The City Represented - The View from the Car

Seminar (052-0828-21)
Organizer: Chair of Prof. Avermaete
Lecturers: Dr. Marianna Charitonidou, Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete
Time: FS 2021, Thursdays, 4.00 - 6:00 pm
Location: Online (and HPT C 103) on the 25.02. / 04.03. / 11.03. / 18.03. / 01.04. / 15.04. / 22.04. / 29.04. / 06.05. / 20.05.
 

Zoom links for the participation to the seminar will be provided ASAP.

  1. Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, Architects and Planners California City General Plan California City, California 1970-71, not implemented
  2. Robert Venturi, John Rauch and DeniseScott Brown Architects and Planners. Signs of Life: Symbols in the American City Renwick Gallery, Washington D.C. 1974-76. Themes & Ideals of the American Suburb Exhibit panel. Credit Line: Venturi, Scott Brown Collecti
  3. Kevin Lynch, “Some Major Problems, Boston,” Perceptual Form of the City, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute Archives and Special Collections, http://hdl.handle.net/1721.3/36515.
  4. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour Learning from Las Vegas Studio Fall 1968
  5. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour Learning from Las Vegas First edition, 1972
  6. The City Represented - The View from the Car


Course Description



Abstract
The automobile has reshaped our conceptions of space and our modes of accessing and penetrating the urban and non-urban territory, revolutionizing how architects perceive the city and contributing significantly to the transformation of the relationship between architecture and urban space. The seminar examines architects’ automobile vision.

Objectives of the seminar
The main objective of the seminar is to help students understand how the automobile influenced architects’ perception of the environment and how its generalized use provoked the emergence of new theoretical concepts and eventually led to new design perspectives. It aims to untie the specificity of car travel as a new episteme of the urban landscape. One of the main learning objectives will be to help students understand that the emergence of the generalised use of the car is related not only to a new epistemological regime, but also to a new representational regime. The latter, which relies upon photography, film, new modes of visual mapping and particular diagrams, serves to capture this new epistemological regime. The seminar will make students aware that there is an agency and an intentionality behind this new representational regime. The themes addressed will be grouped per means of visualization including three sections: “Drawing and the View from the Car”, “Photography and the View from the Car”, and “Film and the View from the Car”. A fourth section will concern “Cross-Fertilization between the View from the Car and Design Strategies”. The structure of the seminar is organized in clusters of architects that were interested in similar questions related to the emergence of the new perceptual regime due to the generalized use of the car.
This seminar will help students understand the difference between capturing and interpreting reality when one films or photographs during a car trip. It will help students realize that each of these modes of representation is based on a different way of retrieving an experience later on. By the end of the course, the students will be able to argue why, when we decide to represent an experience of the city and more specifically a trajectory which is based on the sequential experience of landscape in a specific way, we make choices about what we extract from reality. These choices are based on what we consider to be the most important features of an urban landscape and depends on our own values and methods regarding not only the interpretation of architecture but also the strategies of intervention on a given site. By the end of the seminar, the students will acquire the skill of achieving the best possible alignment between what they consider to be the most important characteristics and the means for representing them.
In parallel, by the end of the teaching process, the students will be able to explain why the choice of specific fragments of reality and the ways in which we relate them goes hand in hand with the taxonomies we wish to build while narrating an experience of driving through a landscape. They will also be expected to understand that there is a tension between stimulation and documentation and that the quick change of views while driving though a landscape promotes a ‘snapshot aesthetics’ and connects to memory in a different way based on the superimposition and juxtaposition of visual impressions. The objective is to help students realise that even if we intend to focus on the same features of reality each mode of representation is characterised by a capacity to focus on certain aspects of reality. Focusing of the analysis of the different modes of representation, the seminar will help students become aware that when one chooses a means of representation over another, one is setting priorities.

Content of the seminar
An important component of the course will be the exploration of the interconnection between theory and architectural design practice. In parallel, the analysis of the connections between epistemological regimes and representational regimes will help them become aware of the intentionality characterizing the use of specific modes of representation. The seminar will also aim to help students understand how to choose the mode of representation that most efficiently promotes their architectural and urban design objectives. Special attention will be paid to the improvement of their skills in elaborating concepts coming from the history and theory of architecture and urban design for self-analysing their design processes, and to the enhancement of interactive learning through the organisation of several sessions of peer feedback on the texts, drawings and photographs produced by the students.
Telling regarding the understanding of car travel as a new episteme is Reyner Banham’s following remark, in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies: “like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original, I had to learn to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original” [1]. During the second half of the 20th century, architects became increasingly aware of the impact of the car. Particular emphasis will be placed on the fact that the new perceptual regime related to its generalised use became more apparent within the American context. Some seminal books in which this becomes evident are Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch, and John Myer’s The View from the Road (1964), Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), and Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972). For instance, in the latter, it becomes evident that one cannot make sense of Las Vegas by walking. Special attention will be paid to the analysis of cases that demonstrate that the view from the car as a new perceptual regime, instead of functioning simply as a tool serving to document visual impressions during travel, plays an important role in shaping the architects’ own architectural and urban design strategies.

