This thesis responds to a growing appreciation for the richness and ambiguity of mid-century architectural culture in Britain. Initially focussing on the enthusiasm for a science-based approach among architects and town planners, the thesis identifies – in the diverse debates of the Second World War and immediate post-war years – an architecture that achieves significantly more than an abstract, inhuman, or totalising utopianism. Instead, it will expose affinities between the enthusiastic pursuit of objective solutions in architecture and planning and the drastically compromised realities, both of the historic city in ruins, and of certain episodes in the history of architecture that enjoyed popularity after the war. The first chapter introduces the problem of utopianism, a concept that has often accompanied critical studies of modern architecture. An appraisal of the utopian tradition highlights the frequent vagueness and ahistoricism of the term, leaving room for an appreciation of utopian speculation as dynamically historical, with the potential to decisively enact change. The second chapter identifies these characteristics in the mid-century enthusiasm for scientific planning, an approach that used quantifiable methods of research in order to legitimise an emerging town planning profession, which had gained added impetus from the transformative social impact of the Second World War. Underpinned by the civic and regional survey, this approach advanced the potential of technocratic management to ‘solve’ the problems of social organisation and physical planning. However, an analysis of specific attempts to speculatively develop the necessary planning machinery indicates a far richer range of concerns. The third chapter shows that the experience of wartime bombing dramatically changed the aspect of Britain’s towns and cities, with the resulting ruins presenting a visceral challenge to the idealising promise of science. But this seeming conflict obscures the relationship between ruination and reconstruction. For the anxiety and exhilaration of destruction was, in fact, embedded in the practice of rebuilding, both in the memories of the builders and of the public at large. Furthermore, an examination of contemporary architectural writing on the subject of wartime ruins displays an attempt to aestheticise and appropriate the ruin’s effects, while simultaneously maintaining an outward attitude of detachment. The final chapter develops this discussion, moving from the ruins of the historic city to investigate the mid-century adoption of architectural history as a justification for design. It will show that while scientific research seemed to promise objective solutions, the study of history received a similar authority after the war. Consequently, the historian could assume a status analogous to that of the planning expert: a fact evidenced by the activities of Rudolf Wittkower and Nikolaus Pevsner. Just as the utopian potential of science was conditioned by its contingency, this chapter will demonstrate that the appeal to history would also inevitably be limited to partial solutions.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(文学) / 甲第18438号 / 文博第651号 / 新制||文||605(附属図書館) / 31316 / 京都大学大学院文学研究科文献文化学専攻 / (主査)教授 佐々木 徹, 教授 若島 正, 准教授 廣田 篤彦 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Letters / Kyoto University / DGAM

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This thesis examines Dickens's uses of images of the river throughout his fiction, and also in the early sketches, the reprinted pieces from Household Words and The Uncommercial Traveller. The river concerned is usually but not exclusively the Thames, usually but not exclusively in London. The thesis offers some practical evidence to account for the powerful influence of the Thames upon Dickens's imagination and shows how he conceives of it both within existing frames of reference and in some distinctively Dickensian ways. It considers how Dickens's representations of the river play into the cult of the picturesque which emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, and into the tradition which sees it as a symbolic conduit of the empire. It goes on to consider his use of the river as a boundary, the consequent importance of river crossings in his work, and his conception of the riparian space as a liminal one. It then explores a distinctive scheme of discourse which uses the river to represent rebellious forces beyond the control of human agency and shows how this reflects the sense of spiritual threat which is to be found in some of the other, albeit rare, depictions of nature to be found in his writing. It then shows how Dickens uses the river symbolically to express ideas about death and rebirth, together with the loss of and changes in identity, and how he draws on a scheme of distinctively Christian iconography to do so. Finally it shows how he uses it to create and represent an underworld for London, using tropes of epic founded on classical models. The thesis concludes that, in its use of natural forces to signify social ones, Dickens's writing about the river serves to amplify his conception of stratification in Victorian society and adds weight to the socially conservative political stance which is known to be present in his world view.

