THOMAS GORDON CULLEN

Thomas Gordon Cullen (9 August 1914 – 11 August 1994) was an influential

British architect and urban designer who was a key motivator in the Townscape movement.
Cullen presented a new theory and methodology for urban visual analysis and design based
on the psychology of perception, such as on the human need for visual stimulation and the
notions of time and space.

He is best known for the book Townscape, first published in 1961. Later editions
of Townscape were published under the title The Concise Townscape.

Cullen was born in Calverley, Pudsey, near Leeds, Yorkshire, England. He studied
architecture at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, the present day University of Westminster,
and subsequently worked as a draughtsman in various architects' offices including that
of Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton, but he never qualified or practised as an architect.
Between 1944 and 1946 he worked in the planning office of the Development and Welfare
Department in Barbados, as his poor eyesight meant that he was unfit to serve in the British
armed forces.
He later returned to London and joined the Architectural Review journal, first as a
draughtsman and then as a writer on planning policies. There he produced a large number
of influential editorials and case studies on the theory of planning and the design of towns.
Many improvements in the urban and rural environment in Britain during the 1950s and
1960s. He was also involved in the Festival of Britain in 1951. One of the few large scale
Cullen works on public display is the mural in the foyer of the Erno
Goldfinger designed Greenside Primary School in west London, completed in 1953. His
1958 ceramic mural in Coventry, depicting the history of the City and its post-war
regeneration, is on a much grander scale though now relocated away from its original central
location
His techniques consisted largely of sketchy drawings that conveyed a particularly clear
understanding of his ideas, and these had a considerable influence on subsequent
architectural illustration styles. He also illustrated several books by other various authors,
before writing his own book - based on the idea of Townscape - in 1961. The Concise
Townscape has subsequently been republished around 15 times, proving to be one of the
most popular books on Urban Design in the 20th Century.
In 1956 Cullen became a freelance writer and consultant and, in the years immediately
following he advised the cities of Liverpool and Peterborough on their reconstruction and
redevelopment plans.
In 1960 he was invited to India to advise on the planning aspects of the Ford Foundation's
work in New Delhi and Calcutta and so in 1962 he and his family lived in India for 6 months
while he worked on the projects. Later, his work included planning advice to the city
of Glasgow and during the 1980s the London Docklands Development Corporation.
For a while Cullen teamed up with a student, David Price, and they formed an architectural
firm together - Price & Cullen. They won a competition in London in the 1980s and together
designed and oversaw the building of the Swedish Quays housing development in
Docklands. They worked together until 1990
Cullen lived in the small village of Wraysbury (Berkshire) from 1958 until his death, aged 80,
on 11 August 1994, following a serious stroke. After his passing, David Gosling and Norman
Foster collected various examples of his work and put them together in the book "Visions of
Urban Design".

“Serial Vision” By Gordon Cullen

Gordon Cullen, the humanist and urbanist designer, first published his seminal work
“Townscape” in 1961, and a concise version of it was published ten years later.
Cullen liked to call his theory and approach to understanding and manipulating the elements
of townscape an “Environment Game.”
He presented his discovery of humanistic urban design in three “gateways”: Motion (Serial
Vision), Position (Here and There), and Content (This and That).
A detailed review of the entire Townscape treatise is not intended here but a short revisit of
the serial vision.
In concerning “Optics,” Cullen calls a series of “jerks or revelations” that we may experience
when walking through a town or city at a uniform speed as Serial Vision.
He considers that a town can become visible in a deeper sense if vivid contrasts can be felt,
as “the human mind reacts to the difference between things,” or “the drama of juxtaposition”
Cullen believes that cities should be designed from the point of view of moving people since
residents “apprehend urban environments through kinesthetic experience”
Gordon Cullen also raised the idea of “Serial Vision”, which means people can experience a
revelation of views while walking along the streets at a uniform pace.

“Serial vision is to walk from one end of the plan to another, at a uniform pace, will provide a
sequence of revelation which are suggested in the serial drawings opposite, reading left to
right”.

Cullen’s work shows how movements can be read as pictorial sequence. How the perception
of time passing and distance travelled differs from the reality.
Figure 1: Serial vision

Cullen’s idea really changed thoughts on urban planning. In reality, cities should be
designed basing on the view of people who live there. A successfully designed city should
provide the residents with joy and revelation along the streets. Serial vision brings city back
to health.

Cullen’s technique of “serial vision” identified and categorized aesthetic components of the
city, documenting the dynamic interplay between the collective form and the space it
occupies.

Cullen’s approach emphasized the importance of the personal and collective visual
experience, theorizing that this form of information plays a central role in creating a vital,
vivid and successful city.

Cullen theorized that the urban landscape consisted of a series of related tangible
(aesthetic) and intangible spaces (meaning of the aesthetic) and proposed that the
architect/planner will produce a more meaningfully design if they understand the relationship
between the two.
The Concise Townscape explores the experiential relationship between the resident and the
city, classifying this relationship into three categories: optics, place and content.

Cullen describes optics as the concept of “serial vision” in which movement at a “uniform
speed” through a city both embraces an “existing view” and hints at possible “emerging
views” down a winding road or through a courtyard .

Cullen theorized that these classifications help to better understand the urban form, and,
moreover, that their use demonstrates the potential of non-traditional resources
(architectural detail, natural features, enclosures, relationships and scale) for informing a
plan-making process that is sensitive to residential desires and respectful of the character of
the space.

Optics: What Gordon Cullen calls “Serial Vision” or “Sequential Experience” is a series of
sudden contrasts, which he describes as the existing and emerging views. This sequential
progress is characterized by extreme organic networks formed by the shape and location of
buildings and the fine grain structure that has a high number of connections. These
connections can enhance the physical permeability of the whole urban form.

Place: This concept deals with a person’s reaction for the position of his body in the
environment. Cullen has adopted several main topics related to this theme such as:
Possession, Vista and Feeling of the user, the observation made was that it seems like
courtyards have the quality of being enclosed, which creates a sense of belonging. In
addition, the seemingly enclosed narrow compact streets give the feeling of being in a
private space, which provides more social and spatial relations between people
Differentiating between public and private spaces is considered one of the features that
characterize the urban pattern by providing a hierarchal sequence between public, semi-
public and private spaces. Place is “concerned with our reactions to the position of our body
in its environment”. This locational awareness allows the resident to identify and sympathize
with the environment and facilitates meaningful navigation through the “here” and “there”
structures of the city.

Content: This topic deals with the fabric’s physical appearance in terms of colour, texture,
character, style, scale and uniqueness. Cullen has adopted the concept of “Seeing in Detail”
to examine the fabric’s content. This could be observed through, the placement different
buildings with variations in size and height is considered a form of detailing. On the other
hand, the existence of multi-use buildings which forms a community is a concept to be
examined under the topic of content. Content refers to the aesthetic of place that contains
visual organization through “colour, texture, scale, style, character, personality and
uniqueness”.