Collage City

by Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter

This book is a critical reappraisal of contemporary theories of urban planning and design and of the role of the architect-planner in an urban context. The authors, rejecting the grand utopian visions of "total planning" and "total design," propose instead a "collage city" which can accommodate a whole range of utopias in miniature.

Genres: Architecture, Urbanism, Nonfiction, Urban Design, Cities, Design, Urban Planning

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Colin Rowe was a British-born, American-naturalised architectural historian, critic, theoretician, and teacher; acknowledged as a major intellectual influence on world architecture and urbanism in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, particularly in the fields of city planning, regeneration, and urban design. During his life he taught briefly at the University of Texas at Austin and, for one year, at the University of Cambridge in England. For the majority of his life he taught as a Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1995 he was awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the professional group's highest honor.

Reviews

[Alice Macdonald · Rating 1 out of 5]

As an architecture student, this is the least enjoyable string of words I’ve ever suffered through.

[Marilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter were both influential architects and theorists. Rowe is known for making unconventional comparisons between cultural events and ideas, a practice that is evident in Collage City.
Collage City was published in 1978. During the 20th century, architecture and planning went through a shift. Growth in cities skyrocketed after the 19th century industrial revolution, and new models of cities began to be considered to deal with the effects of this growth. One of these views was modernism, which began to arise in the 1920s. Rowe’s unique view on history and Koetter’s progressive work were influential in changing how modern architecture and urban planning were viewed during that time. Collage City is a critical re-evaluation of the modernism movement. Rowe and Koetter discuss the fallacies of the modernist movement and note that while Modernist utopian visions were influential, they would ultimately result in uninhabitable cities. Collage City rejects the utopian visions of ‘total planning’ and ‘total design’ and instead proposes a city of fragments— a collage city. Although the argument of Collage City can at times be difficult to discern in the thickness of the writing, the argument is ultimately successful because of the large amount of examples, comparisons, and representations put forward by the authors to support their ideas.

The author’s main arguments in Collage City revolve around the idea of compromise. Following an introduction, the book is divided into five sections. The first section sets up the problem that the authors are addressing, the modernist visions of ‘total design’ and ‘total planning’. The middle three sections each discuss an idea of compromise in order to combat the monocular utopian visions discussed in the first section. These compromises include looking both forward and backward, balance between the planned and the unplanned, and compromise between scientific reasoning and bricoleur architecture. In the last section, the authors bring together all of these compromises in the proposal of a city of collage. An additional sixth section, an Excurses comprised of examples of what pieces of a collage city might look like, neatly ties off the book.

Overall, Collage City is an influential book in the field of urban planning and architecture. Rowe and Koetter’s rejection of popular modern utopian visions steered urban planning in a new direction. The proposals in Collage City are thoughtfully put forward and well backed up with examples. Comparisons to other author’s ideas and the thoughtful presentation of images further support the authors’ argument. However, at times the authors’ argument can be hard to follow due to long paragraph-like sentences and foreign words and concepts. If one can maneuver the complexity of Rowe and Koetter’s writing they will find in Collage City a well-supported argument against monocular modernist visions in favour of a flexible, contextualized, city of collage.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read Rowe's three volumes of "As I Was Saying" and being generally comfortable with architectural theory at an amateur level as a practising landscape architect, I was more optimistic about this book at the beginning and disappointed by the end. Rowe will often reward your efforts in reading his text, which requires research or knowledge of other texts and understanding well known architectural sites, with profound and meaningful insights on design or theory. For whatever reason those seemed to be missing here. The value of reading the work, which is its historical importance in arguing against modernism at a critical juncture, may not be worth the effort for many readers.

[Elizabeth Ginger · Rating 4 out of 5]

You have to keep looking up in a dictionary and keeping research otherwise it will be mass.

