towns buildings de 00 ras m

8/12/2019 Towns Buildings de 00 Ras m

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Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2011 with funding from

LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/townsbuildingsdeOOrasm


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TOWNS AND BUILDINGS


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DANISH EDITION: 1949ENGLISH EDITION: 1951

PRINTED IN DENMARKLAYOUT BY THE AUTHOR BLOCKS BY F. HENDRIKSEN, COPENHAGEN

PRINTED BY KROHNS BOGTRYKKERI, COPENHAGENBOOKBINDING: ANKER KYSTERS EFTERFOLGER, COPENHAGEN


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PREFACEAn unusual house in a street attracts attention but no

mpression remains of the street in its entirety. For thought is easy to discover a particular detail^ it is very difficult

grasp the whohj no matter how simple it is. This interest.n isolated details, which is natural to most people, is furtherstimulated by their reading. Innumerable books are written onhistorical styles, books purporting to show how the creationsof various periods can be distinguished from one another bysmall, seemingly insignificant traits. And as a matter of factit can be quite exciting to be able to decide, like an anti-quarian, to luhich epoch of cultural history so77ie lovely thingbelongs. It can become a veritable mania just as the study ofperforations and juisprints can be for the stamp collector.

The ability to identify and classify arfchitecture is oftenuseful when travelling and there are travel guides to pointout the museums one should visit and every itern in themconsidered worth seeing. These guides also enurnerate all thebuildings the tourist is supposed to admire. Such books arecompiled for the type of traveller who, one imagines, goesthrough strange cities as though they, too, were museu?ns, tak-ing note of the three-starred niunbers. But the cities, the7n-selves, they do not see any more than they see the museumrooms in which the works of art are found.

There are excellent German and Japanese guide booksgiving detailed information about every single palace andtemple in Peking. But they do not contain a single mentionof the fact that the entire city is one of the zuonders of theworld, in its symmetry and clarity a unique monument, theculmination of a great civilization. That ive must discoverfor ourselves. And the nine-sided town of Palma Nuova,which, in its geometrical form, is as fine as an ice crystal,is noted in the Italian Baedeker simply as a fortified town.

In the present book an effort has been made to bring thereader to look on the city as an entity which expresses cer-tain ideals. The individual monuments, the buildings, thusbecome part of a whole. The cities are not all treated in thesame fashion or according to a particular method. The chap-ters are as varied as the subjects, for there are no two cities


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PR E FA C in the world that are identical. In some instances it has seemednatural to begin by drawing up the main lineSj which havedetermined the arrangeinent of all else, and then to go onto the detailsJ the monumental buildings, the ordinary housesand the streets. In other cases it see?ned more fitting to beginwith a particular ?nonument which had been a determiningfactor in the formation of its surroundings, the nucleus fromwhich all the rest evolved. In some cases much can belearned by observing common traits in cities which came intoexistence under the same conditions and for the same reasonsin others it is necessary to seek the clue to a unique develop-ment.To make similarities or contrasts easier to comprehend,

most of the town plans are reproduced to the same scale,1:20.000. It is interesting to compare the size of ancientGreek and Roman cities with medieval toivns and with fa-miliar elements, such as the street net of a modern city. Un-fortuTiately it has not been possible to carry out this prin-ciple in all cases as the great cities of today are so unreason-ably vast that no book, whatever its format, ivould be ableto contain comparisons of them with towns of earlier days.But by ernploying simple scale measurements and then, as forexample in the case of Paris, reducing the scale to half sizeand again to a fifth, it should be possible to jnaintain a basisof comparison.A number of famous places are drazvn to a scale of i:2000

so that direct comparison can be made betiueen an ancientGreek market-place and Rorne's Capitol or Copenhagen'sAinalienborg Place.

The buildings described in this book are riot treated asmonuments to be seen from the outside, only. Architecturecreates rooms for people to live and move about in. Thoughthe fagade is, of course, an important part of the building,it is nevertheless only the outward expression of somethingvery complicated which cannot be understood before zee haveperceived the relation between the interior and the exterior,between the human existence around which the house is builtand the technical resources available at the time of its con-struction. It is difficult to give an impression of these things

II by means of illustrations. Technically ivc say that a building


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is deter?nined by drawings of plan, section and fagades and PREFACEthat these must harrnonizc well if it is to be good architecture.But such descriptions, which are quite clear to architects,make no appeal to the imagination. On the other hand, nophotographs or other pictorial presentation of the interior andexterior of a building, regardless of the wealth of the mater-ial, can ilve any impression of the relation of the r007ns toeach other and of all of them to the massive block of thebuilding. Therefore a new method of illustration has beenattempted in this book. In several instances the building isshown at the top of the page, en f a c e, in perspective, asit would appear to an observer standing before it; beneaththis and corresponding to it lue see the building as it zvouldpresent itself if, like a doll's house, the front wall could beremoved to reveal the rooms behind the fagade. In this tuayive discover what is hidden behind the windows and doors ofthe exterior. Beneath this section, which gives a better ideaof the interior than an ordinary scaled drawing of a section,we see hoiu the house would look if the upper storeys couldbe lifted off so that we could peer down to the ground-floorand study the disposition of the principle rooms.

This mathematically clear presentation in all its factualsobriety is in keeping with an aspect of architecture whichother kijids of illustrations could hardly demonstrate. It alsohas the advantage of being easy to grasp. Even children likeit. They love to see what is inside and can imagine them-selves walking about the rooms of the building. It has thefurther advantage of compressing into one page informationluhich otherwise would fill many more and it has been theparticular aim of the author, ever since the planning of thebook, to put a great deal of material into a inodest amountof space. However, as illustrations of this kind demand muchexpensive drawing ivork, it would have been impossible tocarry out the book with its many original drawings if theNew Carlsberg Foundation of Copenhagen hadnot so generously defrayed the expenses of both art workand plates for the original Danish edition.

Accurately scaled drawings, however, cannot give a com-plete picture of architecture. When the Danish edition of thebook was planned in ig4S the possibilities of procuring good JJJ


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JP R EFA C paper for difficult reproductions were few; therefore it ivasdecided to illustrate the work solely with line drawings whichmake small demands on the paper's quality. To these scaleddrawings it zuas possible to add reproductions of engravingsand luoodcuts as well as unpretentious sketches and outlinedrawings. The result is a rather heterogeneous collection ofillustrations and some of the sketches may seem rather unes-sential and vague compared to the very exact architecturaldrawings and plans. It is, however, the author s hope that thereader will accept them as enlivening titbits a marginalnote here, a hasty travel reminiscence there and, again, a smallvignette which the author has been tempted to place in themargin luhen he felt that words, alone, could not express thefeelings and impressions he wished to share with the reader.Good reproductions of photographs ivould, in ?nany cases,

be better but they would also require ?nuch more space if theywerd to reveal as much. But, as already mentioned, the aimhas been not to expand the book but to pack it tightly withmatter pertaining to cities and buildings not in a systein-atic presentation of the history of toivn planning and archi-tecture but in an informal series of chapters on subjectsivhich, the author feels, it was fun to luork zvith. And it ishis hope that the book will give the interested reader somefresh impressions just as on a journey during which zve noivdiscover entirely neiv things, now find new meaning in old,familiar things.

This English edition is different from the Danish original.The author has attempted to bring more harmony to thelength and contents of the chapters ivithout changing the gene-ral character of the book. So/ne chapters have been shortened,others have been given a fuller for?)i. The one on the Dutchcontribution is neiu. The author has zvorked in close co-oper-ation with Mrs. Eve H'endt zvho made the translation andtook great pains in transferring into English the very styleand spirit of the book. He is also ?nost grateful to Flora andGordon Stephenson for valuable advice and for their carefulreading of manuscript and proofs. The interest and skill ichichthe blockmaker and the printer have shoicn in the ratherexacting task has been a special pleasure to

lY Steen Eiler Rasmussen.


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North

Northern wall.