Echoes of Experience: The Narrative Forces of the Qu’Appelle Valley explores the possibility of playing on the picturesque notion of a ‘folly’ within this Southern Saskatchewan valley. By incorporating an understanding of the physical and narrative forces that have shaped the valley as both place and space, speculative interventions are proposed that generate an awareness of past conditions in order to provide some trace of those narratives within the future of the valley. This practicum endeavors to use landscape narrative inquiry as a tool that helps one to understand the landscape experience by harkening to the ‘echoes’ that beckon people to the Qu’Appelle Valley’s hills and lakes. The valley is a setting for exploration and for experience. Working within a narrative when designing allows those key experiences to be extracted, along with subsequent narratives, and developed into a three-dimensional space. This results in a meandering yet defined direction of thought and reflection during the course of design. By revealing what was once previously hidden within the landscape, the spirit of place reemerges, and the new design becomes integral in the experience and understanding of self and of place.

Echoes of Experience: The Narrative Forces of the Qu’Appelle Valley explores the possibility of playing on the picturesque notion of a ‘folly’ within this Southern Saskatchewan valley. By incorporating an understanding of the physical and narrative forces that have shaped the valley as both place and space, speculative interventions are proposed that generate an awareness of past conditions in order to provide some trace of those narratives within the future of the valley. This practicum endeavors to use landscape narrative inquiry as a tool that helps one to understand the landscape experience by harkening to the ‘echoes’ that beckon people to the Qu’Appelle Valley’s hills and lakes. The valley is a setting for exploration and for experience. Working within a narrative when designing allows those key experiences to be extracted, along with subsequent narratives, and developed into a three-dimensional space. This results in a meandering yet defined direction of thought and reflection during the course of design. By revealing what was once previously hidden within the landscape, the spirit of place reemerges, and the new design becomes integral in the experience and understanding of self and of place.

This thesis examines the emergence and evolution of the Vernacular Italianate style of domestic architecture in Britain. The style was introduced in the form of a series of three country houses by John Nash in the first decade of the nineteenth century. It subsequently evolved over the next five decades into a popular template for the modest suburban house, widely disseminated through the medium of the architectural pattern books. The thesis considers the intellectual sources and antecedents which led to the emergence of this style and influenced its characteristics, analyses Nash's particular vision, and explores how the style was able to make a successful transition from villa rustica to villa suburbana, responding to the social and economic pressures which were at play in the expanding towns of the Regency and early Victorian era. It is a style which has been the subject of limited academic study to date, and the extent and significance of its role as a model villa for the new suburb is a theme which has been central to this research. A case is put forward that the style proliferated for two principal reasons: its versatility and adaptability for houses of differing physical scale and location, and its informal charm, inexpensively achieved, which conferred an air of sophistication appropriate to contemporary social aspiration. Nevertheless, as its popularity and accessibility grew over time the intellectual and aesthetic basis which underlay its origins as a product of the Picturesque aesthetic tended to be misunderstood or overlooked entirely, and by the 1860s the style had become diluted, frequently reduced to a matter of exterior detailing, with little reference either to Picturesque composition or to relationship between house and landscape, in contradiction of the tenets of Picturesque architecture propounded in the late eighteenth century, and in complete antithesis to the approach of John Nash in his original and distinctive Italianate interpretation.