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow; I didn't think collages were that complicated to explain. A fascinating read by a brilliant mind that doesn't dumb down his thoughts at all. Really lucky I've been re-reading philosophy and have a good vocabulary and a decent handle on art/architecture/architects. Picked this book up when I was done a drafting program because I felt like I had no idea what architecture was. This didn't help much but was a challenging read for the sake of it.
A review in the style of Colin Rowe
The dude says “which” to carry on his sentences and paragraphs, which means I started to play a game where I spot the word “which”, which took me out of his arguments some of the time, which meant i had to go back and re-read whole pages, which gave this tome the illusion of a literal literary “witch hunt”, which -to my mind- made his arguments seem thin and rambling, which meant I had to go back and re-read for the 3rd time, which made reading this book a slow process.
Not sure who the intended audience for this book is? Graduate students in Urban Planning? Kids in the 5th grade looking for words that might come up in a spelling bee?
I don't think it is self-indulgent - this is actually how the authors think and they are simply that focused on this one area.

[Pablo Lopes · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Utopia as metaphos and Collage City as prescription: these opposites, involving the guarantees of both law and freedom, should surely constitute the dialectic of the future, rather than any total surrender either to scientific 'certainties' or the simple vagaries of the ad hoc. The disintegration of modern architecture seems to call for such a strategy; an enlightened pluralism seems to invite; and, possibly, even common sense concurs.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book very much of its time. An interesting premise, with lots of thought-provoking ideas, but the use of long, 100+ word sentences, and some other strange manoeuvring within the chapters can make it difficult to read, and it isn’t always entirely clear what they are advocating as a solution. In fact, it takes until page 144 for them to suggest the ‘collage approach’ of combining ‘conscripted or seduced’ objects from out of their context to solve the problems of utopia and tradition.

[Fernanda Avila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es un libro que me complicó mucho al entender la redacción, tenía que pasar la lectura dos o tres veces para comprenderla, incluso creo que algunas cuestiones carecen de raciocinio por mi parte, la comprensión no me dio.
Sin embargo, tengo que aceptar que ha sido de los libros con contenido arquitectónico más interesantes que he leído en toda mi vida. Me fascinó & lo disfruté muchísimo, generar la comprensión en cada parte fue un reto & lo viví plenamente.

[Megija Milberga · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Because collage is a method deriving its virtue from irony, because it seems to be a technique for using things and simultaneously disbelieving in them, it is also a strategy which can allow utopia to be dealt with as image, to be dealt with in fragments without our having to accept it in toto."

[Arnout · Rating 1 out of 5]

This should and could have been a 2000 word article.

[Erin Reilly-Sanders · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, for one of the first times, not only did I feel stupid but I hated reading this. Maybe that makes me a bad architecture student. I think in general I'm much better at reading fiction than non fiction, but in this case the subject matter was pretty uninteresting, mostly because I think I actually understood about 4% of the book. It was a little sad, because the book has some great pictures of neat places with cool ideas that light up even when just placed side by side. Every once in a while something would spark my interest/understanding- the foxes versus hedgehogs, the discussion of main street posing Ithaca against Disney, etc. My guess is that to get more out of this one, you would need a lot of time to look up each foreign concept or a pretty good background in philosophy, which I certainly don't have nor really wish to have. I think it comes back to the idea the humans understand in small steps, not large leaps. I just didn't have any steps close enough to stretch to meet this one.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I'm currently employed by one of the authors, all I can say is terrific read, timely, important, transformative, no egregiously goofy punctuation usage anywhere! Certainly this has to be the granddaddy of ever-present one-liner urban theory phrases (Ecstacity, Collision City, Event City, Emerald City...maybe that one was already around...) and I do know the funny story of how Rowe came to this title and concept, but you'll have to come over bearing a twelve-pack of fine domestic microbrews to get it out of me.

[Audrey Chesterton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the most worthwhile book I've ever read when it comes to understanding the current post-modern debate surrounding cities. Although it was written nearly 50 years ago, it is no less valid today. For anyone even vaguely interested in urban design, planning, and especially those involved in the CNU or UVF, this book is a must for clarification of where current debate is stemming from. And, perhaps, the collage city is still a valid idea... although we must do something about that global village idiot!

[Sean Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew I needed to read this from front to back, but that didn't make it any easier to get through.

[Andrell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Difficult to get through and not very fun

[John Andrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea behind the book is great - but it is not an easy read.