'- r--,J^^m|_ - -


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THE CITY In many parts of Denmark a fixed tradition has beenA TEMPLE handed down 'from one generation to another as to the orient-ation of houses in the landscape. There is nothing strange inthis. On the west coast of Jutland, for example, and indeedall the way down along the coast of the North Sea right intothe north of France, all houses are built in long, parallel wings,squatting down behind the dune rows to avoid as much aspossible the clutches of the fierce west wind. It is just as sens-ible that the Chinese, in so far as they are able, place theirbuildings so that they open toward the south ; for in a climatewhere the sun is very potent and stands high in the heavensa southern exposure with large, projecting roofs over thebuildings is the best. But just as old home remedies whichon closer examination prove to be sensible enough are oftenhedged in with a lot of abracadabra, Chinese building prin-ciples, sensible in themselves, are often based on ideas con-cerning the influence of heaven and earth, evil spirits, etc..Thus, imperceptibly, they pass over to other principles com-pletely outside the control of reason the sort of principleswhich we have in Europe particularly in connection withtemples and churches. Since early times, for instance, it hasbeen imperative that our churches be built with the chancelat the east end. This is not founded on common-sense. It isritual. For the Chinese all building practice was, really, ritual,and if there were no established rules for a given case thepriests, who were deemed to be in intim.ate contact with thepowers that govern nature, would have to be consulted. Andwhen every house and every temple had to be built accordingto ritual, how much more important this must have been forthe laying out of the main city of the entire empire ForPeking was much more than a capital. It w^as the residence ofthe emperor and the emperor was more than a regent or asovereign; he was a demigod. The Son of Heaven he wascalled and had the functions of supreme pontiff. Ever)^ yearat midwinter it was his prerogative to make the great sacrificesThe Imperial Palaces are ad-

mirably illustrated bv draw- ^^ hcaven which re-established the pact between man and theings and photographs in Os- Omnipotent and insured a good year. He succeeded in makingwaidSiren: Imperial Palaces himsclf the Spiritual head of his peopk. His throne was aof Peking I-III, 1926. sanctuary, the throne hall a temple facing due south, the2 entire city a temple ground.


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THE CITYA TEMPLE

Peking's most important feature was the great ProcessionalRoad, a Via Sacra paved with broad, hewn flags, which ledfrom the throne hall directly south to that part of the citywhere the Temples of Heaven and Agriculture lay.

In its plan Peking is very reminiscent of Babylon as de-scribed by Herodotus (about 450 B.C.), another city whichhad been equally important as capital, trade centre and temple.According to Herodotus it was a large, regular, walled townbuilt round a Processional Road leading from the palace tothe main temple. Recent excavations, however, have provedthat his description was somewhat idealized. But in Pekingthe ideal city became reality. Coming with the camel cara-vans out of the plains and approaching its great old walls,you see before you a veritable scene from the Old Testament.Flocks of sheep graze peacefully along the canals which,moat-like, surround the city. Within, Peking appears asone square town placed inside another until the holy of holiesis reached the Forbidden City where the emperor residedand where no intruder could force his way. In contrast to thecolourless residential sections with their grey walls and greyroofs, the Forbidden City glitters with red plastered walls,many-coloured woodwork and roofs of glazed ochre tiles ritual again: only the emperor's buildings could have yellowroofs. While it was called by Europeans the Forbidden City,its Chinese name was the Purple City. This name, Tzu Ch'uiCh'eng, has nothing to do with the colour of its crenellatedwalls but is purely symbolical. It is an allusion to the purple

City wallandcanalsurround-ino- Pekinfr-

See drawing, p. 4.

R. Koldewey: Das zviedererstehende Babylon, ip/j.

For Peking -walls see: TkeTl'alls and Gates of Pekingby Oswald Siren, London,1924, -with excellent illustra-tions.


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THE CITYA TEMPLE

The great Processional RoadhoMng toward the entranceto the Forbidden City.

Compare with plan, p. 2g.

The Jf'hite Dagoha crowninga little artificial mountain atthe northernmost end of theSea Palaces.

polar star , centre of the celestial world, as the Imperial Pal-ace was the centre round which the terrestrial world gravit-ated. Thus both Confucius and Laotse speak of the emperorsposition. The Purple City is built symmetrically about the greatnorth-south axis with large reception halls and courts con-taining apartments for the emperor's concubines and eunuchsand an enormous court staff. Outside its walls lies the Im-perial City , also surrounded by walls and also a court city.But within its domain is a special precinct surrounded bywalls of its own called the Sea Palaces, a fantastic parkcontaining three artifical lakes, with artifical mountainsand grottoes, temples and pavilions and houses, where theemperor could live like a philosopher amid natural surround-ings natural surroundings designed and made by manThe whole of Peking has been fitted into nature by being

given great sj^mmetry. The city itself is an image of nature'sundeviating regularity as the astronomer knows it. But theSea Palaces also represent a special interpretation of nature,the interpretation of the painter and poet which is not depend-ent on anything so simple as rules. The moment you set footinside the walls of the Sea Palaces j'ou feel as though you havebeen transported to a fabulous place far out in the country.From the West Mountains, which from Peking are seen as ablue silhouette, water has been brought through canals to thecity for the moats and the large artificial lakes. The soil whichwas removed to make the northernmost lake has been fomiedinto a pleasant little mountain which is crowned by a bottle-


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THE CITYA TEMPLE

shaped pagoda, the White Dagoba as Europeans call it, amonument for a Buddhistic relic. A bridge leads to it. Fromthe pagoda there is an excellent view over the city, and uphere even the symmetrical Purple City appears irregular be-cause it is seen from a corner. The great city of a millionsouls seems to be one huge park for in the glimmer of thesun's rays the view is dominated by the many green treeswhich overshadow the small, grey houses. Only the gatewaytowers and the high roofs of the Forbidden City stand outclearly. Up here on the mountain the sun is baking andthrows back glaring reflections from the mirror of thelakes. Under leafy trees v/inding paths lead down its slope.At one spot you find an open wooden gallery through whichwinged insects fly. It has a tiled floor and in one cornerthere is 'an opening with a stairway that seems to descendright into the heart of the mountain. But after a turn thedark, cool grotto ends in a circular wooden pavilion restingon the side of the mountain with a broad view over the laketo the far distant shore. Groping your way further down theslope you reach a little flagged terrace where you discover astone turtle with a tall stone tablet standing on its back and,further still, you come to a long, curved wooden gallery edgingthe lake. Lov/ skiffs sail among the lotus over to the othershore which is a legendary world of tea pavilions, strangetemples, bridges and galleries, weird rock gardens, and all therest that a Chinese imagination can invent, executed withgreat elaborateness. It is that Chinese culture we know so well

The northernmost of the lakesin the gardens of the SeaPalaces, Pel Hai , seenfrom an artificial mountainnorth of the Forbidden City.At left, the little mountainwith the White Dagoha.


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THE CITYA TEMPLE

One of the larger divellingsof Peking, consisting of anumber of houses and court-yards. It is exactly orientatedin relation to a north-southaxis. But the entrance (athottom ofdraiving) is placedto one side of the axis. Thisis afixed principle: evil spi-rits must not he able to rushstraight into the house. Notethat the northern gates ofPeking are not placed oppositethe southern spates.

from oriental porcelain, embroideries and painting, and whichhas inspired Europeans to bring forth a thousand chinoiseriesuntil at last it has come to represent to us the very quintessenceof Chinese being. How doubly surprising it is, then, when wecome out of the enchanted world of the Sea Palaces into theeveryday greyness of Peking to discover that it is classical andregular, so completely lacking in all that which we mean bychinoiserieThe great main highways are very broad avenues with a

roadway in the middle for all through traffic. On each sideof it there is an equally broad thoroughfare which partlyserves as what we call the sidewalk, partly is used for morelocal traffic, partly is an area for all sorts of outdoor work.It is an excellent arrangement. Shops and work-rooms areopen booths which almost merge into the street where theChinese display their wares, shoe horses, hold their pig mar-ket, let their tired camels sink heavily down to rest, fetch upthe water from the public wells, are shaved and trimmed bythe street barber, and carry on a hundred and one other


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things. Originally the middle roadway was reserved for theemperor's officials, the mandarins. Everything, indeed, hadits purpose in relation to the imperial residence. For instance,the reason why houses could be only one storey high was sothat no one could see over the walls of the Forbidden City.From the broad highways run the narrow residential streetswhere there are no shops. There may be houses which reflectthe whole plan of Peking with everything carefully orient-ated in relation to a north-south axis and with severalcourtyards, one behind the other. There may also be unsym-metrical Chinese gardens behind symmetrical groups of build-ings. But seen from the street there is hardly any differenceto be noted between a large, costly mansion or a cluster ofcoolie hovels. One sees only grey walls Avithout windows,with here and there an entrance. Just as no one may look overthe walls of the Imperial City, no one may compete with themagnificence of the imperial palace. In the small, narrowstreets there are no shops. But they are visited by many dealerscarrying their wares. Each one calls attention to himself bymeans of some small instrument, a long tuning-fork, smallbrass bowls which are sounded against each other somethinglike castanets, small flutes; all make delicate sounds that areheard behind the walls in faint tones which announce to thelistener who it is that is passing.

It is an existence and a world very different from ours.And yet it is of great interest to us, not as a curiosity but asthe most fully developed example of a special city type whicharises when a ruler makes himself a high-priest or a deity forhis people. Of itself a ritual develops which forms the city.When the French monarch became absolute a system of rulesand regulations evolved governing his conduct and the con-duct of those surrounding him, and it was logical that heshould live in a city which was just as systematically built uparound the king. And when the Third Reich was createdwith Hitler as a leader who was a godhead for his people, itwas necessary to form German city-planning according tospecial rites, with axes and halls and processional roads.