Paris, sous le Second Empire, est capitale du spectacle. Cette vision est à la fois un mythe et l’image d’un lieu réel de relations sociales travaillées par des codes relevant du théâtral. C’est dans ce contexte qu’Edmond et Jules de Goncourt évoluent. Le spectacle et le spectaculaire, qui les fascinent sous toutes leurs formes, sont deux notions qui permettent de rendre compte de leur œuvre et de leur statut d’hommes de lettres. Ces termes témoignent de leurs sources d’inspiration et de leur style, imprégnés du drame et de la peinture, mais aussi de leur posture d’artistes, parmi les écrivains, les artistes, la bohème, le milieu de la presse de leur époque. Dans leurs œuvres, les deux frères s’adonnent à une représentation de leur temps, qui dévoile un jeu du paraître. Leur quête stylistique, qualifiée d’écriture artiste, dans son affranchissement des codes et sa volonté de transgresser les frontières des genres, affirme leur posture d’élection, révélatrice de leurs velléités aristocratiques et de leurs goûts artistiques. Leur position est celle de deux modernes poursuivant la réflexion engagée par Balzac et Baudelaire, mais deux modernes contrariés. Leur œil-artiste, enrichi par les peintres et dramaturges avec qui ils entrent en discussion ou qui leur servent de modèles, opère avec sagacité. Ils offrent une création spectaculaire et spéculaire. Ce miroir tendu à la société, inspiré par les techniques picturales, les genres et registres comme la pantomime, la parodie, la comédie et la satire, renvoie en des vues diffractées l’image de leurs contemporains et celle de leur existence exemplaire, qu’ils mettent en scène artistiquement. / Paris, under the Second Empire, was the world capital of spectacle. This image, as much as it is a myth, also depicts the reality of social relationships that were akin to the rules of drama.This is the milieu Edmond & Jules de Goncourt live in. The spectacle and spectacular of all kinds fascinate them and account for their work, and also their place as writers in society. These two words tell us about their inspiration and style, which are infused by drama and painting, as well as their artistic position among literary sociability, artists, bohemians, and the press of the middle of the nineteenth Century. In their books, the Goncourt brothers give a representation of this time by revealing the codes of make-believe. Their stylistic aspiration, deemed “écriture artiste”, which goes across the rules and borders of literary genres, claims their position of superiority to show their aristocratic aspirations and their artistic tastes. Their position is that of modern men, thinking about modernity as Balzac and Baudelaire did earlier, but in some ways, their position also seems to be an anti-modern one. Their artistic observation, or oeil-artiste, enriched by painters and playwrights, who they converse with or whom they emulate, is shrewd. Their production is both spectacular and specular. This mirror, which they are presenting society with, is inspired by painting techniques, literary genres and tones, like dramatic pantomime, parody, comedy and satire. It shows kaleodoscopic views of their contemporaries and of their own life, scripted and staged like a work of art.

A more water-coherent approach is postulated as a primary pathway through which biophilic urbanism contributes to livability and climate change adaptation. Previous studies have shown that upstream water retention is more cost-effective than downstream for mitigating flood risks downstream. This dissertation proposes a research design for generating an iconography of water urbanism to make upstream cities more coherent. I tested a hypothesis of aquaphilic urbanism as a water-based sense of place that evokes water-based place attachment to help adapt cities and individuals to water-coherent urbanism. Cognitive mapping, photovoice, and emotional recall protocols were conducted during semi‐structured interviews with 60 residents and visitors sampled from eight water-centric cities in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. The participants provided 55 sketch maps. I performed content analyses, regression analyses, path analyses, and mediation analyses to study the relationships of 1) pictorial aquaphilia (intrinsic attachment to safe and clean water scenes) and waterscape imageability, 2) waterscape imageability and the coherence of city image, 3) egocentric aquaphilia (attachment to water-based spatial anchors) and allocentric aquaphilia (attachment to water-centric cities), and 4) the coherence of city image, allocentric aquaphilia, and openness towards water-coherent urbanism. Content analyses show that waterscape imageability and pictorial aquaphilia were the two most common reasons why participants mentioned the five waterscape types, including water landmarks, canals, lakes, rivers, and harbors, during the three recall protocols. Regression analyses indicate that water is a sixth element of imageability and that the imageable structure of canals and rivers and the identifiability of water landmarks significantly influenced the aesthetic coherence of city image. Path analyses suggest that allocentric aquaphilia can be attributed to water-based familiarity, water-based place identity (or identifiability), water-based comfort, and water-based place dependence (or orientation) evoked by water-based spatial anchors. Mediation analyses reveal that water-based goal affordance (as a construct of water-based comfort and water-based place dependence) aided environmental adaptation, while water-based imageability (as a construct of water-based familiarity and water-based place identity) helped adapt cities and individuals to water-coherent urbanism. Canal mappability mediated the effects of gender and of visitor versus resident on the coherence of city image to facilitate environmental adaptation.

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss.