Guardian
Rowe, C. and Koetter, F., 1981. Collage City. Milano: Il Saggiatore.185p. Hardback (price of the book. 24.99 ISBN: (003874751)
REVIEWED BY: Andrés Lara Vallejo. E-mail: alara.arqäuisek.edu.ec INTRODUCTION
The modern city proposes utopian models of cities in which it is sought to generate a better functionalism of the same, to segregate the functions of the city in order to improve the quality of life of its habitants, however the part will never be taken into account social, natural and undervalued the historical part of it. They were radical approaches that sought to change the morphology of cities, with a simple organization of the various functions within a territory. In Rowe's book "Collage City", the author evidences a strong criticism against the modern city and clearly tells us that these were not built and that they probably will not be built because of the postulates that they propose will never adapt to reality and nature of the operation of a city, in addition to questioning the architecture that composes it. Certainly the author generates a choice between sciences and organic, the architect tells us of two clear positions which are: the physical model where an orthogonal city focuses on the organized city and the psychological model, which makes us have an environment much more natural. Consequently, this clearly shows how modern architecture, which was simply management, succumbs to a New Architecture much more sensitive to the spirit of the time. The new architecture according to the author was the end of deception, of a simulation, vanity and imposition proposed by modern architecture, a city must meet a series of requirements, a city must be inhabited, record and perceive by the user, it cannot be like a machine or a beautiful sculpture. To conclude This text clearly shows how it is that with a series of essays, the author proposes the end of the discourse of modernism to make an architecture that segregates, what he proposes is a city that works in balance between time vs. life of society, between the ancient and the modern, the public and private, and is proposed by the collage model in which the fragments of a previous urban structure are confronted with a new superposition, confronting natural periods and allowing them to exist together. In my opinion, this book is very interesting, since you criticize modernism with solidity and making it evident that a city is not only a well-achieved mix of functions, but it also has a much stronger side, which is its natural side, which leads to the inhabitant. To perceive the city is a series of sensations and perceptions that help us identify certain parts and have an attachment to it.
BOOK REVIEW
Colin Rowe, in this work Collage City clearly shows a position totally against modernism, both its urban planning and the architecture that composes it. Rowe makes a harsh criticism against the urban and architectural thought that modernism had and how it fails on its own principles. Through facts, documents and works the author explains to us from the beginning in a sarcastic but very direct way how the thought of modernism was the complete opposite of what is really the nature of a city. It reviews the different contemporary theories of urban planning and design as well as the planned architectural object in these great rigid ideas that turn the city into a morphological object with segregated functions. Likewise, this text can be considered as a philosophical manifestation of the way of life of people, urban life, the interaction between the different activities that were totally left aside in the conception of Utopian ideologies of segregation of activities that the modern movement. On the other hand, the author evaluates some important examples for the modern movement that had a very functionalist and utopian approach that tried to generate perfect cities that, after all, only seek to satisfy the morality of a movement and of the architects. Likewise, this text should be considered as a critical reevaluation of the aspects not considered in the ways of living, the functional and social needs of people as well as their need to move through the territory. All these aspects that are criticized by the author, are considerable for the naturalness and the various activities and needs of people who inhabit a territory or a city, an idea of segregation does not combine all these various aspects that each of the inhabitants, architecture must go beyond satisfying an urban landscape and an absolute order that, in the end, ends up creating a barrier between the diverse relationships of the city's different lifestyles. But in addition to generating only architectural beauty, the book leads us to a reflection on what cities should be, ironically determining that utopias were nothing more than a way to form an ideally healthy society, this approach was sought to replace social life for a programmed order is to undo the natural part of a city, thus idealizing an alternative city composed of solids and voids; where the solids will be the raised blocks of the ground. As an example, the Marseille Housing Unit is presented. The void will be the interstitial space, capable of giving freedom and dynamism to the man of the future. Continuing with the Text, the author takes us on a journey through various architectural works, urban plans and architects that promote modernism and criticism with various examples of plans that were proposed and failed and were directly compared to ways of living that have really worked. Thus in this way modernism exposes is capricious and omits the historical background, erases to generate an architecture that meets an expectation of beauty rather than use, proposes an architecture that generates a landscape and creates at the same level urban planning models that see and they read clearly as planned areas that segregate the various functions. On the other hand, the book brings us a reflection on what affects cities, using the architecture of modernism in an ironic and mocking way to determine the utopias that were nothing more than a way to form an ideally healthy society. His approach replaces social life with a program in which order and good planning is to undo and destroy the natural part, the historical identity and the way of living and inhabiting a city, thus idealizing an alternative city made up of solids and voids One of Rowe's strong criticisms is directly to the Architect Le Corbusier and his work the Marseille Housing Unit, in which this rigid form of available spaces and spatial organization fail, however this relationship takes the Universidad Internacional SEK Ingles Tecnico II – 2020-3
author a generation relationship between the solid and the empty, preventing one from prevailing over the other. Thus and using this example, the author says that a modern city must avoid any extreme, the chaos of the medieval city or the alien and despotic order of the CIAM city. Of all the examples, essays, plans, and objects discussed in the book, modernism is considered to be going against everything organic life is. It is clearly seen how all the examples trigger that the programmed use of cities, the flows used by people and the value that space has for various factors should not be modified by a plan that only meets the formal and functional whims of some. It also clearly shows each of the aspects of the plan as an architectural object, uses of interfaces and urban spaces proposed in plans that segregate and not in cities that grow over time in a more organic way, that is, what the author is looking for is show how a city with a better inhabited mixture and generates a different lifestyle than one that separates each of its uses and that does not take the person into account as an object of planning. For this reason, the author seeks a way to combine the different models of the city, both historical and failed plans, which have somehow found a balance to exist in parallel that the opposition to organic was totally harmful in the moment in which a city system is proposed. On the other hand, we can clearly understand that despising the naturalness of a city is nothing more than generating inhabiting machines or alien cities of order that do not allow or promote social life. On the other hand, it tells us about the contemporary city that can be considered as a biological element, genetically predetermined, however, that is not why it is said that they must have a chaotic growth, a cohesion between natural, organic and ordered, programmed life. , the author seeks that the form of a city manages to find its natural form but not in a disorganized way. The text clearly explains that this combination of various utopias must be achieved in an Orderly way that is to say that the naturalness of a city is important when it encounters an ordered chaos and a mix of diverse urban proposals and their historical values.
Figure 2. This is my very fine chart. A new theory of urban morphology? Ask Kopf (2001)
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the book lets us see clearly how modernism fails by trying to avoid the naturalness of a city. It invites a deep reflection on how a city is understood seen as a collage of elements, history and utopian plans that have been coupled to each other over time, always integrating all urban parts and ways of living. In addition to understanding that these natural aspects of the city are determining factors which cannot be omitted or left aside, since they help us to generate a more humanized and democratic space in which there can be enriching elements of the relationship between people and ambient. Finally, the type of city we are generating is taken into account, low consumption that divides men between those who have and those who do not, who only achieve social and spatial segmentation, which leads to the privatization of the city-city and therefore to the disappearance of the city as a public space and as this mixture of history, behavior and social life. The author allows us to clearly see how a city that accepts its historical processes, that generates a much more interesting social life and that manages to generate a Universidad Internacional SEK Ingles Tecnico II – 2020-3
collage, that is, a collective operation between the different parts, will create a much more controlled city. Environment, is much more aware of life forms and their users, seeking to create a much more comfortable life for its user, allowing all uses to be related in an orderly but not necessarily spatially limited way. Finally, we can say that a city begins to function correctly when all the historical processes and historical processes work in harmony, generating growth not only urban but also social, making a Collage city a much more attractive alternative to live. REFERENCES
Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 577. ISBN 9780415252256 Muschamp, Herbert. "Colin Rowe, Architecture Professor, Dies at 79". www.nytimes.com. Retrieved 29 July 2014. Naegele, Daniel ed., The Letters of Colin Rowe: Five Decades of Correspondence, Artifice Press, St. James Press, London, 2016 p. 8. Giamarelos, Stylianos, Calling Rowe: After-lives of Formalism in the Digital Age, Footprint 22 (Spring/Summer 2018), pp. 89-102. https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.12.1.1760. New Paradigm In Architecture by Charles Jencks, Yale University Press; 7th Edition (1 August 2002), ISBN 0-300-09512-0, p. 78-79. Curl, James Stevens (2006). A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Paperback) (Second ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 880. ISBN 0-19-860678-8 Colin Rowe. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa. MIT Press, 1976, p. 4. Rowe (1976), The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, p. 9.
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