THE CITYA TEMPLE

'mmmm

Residential streets Huttings '

'

ill Peking. The street is notpaved, only a dusty grey roadbetween grey houses with hereand there a large green treeseen above the ivalls. Leanblack pigs gallop through thestreets and in the summerwell-built, stark-naked chil-dren play in them ivith nounnecessary noise while thetradesmen pass through thestreets producing their deli-cate, eljin-like music.

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r-L-

P.J

COLONIAL CITIESIt is not only when a city is made into a temple that it be-

comes regular. If a group of people leave their native soil andfind themselves suddenly faced with the necessity of creatinga new town in a strange place they must build it accordingto a preconceived plan or it will end in chaos. And that planmust, of necessity, be a very simple one, easily laid out, so thateveryone with the least possible trouble can quickly discoverwhat he has to do. Soldiers pitch camp by raising their tents inlong, straight rows within a regular area so that sentry dutyand defence are the easiest possible. Even nomadic tribes ar-range their tents in accordance with simple camp plans.When you gaze across the Forbidden City from one of the

artificial mountains in Peking, its curved Chinese roofs seemto resemble a petrified tent city. The la3'out of modern Pekingis based on a plan of 1268 when Kublai Khan, the greatMongolian emperor, founded his symmetrical capital. As theMongols are still a warrior and nomadic people it is not dif-ficult to understand why Europeans believe they can see inPeking's plan an outgrowth of the military encam_pment, thegarrison town. But it is doubtful whether this is correct.Almost nothing can be concluded from the fact that the build-ings resemble tents. At any rate, they are not in the least likeMongolian tents, which are stretched over a framework sothat they appear convex, not concave. When he became em-peror, Kublai Khan took over much of the Chinese culture andthe Chinese have been settled farmers as far back as their his-tory can be traced. There where he built his residential cityfive different towns had existed, one after the other, over aperiod of thousands of years; each one perfectly rectangularand each one orientated exactly north-south and east-west.

The cities on the site of When you know how difficult it is to lay out a city accuratelyorientated you are aware that it is never done for practicalreasons. And when you hear why the cities were moved fromone place to another right beside it, it w411 be quite clear that ithad no practical purpose in any sober sense of the term. TheVenetian merchant, Marco Polo, who visited China from 1275to 1292, at the time of Kublai Khan, wrote on returning homeNow there was on that spot in old times a great and noble city,

i) Chi, destroyed 221 B. C.2) Yen, 70 936. 3) Ycn-Ching, Q36 1125. 4) ChungTu, II2S 1268. s) KublaiKhan's city, T'aitu, founded1268.


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called Cambaluc, which is as much as to say in our tongue'The City of the Emperor'. But the great Kaan was informedby his Astrologers that this city would prove rebellious andraise great disorders against his imperial authority. So hecaused the present city to be built close beside the old one withonly a river between them. And caused the people of the oldcity to be removed to the new town that he had founded.

In ancient times there were undoubtedly certain rites in con-nection with every large undertaking; it has not been possible todiscriminate clearly between ritual forms and purely practicalones. Nevertheless, it is probably justifiable to distinguish be-

tween towns which, like Peking, became out-and-out templecities, their layout determined by priests and astrologers; and,on the other hand, more practical settlements such as colonialcities or garrison towns.Modern technique, which has facilitated the rapid transport

of goods over great distances, has made it possible for citiesto continue expanding without form or bounds. But in ancienttimes a city could only grow to a certain size dependent on theability of a rather limited agricultural district to furnish foodfor it. If the population became too large the choice for thesurplus was either starvation or emigration and naturallythey chose the latter. The world was wide then and there wasmuch virgin soil where people could settle and form newtowns. Almost the same story can be told to describe the ex-pansion of the Greeks from their barren native shores over theislands .and coasts of the Mediterranean or, much later, theeastward migration of the Germans of the Middle Ages or,later still, the emigration of Europeans to America.At first the Greeks were (like the Norsemen before the

Viking Age) dependent on the trading genius of anotherpeople, the Phoenicians, who brought their wares to Greece.But as time went by the Greeks, themselves, developed intoa sea-faring nation and they were not content with visitingthe ports of others. The two hundred years from the middleof the 8th century to the middle of the 6th century B. C.formed an uninterrupted period of Greek expansion. Thismighty colonization was by no means the result of a premed-itated trade policy. It was just as much a natural phenomenonas it is when a tree scatters its seed and a copse grows up.

COLONIAL CITIES

The present Peking in out-line (dravjii to the same scaleas the old cities, p. 8, whereit is sketched in with a dottedline). At top, the Tartar city,surrounding the Imperial Citywhich likezvise surrounds theForbidden City. Below, theChinese city tuith the twolarge enclosures, the Templesof Agriculture and Heaven ;the t-zvo cities connected bythe north-south axis.


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COLONIAL CITIES

Plan of Miletus.Scale I : 20.000.North upiDard. 'x '-'

See : How the Greeks builtCities, by R. E. JVychcrly.London. 1(149.

See Arniiii fon Gerkan :Griechischc Stcidteanlagen,p. 42 et. seq.

The southernmost part of theplan is Roman and has, ascan be seen, larger squaresthan the Grceh part.

10

The colonies were all city-states like the mother cornmunitj'.All Greek states were, according to our idea, small. Ten totwenty thousand inhabitants was probably the maximum.The plans of the older Greek towns were irregular. But

later they began laying out their cities in squares. On the basisof a statement by Aristotle it was formerly thought that thegridiron plan was invented, so to speak, by one man. His nameis Hippodamos of Miletus and he lived in the 5th centuryB. C. Now it is believed, however, that the regular city planwas a practical measure which developed of itself, as is alwaj^sapparent in colonial cities, and that Hippodamos' contributionwas, rather, to form a theory from it and put it into practice.

Miletus, itself, the town that fostered Hippodamos was an Ionian city on the west coast of Asia Minor and it wasthe starting point of a gigantic colonization. At least sixty col-onies originated from there. Compared to its colonies the citywas old-fashioned. But when it was rebuilt after being razedby the Persians in the 5th century, it was made completely reg-ular. Miletus prospered even more under the Romans. Itgrew to be a city of 80-100,000 inhabitants.


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COLONIAL CITIES

North of Miletus high above the Maeander Plain, layPriene, also regularly laid out and with its rocky soil formed interraces. The streets were laid from east to west to assure theminimum of gradient. They were about 20-foot broad, pavedwith light-coloured stone. At right angles to them ran the1 0-foot cross streets, with steps. The housing blocks were rect-angular, normally with four building sites to each. In sucha city not only were building plots of equal size provided foreach family but there were also various large establishmentsfor the use of the entire community. In the centre of the plan,adjoining the main street, lies the market place, the town'sAgora. The city also had its temples and, at the foot of themountain its stadion and gymnasiorij where fresh mountainwater spouted out of the lion heads in the marble walls.

Plan of Priene.Scale I : 20.000.North upward.

Priene^s Agora.Scale 1 : 2.000.

I I


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COLONIAL CITIES

The English city of Chester.Scale I : 20.000.North upzuard.At left, the rectangular Ro-vian city, to the right, thecity as it is today ivith a me-dieval zvall zuhich, to thenorth and east, almost fol-loivs the Roman.

English toiuns zvilh namesending in -Chester were ori-ginally a Roman camp : Ca-strum.

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The market place is like a beautiful pillared assembly hallopen to the heavens. Originally there were colonnades on allfour sides for booths but later a Maecenas broke up the sym-metrj^ of the square by adding the large, tvvo-naved hall ofcolumns north of the market place ; a sacred hall, broader thanthe square, a gathering place where the citizens could gossipwith friends while strolling in the shade. It was a communitycentre, a sort of town hall. The small cells in the rear wereoffices for the city administration.The Mediterranean coast was the colonizing area of the

Greeks. When their time came the Romans were to dominatelarge parts of Europe. Their colonial towns were not, like theGreek, the result of the emigration of people for w^hom therewas not enough room at home. They were, above all, garrisontowns to guard strategically important crossings in conqueredterritory. (The Romans had just reached the point in tech-nique and administration where they could permit a few townsto expand to what we would consider large cities withall the evils that follow in their train. Rome knew - aswell as we do today slum districts with wretched tene-ment houses and a dangerous proletariat.) From as far awayas England all roads led to Rome and it was vital that theybe nowhere cut off by the oppressed peoples. Therefore it wasnecessary to have garrison towns to protect every vulnerablepoint. A free passage for the legions to all parts of the empirewas always necessary. Every city was a military encampment,a castrum. All English towns ending in -chester originate from


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i)

n^\:

COLONIAL CITIES

a Roman camp. In the plan of the city so laconically namedChester this can still be traced. Beyond the main street-cross-ings the towns might be variously laid out. These Roman gar-rison towns form the more or less clear nucleus of thousandsof Europe's larger and smaller cities as we know them todaj^This is most clearly seen in cases where the towns have notexpanded too greatly, such as Aosta.

