Book Unknown (Vikas Reading)

"... bring people together and they create a collective surplus of enjoyment; bring buildings together and collectively they can give visual pleasure which none can give seperately." ( ,9)

"In fact there is an art of relationship just as there is an art of architecture. Its purpose is to take all the elements that go to create the environment: buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements and so on, and to weave them together in such a way that drama is released. For a city is a dramatic event in the environment." ( ,10)

"And yet... at the end of it all the city appears dull, uninteresting and soulless, then it is not fullfilling itself. It has failed. The fire has been laid but nobody has put a match to it." ( ,10)

"The upshot is that a town could take one of several patterns and still operate with success, equal success. Here then we discover a pliability in the scientific solution and it is precisely in the manipulation of this pliability that the art of relationship is made possible. As will be seen, the aim is not to dictate the shape of the town or environment, but is a modest one: simply to manipulate within the tolerances.
This means that we can get no further help from the scientific attitude and that we must therefore turn to other values and other standards.
We turn to the faculty of sight, for it is almost entirely through vision that the environment is apprehended. If someone knocks at your door and you open it to let him in, it sometimes happens that a gust of wind comes in too... Vision is somewhat the same; we often get more than we bargained for. Glance at the clock to see the time and you see the wallpaper, the clock's carved brown mahogany frame, the fly crawling over the glass and the delicate rapier-like pointers." ( , 11)

"In fact, of course, vision is not only useful but it evokes our memories and experiences, those responsive emotions inside us which have the power to disturb the mind when aroused. It is this unlooked-for surplus that we are dealing with, for clearly if the environment is going to produce an emotional reaction, with or without our volition, it is up to us to try to understand the three ways in which this happens." -Optics, Place, Content ( ,11)

OPTICS:
"The significance of all this is that although the pedestrian walks through the town at a uniform speed, the scenery of towns is often revealed in a series of jerks or revelations. This we call SERIAL VISION.
Examine what this means. Our original aim is to manipulate the elements of the town so that an impact on the emotions is achieved. ... The human mind reacts to a contrast, to the difference between things, and when two pictures are in the mind at the same time, a vivid contrast is felt and the town becomes visible in a deeper sense. It becomes alive through the drama of juxtaposition. Unless this happens the twon will past us featureless and inert." ( ,11)

"Although from a scientific or commercial point of view the town may be a unity, from our optical viewpoint we have split it into two elements: the existing view and the emerging view. In a normal way, this is an accidental chain of events and whatever significance may arise out of the linking of views will be fortuitous. Suppose, however, that we take over this linking as a branch of the art of relationship; then we are finding a tool with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into a emotional drama." ( ,12)

PLACE:
"The second point is concerned with our reactions to the position of our body in its environment. ...
Since it is an instinctive and continuous habit of the body to relate itself to the environment, this sense of position cannot be ignored; it becomes a factor in the design of the environment. I would go further to say that it should be exploited." ( ,12)

"If, therefore, we design our towns from the point of view of the moving person (pedestrian or car-borne) it is easy to see how the whole city becomes a plastic experience, a journey through pressures and vacuums, a sequence of exposures and enclosures, of constraint and reliefs." ( ,12)

CONTENT:
"In this last category we turn to an examination of the fabric of towns: colour, texture, scale, style, character, personality and uniqueness." ( , 13)