Throughout the seminar the students will work collaboratively in order to contribute to the production of an exhibition entitled “The View from the Car: Autopia as a New Perceptual Regime”, which will be displayed at the gta exhibitions foyer space from 29 March 2021 through the end of spring semester 2021. An ensemble of exercises that will be held every two sessions will help students get familiarized with the theoretical concepts and the modes of representation analysed in the seminar. A booklet published at the end of the seminar will bring together the outcomes of these different exercises. The final presentation of the seminar will take place within the exhibition space and will be accompanied by the feedback of a jury consisting of different professors from the school.

Structure of the seminar



Drawing and the view from the car

Seminar 1, 25.02.2021
Kevin Lynch, Donald Appleyard and John Myer’s Mapping Strategies: Cognitive Maps

Seminar 2, 04.03.2021
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour’s Diagrams: The Specificity of the American Urban and the View from the Car

Seminar 3 - 11.03.2021
Ian Nairn and Gordon Cullen’s “serial vision”, Outrage and subtopia
Crit with Dr. Irina Davidovici

Photography and the view from the car

Seminar 4 - 18.03.2021
John Lautner’s residences as equivalents of cameras: The
‘autophotographic grasp’

Seminar 5 - 01.04.2021
The “as found” and the act of capturing very materiality of
the artefacts through street photography

Seminar 6 - 15.04.2021
Aldo Rossi’s act of taking photographs from the car: Shaping
mental maps of the cities
Crit with Fredi Fischli & Niels Olsen

Film and the view from the car

Seminar 7 - 22.04.2021
Kevin Lynch’s “View from The Road”

Seminar 8 - 29.04.2021
Reyner Banham’s “Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles” & Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s “Deadpan”

Seminar 9 - 06.05.2021
The cross-fertilization between the view from the car and the design strategies
Crit with Dr. Hans Teerds

Seminar 10 - 20.05.2021
Final presentations of students

Lecture notes


A printed syllabus and a handout including the visual and textual material to be investigated during the seminar will be provided in the first seminar class. Weekly assigned readings will be provided in digital form. Additional readings will be put on reserve in the library.


Schedule


General Readings


1 THE DRAWING & THE VIEW FROM THE CAR

25.02. Seminar 1
1.1 Compulsory Readings


04.03. Seminar 2
1.2 Compulsory Readings
Scott Brown, Denise, “Learning from Pop,”  in Casabella, nos 359–360 (1971), 15-19.
Stierli, Martino, “In Sequence: Cinematic Perception in Learning from Las Vegas,”  in Hunch 12 (2009), 76-85.

1.2 Further Readings



11.03. Seminar 3
1.3 Compulsory Reading

1.3 Further Reading



2 PHOTOGRAPHY & THE VIEW FROM THE CAR

18.03. Seminar 4
2.1 Compulsory Reading

2.1 Further Reading


01.04. Seminar 5
2.2 Compulsory Reading

2.2 Further Reading


15.04. Seminar 6
2.3 Compulsory Reading

2.3 Further Reading




3 THE FILM & THE VIEW FROM THE CAR

22.04. Seminar 7
3.1 Compulsory Reading
  • Appleyard, Donald, Kevin Lynch, John Myer, The View from the Road  (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1964). (full book)

3.1 Further Reading


29.04. Seminar 8
3.2 Compulsory Reading
  • Day, Joey, “After Ecologies,”  in Banham, Reyner, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), introduction by Anthony Vidler (Berkeley, California; London: University of California Press, c2000), xv-xxxi.
  • Vidler, Anthony, “Los Angeles: City of the Immediate Future,”  in Banham, Reyner, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), introduction by Anthony Vidler (Berkeley, California; London: University of California Press, c2000), xxxiii-xlix.
  • Banham, Reyner, “In the Rear-view Mirror,”  in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), introduction by Anthony Vidler (Berkeley, California; London: University of California Press, c2000), 3-18.

3.2 Further Reading


06.05. Seminar 9
3.3 Compulsory Reading
  • Stadler, Hilar, Museum im Bellpark, Kriens, Martino Stierli, „Second Reading,“  in Stadler, Hilar, Martino Stierli, Peter Fischli, Las Vegas Studio: Bilder aus dem Archiv von Robert Venturi und Denise Scott Brown (Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2008), 9.
  • Stierli, Martino, „Las Vegas Studio,“  in Stadler, Hilar, Martino Stierli, Peter Fischli, Las Vegas Studio: Bilder aus dem Archiv von Robert Venturi und Denise Scott Brown (Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2008), 1-71.
  • Stierli, Martino, “In Sequence: Cinematic Perception in Learning from Las Vegas” , in Hunch 12 (2009), 76-85.

3.3 Further Reading



4 THE CROSS-FERTILIZATION BETWEEN THE VIEW OF THE CAR AND THE DESIGN STRATEGIES

20.05. Seminar 10
4 Further Reading



View From The Road—Kevin Lynch (1965)

Below you can watch a short film produced by Professor Kevin Lynch BCP ’47 produced this high-speed film as part of his studies into the theory of city form and of human perceptions of the city.

View From The Road—Kevin Lynch (1965)" />


Contact


Dr. ir Marianna Charitonidou
marianna.charitonidou@gta.arch.ethz.ch