Another city in Piedmont, Augusta Taurinorum, the pre-sent-day Turin, has greatly expanded since its Roman originbut has, like a crystal, steadily grown in accordance with thesame geometric principle. The Renaissance added only itssystem of bastioned walls to the almost square Roman plan.Later, as a defensive measure, a strong citadel was built south-west of the city. Next followed, to the south, an irregularpolygonal rampart but still with rectangular blocks within itswalls. Ayith the passing of tim.e new additions in all directionsstretched out the polygon more and more. The original easterngateway lay finally almost in the middle of the city wherea square was connected by a broad, arcaded street with themonumental Piazza S. Carlo to the south. The town con-tinued to grow, adding one new rectangular block after theother until it became the great city which the i8th centuryDanish traveller and playwright, Ludvig Holberg, admiredso greatly for its regularity.

Large, magnificent cities, like Timgad in Algiers, had en-tirely lost their importance and ceased to exist as cities by theearly Middle Ages. Nevertheless, greater traces remain of themthan of towns which continued to flourish because of thestrategic and mercantile importance of their sites. They werecontinually rebuilt so that today nothing is left of the original

Aosta.Scale I : 20.000.

The dra^uing at the left shoiu^the Ro7nan city, to the rightis the plan of the city as itis today.

About Turiiio see : The To-iunPlanning Review Vol. XII.igzj. p. 191 ff.

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COLONIAL CITIES

The city of Turin in fivestages.Scale I : 20.000.North upivard.On this page from top tobottom :i) The Roman city, AugustaTaurinorum. 2) Turin at theclose of the i6th century.3) Turin at the beginning ofthe lyih century luith citadeland city extension.On page is:4) Turin with a new exten-sion from about 1670. 5) Tu-rin at the end of the 17thcentury loith still another ex-tension, this time of the nnrth-zucst.

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COLONIAL CITIES

Cologne. A section of an en-grwoing from the hcginningof the lyth century. Below,on territory luhicli in Romantimes %uas under water, isseen around the Haymarket(B) Hanseatic district withgabled houses. Above (to thezvest) the medieval city whichfollows the lines of the oldRoman town over zuhich itis built.

i6

towns. There was the important Rhine crossing where theRomans placed Colonia Agrippinensis on the v^estern bankwith a small fortification on the eastern shore. The cit}' stillbears in its name a reminiscence of the original Roman colony.The French and English call it Cologne, the Gennans Kolnand it has always been an important strategic centre. As earlyas the Middle Ages the Roman plan of Cologne was difficultto trace. In the same manner Roman towns lie hidden inParis, London and Vienna.

It is usually believed that medieval cities developed veryirregularly, without any plan. This is true of towns whichgrew slowly but it does not mean that irregularity was, some-how or other, an ideal of the time. When new towns werebuilt rapidly the same method was employed as at all othertimes : they were laid out in rectangular blocks along straightstreets. Here again it was the same story as in ancient Greece:when a city could no longer provide for more people some ofthe inhabitants left and founded new cities.


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COLONIAL CITIES

Houses on market-place inMonpaxier.

ff ^J) ^^

I, )

T/ie Danish toivn K0ge inthe 17th century.Scale I : 20.000.North upward.

Monpaxier.Scale I : 20.000.North upward.

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The Danish historian, Hugo Matthiessen, has pointed outthat the town of Koge, on the island of Seeland in Denmark,which was established in the second half of the 13th century,is of the same type. And, indeed, the streets of New Branden-burg and Koge are very much alike. The building sites arequite large and the houses face the streets lengthwise while inmany medieval commercial towns (e. g. the Hanseatic towns)the houses were built on narrow plots with high gabies facingthe streets. In the town of Koge, as in the German colonialtowns, the miarket-place is separated from the church by ablock but here it is safer from attack from outside than inNew Brandenburg. Koge's market-place is just as well protect-ed against enemy fire as the Chinese house against evil spirits.One of the strangest examples of a very regular planned

medieval town is Monpazier. It lies in the province of Guj'ennein France, between the Dordogne and the Garonne. It wasfounded in 1284 by an English king who owned great stretchesof present-day France. It is not only laid out in rectangu-lar blocks and squares but its contours, too, in contrastto the German colonial towns described above are com-pletely rectangular. The houses around the market-place arevery narrow and all alike, and each one bestrides its street doorin a broad, pointed arch so that together they form a delight-ful, shady arcade around the square.When America was colonized the land there, too, was di-

vided up in straight lines. The boundaries of the states arerectilineal and the networks of streets in the cities are just asregular as they were in the colonies of ancient Greece.


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In town-planning the square grid, and in parcelling the COLONIAL CITIESrectangle, are still fundamental factors. The same generalscheme has been followed even in cities founded in the 19thcentury. But it cannot be denied that it was best adapted toancient and medieval towns which consisted entirely of homo-geneous units. In our day there is decided differentiation. Somebuildings are designed for dwelling purposes only, some forbusiness and some for factories. Cities have no longer clearlimits and, preferably, there should be recreation grounds inthe city, itself, near the residential districts.There is not very much information available about the

greatest colonization project of the present day the manynew cities of the Soviet Union. But we do know that the Rus-sians have been working with new principles. They have de-veloped the theory of the band city in which the various ele-ments are laid out in bands : the factories form one, park beltsanother, main traffic a third, the residential section a fourth.But just as the more or less square cities of the Middle Ageshad to be altered to suit local conditions, the modern Russianband-city principle, too, must be adapted to the given circum-stances.

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The small Danish toivn Ka-lutidborg in the iSth century,sketched from an illustra-tion in Pontoppidan 's Atlas.The fortress-like churchcroivns the high upper tozvn.

Denmark luith strongholdsof the Middle Ages, i Sprogo,2 Ha-vn now Copenhagen,3 Arlius, 4 Kalundhorg.

20

THE IDEAL CITIES OFTHE RENAISSANCECenturies of great migrations and wars gave the feudal lord

in his castle a dominating position. To be able to lead a reason-ably civilized life in the Middle Ages protection of one sortor another was necessary. The master of the castle not onlyprotected the town from assault but also supplied it with itsmeans of existence.

It is easy to form an exaggerated idea of the amount of com-merce carried on by the burgher towns and of the size of mer-chants' fortunes in those days. The towns engaged much morein agriculture and handicrafts than in commerce as we knowit in modern cities. The men of property were the great lordsof the manors, temporal or spiritual, and they were, for themost part, the ones who purchased the products of the towns.It was the feudal lord who gave a town its fair and marketprivileges. It was he who provided for the maintenance oforder on market days. He could muster the necessary manpower to build castles and fortifications and to protect thelife of the town.Through all this he had the power to determine the sites of

new cities. It might be a question of ordinary colonization, suchas at New Brandenburg (see page ly). Or military and politicalmotives might lie behind his decision. In the castles and townsbuilt by the Danish kings and their feudal lords about I200,a great national plan for the defence of the kingdom can beseen. King Valdemar I (115 7- ii 82), himself, fortified thelittle island of Sprogo, strategically located in the middle ofthe Great Belt between the islands of Seeland and Funen.


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Bishop Absalon, his chancellor, built a citadel on an islet inthe Sound just off the little trading and fishing village ofHavn and fortified that small church town which later becamethe capital of the kingdom: Copenhagen. Traces of Absalon'sstronghold are still found under Christiansborg Castle, theseat of government today. During the reign of King Val-demar's son, Canute VI, (i 182-1202) another bishop, PederVagnsson, founded the little town of St. Clemens, the heartof present-day Arhus Denmark's second-largest city onthe peninsula of Jutland, and probably laid the foundationsfor the still existent St. Clemens church, there. To protect theimportant Kattegat crossing to Jutland, Esbern Snare, like hisbrother Bishop Absalon the friend and foster-brother of KingValdemar I, built the town of Kalundborg with harbour andchurch on the northwestern coast of Seeland.Old Kalundborg was built on a hill, with a castle no

longer existent at one end and a church at the other, achurch which, with its five towers and loophole-like windows,was also a stronghold. It is quite evident that the town wasplanned, though it is not schematic, with its three-corneredsquare opening toward the church. The upper part is still oneof the handsomest town units in Denmark.

In the medieval city the castle was one dominating fac-tor and the church the other. The church was wealthy. Thechurch was the important cultural link with the outside world,an international organism which has never been equalled since.And finally the church was the consolation and hope of thedown-trodden masses who lived in the mean, small houses ofthe towns the hope of a life hereafter better than the lifeof today.

Gradually, as payment-in-kind gave way to a mone^^ econ-omy, the position of the towns changed. Commerce began toboom, the commoners became more and more conscious oftheir own strength and felt a growing independence of bothtemporal and spiritual powers. They were no longer willingto accept the hereafter as the essential meaning of life. Peoplewanted to live here and now, they were more interested intheir fellow-men than in angels. Natural sciences, based onmathematics, flourished. Society took over not only part of thepower of the church but also some of its obligations.

IDEAL C ITI ES

The upper tozvn of Kalund-borg to scale of 1 : 20.000, asit zvas in the Middle Ages.A hill toivn surrounded bylualls, to the east protectedby a large castle. The townitself is built arounda squarexvhich, funnel-shaped, openstozuard the s-totvered church.

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See: Die Geschichte der Ideal-siadt by Genrg Milliter in thejournal Stddtebau ic>2q, page249 56 and 317 340.

IDEAL CITIES There arose the desire to create an ideal city, not as the back-ground of a church or an adjunct to a castle, but as an inde-pendent and well-rounded whole for an ordinary civic com-munity, well-protected against all aggressors, a classical Repub-lic like the Greek city-states. The heathen philosophers of an-cient Greece and Rome were studied for the knowledge andinstruction that could not be found in the Bible.The new weapons which followed on the invention of gun-

pov/der created problems unknown to the colonial tovv^ns ofthe Middle Ages. Before the advent of gunpowder and cannon-ball, cities could be protected by palisades or walls. But nowthese were no longer enough. Earthworks were necessary. At-tackers must be met with flanking fire. The castle acquiredprojecting towers and the ramparts were fitted with bastions.The plans of Turin pp. 14 and 15 illustrate clearly how they

developed from the Renaissance to the end of the 17th century.Pointed bastions have been added to the corners of thealmost square Roman city. From these it was possible to sendan enfilade along the sides of the ramparts. But the bastions,themselves, presented quite a large flank which also could befired upon. Therefore they must be sharply pointed which tech-nically is a poor form for earthern structures. It was quicklydiscovered that the rectangular contour was the least practicalfor a fortification of ramparts with bastions. A pentagon wasbetter than a rectangle and a hexagon was still better. But bestof all would be a town periphery in the form of a pol5'gon.A great amount of literature dealing with the new theory of

fortifications appeared. Defences were a sine qua non for theexistence of the city and if these were to form a polygonalrampart, cities, too, must be many-sided. Never before or sincehave so many projects for ideal cities been published.The literature dealing with ideal cities first appeared in

Italy. After 1600 it was Germany and France that took thelead. The great Italian artists of the Renaissance were, as iswell-known, also superb technicians. Throughout the longperiod in which ideal projects were of such great interest therewas no dividing line between art and technics. The artistsloved applied mathematics and its beautifully exact results.Added to this came their knowledge of classical literature, the

22 culture the}^ wished to revive.


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In a work on the theory of architecture from about 1500,by the Italian Francesco di Giorgio Martini, there are a num-ber of ideal plans which seem to be children of the imaginationof an extremely theoretical brain. Yet this same Francesco wasactually a very practical man with wide experience both asarchitect and fortifications builder. And as a matter of facthis drawings were practical and real enough so that theymight very well have served as models for many cities builtaccording to similar schematic plans in the following centuries.As the drawings show, the determining factors in all of themwere the fortification-polygon and the central square. Thearea between, Francesco sought to fill out in the best possiblemanner with a geometrical network of streets and squares. Itis evident that he did not give much thought to the form ofthe houses or dwelling sites. Also in the medieval city a cen-trally located square had been a basic element, but neverthelessthe forming of the house blocks was the primary interest whilethe squares and streets were simply spaces between them. InFrancesco's plans the house blocks are the odds and ends re-maining after the street network has been determined. Thisis clearly seen on the plan in which a thoroughfare is introduc-ed as a spiral which crosses all the radial streets. Such a townplan has probably never been carried out but the two above itcorrespond to a number of actual cities of the i6th and 17thcenturies.

Francesco also gives examples of plans for mountain towns.The mountain has been reduced to a skull-cap. Here, too,the streets are laid out in a very theoretical network whichcovers the spherical surface. These speculations, which un-doubtedly were very natural for an Italian, probably never hadany significance. Ideal cities were mostly carried out on levelground.

In Braun und Hogenberg's Atlas, containing city plans fromall over Europe, there is an engraving of an ideal city, PalmaNuova. This one was really built. Founded in 1593 in thestate of Venice, it is one of the most intricate of all idealcities. The polygonal rampart has nine sides and there arethree gateways to the town. From them radial streets leadto the hexagonal square in the centre. The cross streets, lyingin rings, correspond to the nine sides of the polygon and the

ID E AL CITIES

&j= &

^Vl

^BaaPlansfor ideal cities by Fran-cesco di Giorgio Martini,about 1500.

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IDEAL CITIES

Planfor an ideal city fromBuonaiiito Lorini : Dellefortifcatione libri cinque .Venexia isp2.

Plan for an ideal city fromVincen'zo Scamozxi: DelVi-dea dcir architettura uni-versale . I'enexia 1615.

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Palma Nuova founded 1593, from an engraving by Braun & Hogenberg.


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I D EAL CITIES

Proposal for a plan for theextension of Copenhagen,about 262g. Scale i : 20.000.North upzoard. Top, right:the Citadel, left : RosenborgCastle. Below, left : The oldCity.

See draiuing page 24.

26

innermost ring of house blocks neutralizes the difference be-tween the nine sides of the periphery and the six sides of thecentral place. The building in the centre, which resembles thecastle in a game of chess, has never existed. As shown in theengraving there are also radial streets running from three ofthe bastions all the way to the centre. From the othersix the streets extend only as far as the innermost ring street,ending in some sort of monumental gabled structure. Thestreets of Palma Nuova are actually laid out as shown in theengraving but their terminals are more casual. The rectangularspaces which are crossed by the middle ring street are alsofound in the town as small squares planted with trees. Thereis a book from about the same time as this city (1592) by anItalian, Buonaiuto Lorini, on fortification problems which alsocontains proposals for town plans. In it there is a drawing of a


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nine-sided city like Palma Nuova with radial streets and smallsquares in a ring round a central place. But Palma Nuova'splan with the three entrance highways leading to the heart ofthe city is really handsomer.A somewhat later ideal city plan (1615) which was never

carried out drawn by Scamozzi represents another prin-ciple. All the blocks and squares are rectangular and all thestreets cross each other at right angles. Out toward the forti-fication-polygon the street blocks become irregular, arbitrarilyformed in triangles or other unsymmetrical shapes. In Lorini'sand Scamozzi's proposals we have the two basic types of idealplan. Either the polj^gonal rampart must determine the net-work of streets, which then will consist of ring streets parallelwith the line of fortifications and radial streets at right anglesto it, or one can work with a rectangular network haphazardlycut off by the wall street.King Christian IV of Denmark, who reigned from 1588 to

1648, founded a number of towns which were built in accord-ance with the ideals of the time. In a proposal for the expansionof Copenhagen the polygonal tovv^n plan is found, featuring alarge octagonal place from which streets branch out to thebastions of the fortifications. It could not be quite as regularas ideal plans found in books for its form was dependent notonly on the existing city but on the coast line as well. However,this proposal did not come into consideration in the finaldisposition; a plan of the other type was chosen, with rect-angular building sites between parallel streets. The same thinghappened when Christianshavn was built, a little town on theisland of Amager just opposite Copenhagen and now incor-porated in the capital.

I D E AL CITIE S

See draiving page 24..

At left: Johan Sevip's pro-posal for Christianshavn,1617. Right: The plan used.Scalefor both about i : 20.000.

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THE GRAND PERSPECTIVEUntil quite recently history was regarded as the record of

the lives of kings and great men transformed into populardrama with a small cast of outstanding figures, very much asin a play by Shakespeare. Today it is more usual to look onthese individuals as tools of a development generally an eco-nomic development that is borne up by the nameless multi-tudes ; and the course of this development is what we now meanby history. In other words, the conception of cause and effecthas changed.

In the old days it would have been said that Sir Herbordfounded New Brandenburg in 1248 (see p. 17) and, indeed,this was no myth as it could be documented ; the letter existedwhich in one stroke brought the town of New Brandenburginto being. Today we would say that despite this fact the caseis not so simple. The large population surplus in Brandenburg,itself, made emigration necessary. It was not by means of aletter, a sort of open sesame , that the town was created bySir Herbord. He was but the tool of forces stronger than anyone man and the document was made effective by these forces.In much the same way it can be said of the ideal cities of theRenaissance that their outward form was logically determinedby the laws of defence against the firearms of the day, so dif-ferent from those that existed before the discovery of gunpowd-er. But there must have been someone who was the veiy first

1 to make gunpowder and that inventor, that one person, wasthe one responsible for the revolutionary development. In theevolution of plants and animals there are mutations, suddenchanges to new forms. In the same way there are mutations inhuman historj^An idea of genius, the advancement of a thoughtnever conceived before, inventions and discoveries all thesecan lead economic development into new channels or quickenits course along the lines already laid out. The steam-enginedid not create industrialism but it gave it immense impetus.There are other inventions and discoveries which have not

the slightest direct influence on economic development, on ma-terial history, but which can completely change the feeling forhow things should be formed and in this way greatly influence

2 3,' cultural life, forms of expression. It is often the artist's achieve-


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ment that he imagines and depicts that which becomes actual THE GRANDmuch later. Art can be like children's play : apparently without PERSPECTIVEpurpose or value and yet in the long run of greater import-ance than much so-called useful work.

J'ersailhs Pari.Scale I : 40.000. North iip-ivard. At right, the palace,opposite it along the greataxis of the park, the cross-shaped Grand Canal sur-rounded by pruned trees.

Versailles is often pointed out as a logical manifestation ofthe absolute monarchy, a magnificent establishment whichvisibly -demonstrates the central position of the ruler just asPeking did. But this does not explain the forms they havebeen given. These two particularly, Versailles and the Imper-ial Palaces of Peking, are worth comparing. At both placesthe huge grounds are laid out in artificial lakes, but how dif-ferent they are In Versailles the Grand Canal is an immense,symmetrically framed mirror of water which forms a splendidview from the centre of the palace and which continues alongthe symmetrical axis of the chateau almost to the horizon. InPeking the Sea Palaces are not smaller but they are formedin picturesque and capricious lakes which lay beside the axisof the symmetrical palace of the Forbidden City and quite in-dependent of it. It is the private life of the emperor whichhere has found expression, literally speaking beside his official Peking, Sea Palace gardens.existence. Both parks are manifestations of artistic conceptions ^^ ^ ^ 40.000.

zvard. Compare p. i.just as divergent as Chinese and French painting were aroundthe year 1700. 20


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THE GRANDPERSPECTIVE

Landscape drazving hyClaude horrain.

Chinese landscape draiving

30

The Chinese paints almost as he writes. Just as he adds onecharacter under another from top to bottom and lets each onemean a word or an idea, he paints one neat detail under theother and everyone understands that that which is painted atthe top is that which is farthest away and that which is at thebottom is nearest to the observer. A French landscape drawingfrom the Versailles period, just like the Chinese, depicts lakesand mountains and human figures. But the landscape is seenstretching away behind the trees not, as in the Chinese picture,above them. A native of China would think it very wrong thatthe trees are shown becoming smaller and smaller the fartheraway they stand when everybody knows that they are more orless the same size. He would not understand this magical draw-ing in which everything not only loses in height in the back-ground but also becomes lighter in colour until it almostvanishes in the airy silhouette of the farthest mountain. In theChinese picture there are, quite logically, only two dimensionspaper is, after all, flat. The European picture gives the impres-sion of a third dimension. The Chinese neither sees nor thinksin perspective.No human being is born with the ability to experience the

world around him in perspectives despite the fact that thepicture which the retina of the eye receives is in perspective.If you stand in a street looking at a row of lamp-posts, theimage on the retina will be in diminishing sizes, the nearestlamp-post largest, the most distant smallest. But you will not


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be fooled by this. You realize that they are all of the same THE GRANDsize and that they stand behind each other. The discovery that PERSPECTIVEan impression of perspective depth can be given by depictingthings in gradually diminishing sizes revolutionized the art ofreproducing that which is seen. This revolution in pictorial artoccurred in Europe around 1400 but it never influenced China.European artists were so absorbed by it that they began to seethe world around them in an entirely new light and it not onlyinfluenced their painting but also their idea of how buildingsshould be formed in relation to each other. The vista in town-planning came into existence.

In his theoretical work on Geometry and PerspectiveAlbrecht Diirer has given a very clear description of the newtheory. From various points on the mandolin to be sketched astring is drawn to a nail in the wall. From points at whichthe string intersects a plane determined by a frame, thedistances to the edge of the fram.e are measured and markedoff on a piece of paper, as shov/n in the illustration below.In this way a number of fixed points in the picture to be drawnare established. One can continue adding new points until anoutline drawing in correct perspective is obtained.

This was a discovery Now, 3-diraensional figures could beproduced without having to model them, simply by drawingand painting them. It became a veritable sport to make themstatuesque like real sculpture. It was not only possible to givethe impression that they stood forth quite freely in space and

The theory of perspectiveillustrated in wood-cut byAlbrecht Diirer.


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Architectonic hachgroundfrom a viural painting hyPinturicchio in the library atSiena. Painted betzueen 1502and 1507.

The Tessin palace, Stockholm,1694 gy. Court looking to-ward pavilion at rear. Thelarge colonnade seen at thetop is only ostensibly verydeep. Actually it is quiteshalloiu hut the columns indiminishing si-zes give asplendid illusion of perspec-tive depth.

32

formed on all sides, but it was even possible to composearchitectural settings around them. Fantastical Renaissancebuildings consisting only of colonnades and loggias and pavedcourts, which would be completely absurd as actual buildings,were given a sort of reality in the frescoes of the great painters.These decorations were employed to break through the wallsof existing rooms, so to speak, so that they seemed to open onto the imaginary courts through whose arches and colonnadesvistas of distant landscapes could be enjoyed. Ceilings were alsopainted with scenes which gave the illusion of openings to theskies, openings surrounded by balustrades over which happymortals smiled down on the observer. In churches that couldnot afford real cupolas, paintings were carried out on the flatceiling which, when seen from certain points on the floor, gavea perfect illusion of a domed roof. For great religious dramasscenery was painted in the form of grand architectural com-positions in which the stories of the New Testament could beperformed in appropriately magnificent settings.

In the courtyard of the Palazzo Spada in Rome an archi-tectural jest is found in the form of a colonnade so skilfullyconstructed of columns in diminishing sizes that though actu-ally very short it seems to extend quite a distance. The Swedisharchitect, Nicodemus Tessin, the Younger, in the same wayimproved the shallow depth of the grounds on which hishouse in Stockholm is built by erecting at the end of thecourtyard a pavilion with a large colonnade at the top whichgives sham perspective to the grounds.

It was possible to make a small stage seem large and even tomake the flattest wall appear to be a space of great depth bypainting pictures on it. But there was one problem which hadnot yet been solved. When great perspective depth really ex-isted, when there was a great vista, a very deep square, a longstreet, what could be done to give the observer a feeling ofdepth as great as it really was ? If you look through a colonnadewith many hundreds of columns those nearest you will clearlyindicate the depth of the foreground but as j^our eyes travelfurther along they will quickly reach the point where the per-spective diminution is so great that the columns seem to meltinto each other and you no longer receive any real impressionof depth. To enhance the effect produced by the more distant


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objects they must somehow or other be brought out of line.Due to the fact that it is curved, the colonnade around thePiazza di S. Pietro in Rome has a splendour and depth neverfound in a straight one. By comparing the large details of thenearest columns with the more distant, which are drawn intothe field of vision for comparison, it becomes evident that thepiazza is, indeed, a very large one. Standing inside the colon-nade, itself, you see the same column steadily repeated at dif-ferent angles and in varying shades of light until the colonnadecurves away out of sight. During several centuries curved col-onnades were a favourite feature of grandiose and extravagant

The colonnade around Piazzadi S. Pietro in Rome, erectedi6s6 1663. Designed by Lo-renzo Bernini.See plan p. 54.

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Landscape etching hy ClaudeLorrain. In the foregrounddistinct details in strong darkcolours. A road and a bridgelead to the middle groundwith the large tree. Behindit the sea and distant moun-tains.

See draiving p. 144.

Etched sketch by Claude Lor-

34

architecture. They framed the squares in front of palaces. Oneof the last times the curved colonnade was used m the grandmanner was at the beginning of the 19th century when Lon-don's shopping district, Regent Street, was built. But evenwithout columns the concave house-row is beautiful becauseevery detail stands out so distinctly. The distant houses, whichwould be indistinguishable in a straight row, turn more andmore toward the observer so that each one is easily perceived.A broad avenue of trees which cuts a straight path throughthe landscape has a much more striking effect when it mountsin the distance so that the length of the road becomes morediscernible. Strongest of all, however, is the effect produced byterminating the vista with a great monument where the land-scape begins to merge into the blue sky. This was understoodby Louis XIV's famous landscape gardener, Le Notre, who laidout the Champs Elysees as a grand avenue leading from thelimits of old Paris to a distant hill. Also Napoleon I realized itwhen he began the erection of a gigantic triumphal arch on thathill. No real impression of this vast landscape could be obtain-ed if the mile-long avenue did not lead to that clear goal.Through paintings and theatre decorations the European

was taught to look for depth effects in what he saw. Nothingwas considered correctly formed or beautiful unless it stoodforth distinctly as though on a stage with scenery and set piecesat well-defined distances from the eye. The best results wereobtained when the composition could be built up from an ab-


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Etching ivith harbour tnoti'veby Claude Lorrain.

solutely horizontal plane. Harbour paintings with buildingsand long jetties ending in distant towers were popular back-drops for stage settings; they were also a favourite subject ofthe famous French artist, Claude Lorrain (i 600-1682), whosework, more than that of any other painter, determined thecourse of European landscape painting over a long period.Claude Lorrain's landscapes lead the eye into the depth fromone guide-post to another. He knew that it was not enoughto construct perspective properly, it must also be properly ac-centuated. Not until then did it become grand perspective.Over his firm and well-planned compositions he poured hispoetry in the form of classically draped figures, agitated tree-tops and the golden light of sunsets. At a later date landscapepainters commonly made their pictures even more poetic, moreromantic, by depicting the buildings in ruins half hidden underwild and luxuriant flora. When Claude Lorrain used treesin his landscapes they were placed just as deliberately as thebuildings to act as guide-posts to the perspective depth. Oftena single tree stands in the middle ground of the picture to serveas a measuring rod for the strong perspective diminution of thebackground and thereby increases the feeling of spaciousness.This singly placed tree, the solitary tree , is found again inEnglish parks where an attempt has been made to bring ClaudeLorrain's heroic landscape to life. These landscaped gardenswere laid out for Englishmen who had learned to appreciateart and nature on the grand tour through France and Italy.

-^ -^f.;''^^^ ^^^^3^^^^^^K''-^ ^^^^?/^m^^^P

fijfc '^-' ^^S^^^^^^^^p^^S^^^^sEtched sketch by Clauderain.

Lor-

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THE GRANDPERSPECTIVE i^WjiWrT^W^^^^^P^^^^^^^^^

Prior Park, near Bath, Eng-land. The park seen from themanor-house.

36

Just outside the handsome town of Bath in west Englandthere lies an old manor, Prior Park , set in grounds ofunique beauty. If you come there at evening when the sunpours its shimmering golden rays among the trees, you feel asthough you had stepped directly into one of Claude Lorrain'slandscapes. The park is formed around a long, sloping dale.On the horizon you see the blue hill slopes which surroundBath on all sides. At the bottom of the dale, which lies entirelyin shadow, a motionless pond mirrors the light evening sky.Down there stands an artistic covered bridge with Ionic col-umns supporting the roof, a Palladian bridge, just such apiece of architecture as is found in stage settings. Functionallyit is meaningless. There is absolutely no need of a bridge therebecause one can easily go around the pond ; and there is evenless use for a roof over the bridge and, if one inust have a roof,it certainly could be raised less expensively than on a wholerow of columns. Its mission is exclusively an aesthetic one. Itis to produce a picturesque effect with its light arches andcolumns reflected in the water. Seen from the bottom of thedale it is an effective foreground, a piece of scenery correspond-ing to the background : the house with its classical portico. Andseen from the house it is one of the many perspective guide-posts which emphasize the depth : first the balustrades andvases of the terrace stairway, then the solitary tree, and stillfurther back the columns of the Palladian bridge, finally theborder of trees around the park and at the horizon the silhou-ette of the mountains.

Practically every one of the effects that had been tested inpaintings and theatre decorations were carried out in the


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THE GRANDP ERS P ECTIVE

Prior Park, near Bath, Eng-land. The manor-house seenfrom the Palladian bridge.

great palace grounds, in town-planning and in landscape gard-ening of the 17th and i8th centuries. It was in keeping withAbsolutism. Perspective is a central projection, that is to saya form of representation whereby all parts are determined bytheir relation to one point, all is centralized. But it was notAbsolutism that created this conception of art. It already ex-isted. Absolutism utilized what it found for its own purposes.The Middle Ages knew only parallel projection in whichequally large elements are represented equally large. Medievaltowns were conceived in parallel projection, a simple co-ordi-nation of the elements of the town. This was quite expedientin colonial cities, new settlements where a certain numberof families were to have equally large houses on sites of equalsize. But Imperial Peking, the capital of autocratic China, wasalso planned in parallel projection. No account was taken ofhow the whole would look seen from one spot. In Versaillesthere was. This is also true of Amaliegade in Copenhagen, the See drazving page 137 andstreet in which Harsdorff's colonnade terminates its length, '^-brings the sidewalks to an end and, at the same time, framesthe view of Saly's fine equestrian statue in the centre of thespacious Amalienborg Square.Thus the grand perspective effects were still utilized in

the Neo-Classic architecture at the end of the i8th century.Indeed, they were not yet forgotten as late as the year igoo.The French architect, Le Corbusier, who, before all others,is rightly regarded as the representative of Functionalism,utilized in his early town-planning projects great symmetricalaxes and even bizarre arches to frame street vistas. But theseprojects were not to be characteristic either of him or of the nj


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THE GRAND endeavours of modern times. It seems as though the art ofPERSPECTIVE painting has exhausted all the possibilities offered by paintingin perspective and that novi^ it aims at broadening our com-prehension along other lines. It works less with three-dimen-sional bodies in clearly defined space than with the possibilitiesof colour on the picture surface itself, within the limits of theframe. From this work completely new ideals have arisen thatalso affect architecture which now is more spontaneous, work-ing less with the vistas houses can form than with the housesthemselves.

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ROME, THE ETERNAL CITYAfter spending several days amidst the noise and dirt of the

seaport of Naples, it is a relief to come back to Rome. It is likereturning home. There is something gentle about the Romanswhich, I believe, can be found only in a city with a greathistory, a city that does not live by trade and industry alone.The Romans stand for something of great value, for somethingindispensable, which gives them dignity and makes it easy forthem to be amiable and sympathetic towards others. The in-habitants of Peking are very much the same. They, too, arerepresentatives of an ancient culture.There were times during the Middle Ages when relics of

ancient Rome were destroyed simply because they were pagan.But with the Renaissance came a tremendous enthusiasm forclassical art and architecture. Without in any way turningtheir palaces into museums the Roman aristocracy began col-lecting antique sculpture. They looked on these ancient statuessimply as works of art that would decorate their courtyardsand halls. Dilapidated statues were restored to look like new 39


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ROME, THEETERNAL CITY

The Colosseum lying amongrubble heaps and simple hutsat the beginning of the 17 thcentury.

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and set up as the owners imagined the artists had intendedbetween classical columns. The distinctive features of the newstone palaces vaulted entrance halls, colonnaded courtyards,imposing stone staircases, and regular, high-ceilinged rooms were carried out with great architectural effect. The Romansdid not look for comfort and conveniences in their homes.Such pieces of furniture as armchairs and sofas were entirelyunknown. The cool marble of the classical sculpture struckthe keynote. The Romans wanted to live in the grand mannerof the statuesque figures of the half-visionary architecture ofperspective paintings.The popes realized that by protecting and preserving the

antique marbles, by displaying them advantageously, they couldgive an added nimbus to the holy city. Sixtus IV (i 471- 1487)began inaking a collection of antiques on Capitoline Hill. Thiswas done quite independently of the work on the great churchesand the papal palaces. Since Antiquity, the Capitol had been themost renowned of the seven famous hills on which Rome wasbuilt. The Capitol, which had been the seat of the Romangoverning body, the Senate, was the very heart of the city. Torestore its eminence would be to underline Rome's illustrioushistory. Actually, it was not so much the artistic value of thestatuary that interested Sixtus IV as the fact that it representedthe glory that had been Rome's. After his death other popescontinued to add to the collection on the hill. Statues of allkinds were brought there intimate subjects like the famousThorn Remover, statues like the two colossal reclining rivergods, symbolic works like the bronze she-wolf, supposed to bethe very she-wolf that had suckled Romolus and Remus, thefounders of Rome. But there was no plan either in the arrange-ment of the sculpture or in the formation of the hill untilPaul III became pope in 1534.Rome must have been a strange city in those days large

in area within the ancient walls but with few inhabitants, sothat many desolate stretches surrounded the few occupieddistricts. In 1527 Rome had been sacked by Charles de Bour-bon. In 1530 it had a population of probably no more than30,000 within walls built to protect a city of a million. In thisvast, almost empty wilderness the effect of the great monu-ments of Antiquity the Pantheon, the Colosseum and many


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other awe-inspiring ruins, must have been so much the moreoverwhelming. Everywhere in the shapeless mounds of earthone stumbled over columns and venerable brickwork from thegreat and glorious past. Among these pagan ruins later gener-ations had erected the churches that became the goal of pil-grims from all over the Christian world. And now a newmonumental city began to rise out of the ruins, a sequel toancient Rome. In 1506 the foundation stone was laid for thenew cathedral of S. Peter which was to replace the medievalone. From now on, plans were laid that would take gener-ations to carry out. The great masters of architecture, Bra-mante, Raphael, Michelangelo, and the others, waded aroundin the rubble heaps of Rome and died long before they couldsee their magnificent projects completed.

During the papacy of Paul III (i 534-1 549) plans werefinally made for the creation of a monumental square onCapitoline Hill. It began, characteristically enough, with theplacing of the antique bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius therein 1538. Michelangelo, himself, superintended its erection andhe not only designed the pedestal for the statue but also drewthe plans for the entire piazza and the buildings that were toframe it. Then, slowly over a period of several hundredyears his great plan was carried out. The Marcus Aureliuswas the only equestrian statue from imperial Rome still inexistence. Quite accidentally, or, rather, through an error, ithad been preserved. When during the Middle Ages the otherstatues had been destroyed as pagan, this one had been sparedbecause it was believed to represent the Christian emperor,Constantine the Great. In 1538 its true identity was knownbut now people were interested in it first and foremost as agreat work of art, admired by art lovers, copied by sculptors.Where the statue stood in ancient Rome is not known. In

the Middle Ages it had been placed projecting from a cornerof the Lateran, a setting characteristic of the period. At thattime sculpture was treated as part of the building and if itstood alone, it w^as placed as though under the protection of thebuilding, close to its walls. With the erection of MarcusAurelius on Capitoline Hill a new practice was inaugurated.Michelangelo placed the statue so that it would stand in thecentre of the new piazza to be laid out there.


About the Capitol of Romesee : The Town Planning Re-viezv Vol. XII 1927 p. IS7zvitli excellent notes p. lyi.

See also : Michelangelo Ar-chitetto by Armando Sckiavo.Roma 1949, fig. 50 j6 (withEnglish text).

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The Capita piaxxa duringreconstruction, after a draw-ing by Heemskerck. In themiddle is seen the Pala-zxodel Senatore. Michelangelo Vdouble stairway is finishedand the equestrian statue inplace. To the right is thePalace of the Conservatoribefore remodelling.

Palazxo del Senatore beforeremodelling, after an olddrawing. It is seen from theside. At left, thefacadefac-ing the neiu piaxxa. Thebuilding is seen zvith cornerturrets and a high centraltozver with loopholes as in amedieval stronghold.

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Old drawings show that the Capitol was just as disorderlyas so many other places in Rome. The famous hill had no form.It had been plowed up by horsemen and weeds and bushes grewat random over the uneven terrain. Out of the ruin heaps rosethe old Palazzo del Senatorej built over the remains of antiquewalls, in the form of a medieval town hall, a robber-baronstronghold with corner turrets and parapets and a high centraltower. Besides the Senators' Palace there was another officialbuilding, the Palazzo del Conservatori, also quite medieval.The two buildings were placed so that they formed a rathersharp angle at one corner.Out of this picturesque confusion Michelangelo planned to

create rigorous architectonic unity. The irregular hill-top wasto become a platform, a lofty stone-paved terrace approachedby a long flight of stairs. The houses were to be remodelled inthe same spirit. The Senators' Palace which, with its towersand parapets, produced a decided impression of verticality, wasto be remodelled to form a continuation of the terrace-like com-position with a large double staircase leading from the level ofthe square up to that of the great hall. There, a powerful stringcourse, marking the floor plan on the fagade, would produce aneffect of horizontality further accentuated by a great crowningcornice. Also the central tower would be divided up horizont-ally and the corner turrets would be taken up in the mass of thebuilding, losing their independent existence to become, simply,projecting end bays. The first to be constructed was the impos-ing outside stairway to the bari'el-vaulted hall. Thus, a fittingbackground was quickly obtained for the Marcus Aurelius,


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later (not until about 1600) to include the entire buildingwhich, with its projecting end bays, seems to form a large nichefor the famous equestrian statue. The Conservator's Palace,to the right of the entrance to the piazza, was also completelyremodelled (finished before Michelangelo's death in 1564).The twin building to the left, the Capitoline Museum whichhouses the Roman antiques, was not finished until 1655.The design of the piazza indicated a decisive break with

the town-planning ideas of the Renaissance as laid down in theideal plans of the theorists. Their piazzi always form regular,geometric figures: circles, quadrangles, hexagons, octagons,and they are always designed as independent units, the sameon all sides. The Capitol piazza is a trapezoid, which, however,is of no great importance in this connection. It became atrapezoid simply because the walls of the tM^o remodelled build-ings formed, as has been noted, a sharp angle at one corner.But when you stand in it the piazza seems to be rectangular, soskilfully has the irregularity been counteracted by the patternof the pavement a large oval with lines radiating from thestatue, fashioned of light-coloured stone. No, the crucial differ-ence is that Michelangelo's square is not in itself a handsome,well-rounded figure but that it consists of a number ofelements, each of which derives its value from its relation tothe rest. Like a stage, the piazza has an opening and a back-ground. There is a crescendo rising from the base of the ap-proach to the top of the Senate tower. Corresponding to thisare the colossal pilasters of the two flanking palaces risingfrom the pavement all the way up to the great crowning


The Capitol piaxxa dur'mgreconstruction, after a draw-ing by Heemskerck. At rightPalaxxo del Senatore luithjSlichelangelo 'j imposingstaircase. In the centre isseen the great pilgrimagechurch, Sta. Maria in Ara-coeli, zuhich later was hid-den by the Capitoline Mu-

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Plan of Rome's Capitol, scaleI : 2000. Beloiv, the greatramp leading tip to the piaz-za. At right, the Palace ofthe Conservatori, at left, theCapitoline JMuseuvi. Backcentre, Palazxo del Senatore.

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dishevelled hill, the Capitol, has been conquered. Not in thesense of levelling its steep gradients. On the contrary, theywere given form, transformed into an imposing flight ofstairs, magnificent as cascades. The horizontal planes havebeen emphasized, the hill divided into mounting levels andmade even higher by the buildings so that it seems to drawitself up proudly before your eyes. It has been made a monu-ment to Rome, itself, the city that was once the mighty heartof a world empire and later the mother of the holy Romanchurch, the centre of learning and art.The new Capitol won admiration and fame. Engravers

spread views of it all over the world. But it cannot be seenin one picture. It is necessary to stroll about on it, toexperience ascending the ramp, la Cordonata, to the summitwhere serene peace reigns. It is only a small square, smallenough to be completely dominated by the equestrian statueon its low base. From the colonnades one should wander intothe courtyards of the palaces, where the same dimensions arerepeated, into the buildingswhere the antique sculpture is set up.


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Capitol Square in Rome. Centre, Palaxzo del Senatore, at right, The Palace of the Conservatori, at left, Capitoline Aduseum.

Capitol Square in Rome, seen from foot of the ramp leading up to pia%%a. 47


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ROET ME, THE More than a hundred years before the introduction of theERNAL CITY absolute monarchy in France an artist conceived this square,conceived an artistic form which seemingly was created for theglorification of kings.With the grand perspective and with Baroque architecture two things closely related motifs were given which the

absolute monarchy could use, and which, today, seem insep-arably bound up with Absolutism.Rome was not satisfied with this one great monument. An

effort was made to draw great lines through the whole vastcity by laying out a new network of streets. Sixtus V was popefor only five years, from 1585 to 1590, but in that short timehe accomplished wonders. He not only busied himself withforeign politics and brought order in the finances, but he alsofinished the dome of S. Peter's, gave the city decent drinkingwater, and marked out the main points of the great networkof streets he had planned. This remarkable man, w^hc hadbegun life as a poor country lad, a shepherd boy, was to domore for the great city of Rome than anyone else. His namefigures in all the great plans that were to change the face ofthe city. That this was at all possible is undoubtedly due tothe fact that much of this work had been prepared before hebecame pope and much of it was continued after his death.The matter of the drinking water was a very important one.

In ancient times the city had been well supplied w4th pure coldwater that was brought to Rome from the mountains through adozen aqueducts. But these were now in ruins and the Romanswere forced to drink the much less palatable water of theTiber. In 15 70 one of the ancient aqueducts had been repaired.Under Sixtus V another was put in order and in 161 1 a thirdwas made to function again. Once more Rome had pure water.This was not only a sanitary improvement. It resulted in suchan abundance of sparkling spring water that it could be usedfor fountains and rippling cascades all over the sun-parchedcity. The water from Sixtus V's aqueduct, Acqua Felice, fedthe magnificent fountain, Fontanone dell'Acqua Felice. (Theoriginal name of Sixtus V was Felice Peretti.)

Every square received its fountain, and through the centuriesartists created new variations of the same theme : rippling,splashing water, whether jetting forth from sculptured groups


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set up amidst the columns of the many decorative fagades or ROME, THEfrom single fountains, embellished with tritons and river gods, ETERNAL CITYstanding in the centres of squares. The sound of hundreds ofplaying fountains became the melody of Rome, faintly audiblebehind the loud noise of the city by day, clearly heard at nightwhen the great metropolis lay in hushed tranquillity.Though Sixtus V did not live long enough actually to build

the great new thoroughfares that were to change Rome froma small medieval town with a maze of streets to a city of greatvistas, he at any rate clearly marked out where they were tostart and where they were to end. He did this with obelisksand columns. The obelisk, the tall, slender, almost square stonepillar, slightly tapering toward the top and terminated by a s ee .- How Pope Sixtus v lostpyramidion, originated in Egypt and, in Rome's case, actually ^ ^'' '^> ^y J.A.F.Orhaan.

r , /-T^i - 1 1- I / 1 n I The Tozun Planniiipr Reviewcame from there. 1 he Egypti

towns buildings de 00 ras m

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