SCHUMACHER, Thomas, 1971 : Contextualism: urban ideals and deformation

THOMAS L. SCHUMACHER

CONTEXTUALISM: URBAN IDEALS AND DEFORMATION

 THOMAS L. SCHUMACHER explains the theory of "contextualism" as the reconciliation of modern urbanism with ancient, traditional cities; as an alternative to the destruction of some areas of downtown cities.

This theory tries to find a middle ground between a sort of "unrealistically" freezing of the exist, which does not allow any evolution, and the urban revival which completely annihilates the existing urban fabric and its qualities. For this, contextualism is based on two principles. The first is the concept of "figure and ground", that is to say of figure and context. The author starts from the premise that the solid and the void are intimately connected, interdependent, and can both be extras. Thus, we can not explain an urban space, that is to say a void, a "figure" in this case, without the solid that exists around it, the context, the "ground", because it would have no meaning. And reciprocally. SCHUMACHER then speaks of "figure-ground drawing" as an essential analytical tool to clarify the meaning of the urban form of a given place. The second principle is the creation of "differentiated buildings", which I will translate as "context buildings". These buildings keep a concept, a strong idea, are distorted by the conditions and pressures of the site without losing their personality, their "Gestalt imageability".

It is from these principles that SCHUMACHER thinks to "save" the twentieth century city that he defines as an incoherent and disordered combination of two simple concepts. First of all, there is the traditional town, made up of "street corridors", networks, squares, which represents a continuity of buildings arranged in such a way as to bring out the space and to forget the volumes of the building. The spaces are carved, carved, in the volume. And even if it seems incomprehensible at the level of its construction, it offers strong identities to places, an important modularity, a total orientation and a familiar character. He takes the example of the city of RENAISSANCE, which he defines as a medieval town that deforms and is distorted by the RENAISSANCE-type buildings it hosts. On the contrary, he takes the example of HARLEM in MANHATTAN. Its grid, without hierarchy, does not leave room for centers of activities or zones for important buildings. Intersections do not give any hierarchy.

It's the opposite of medieval cities. Because all the streets are the same, the initial orientation changes and becomes a disorientation. No space that could have the meaning of "place" appears because no space is different from another. These modern cities are called by schumacher himself "city-in-the-park", which are made of isolated buildings that accentuates the volumes and not the spaces that the buildings define, like the radiant city of CORBU. The author puts forward the "idealization" of buildings by modern architects, by preference of form, or as representation of a function or a program. Modern architects have a totally contextual approach to their buildings, thinking they have created a "figure", but without thinking of the "ground". SCHUMACHER denounces the fact that these architects do not know that "ideal" forms can exist as fragments, pieces, in a context difficult to apprehend, and that others can also persist and assert themselves during the implementation to a context .

Contextualism seeks precisely to explain the ways of implanting these "ideal" forms into a context and how to use these collages. He caricatures modern architects as people who can only create blocks in the middle of a plot. This type of concept is however not new (BRAMANTE, DOESBURG, etc.) but it is its systematic character that it denounces today.

In my opinion, the theory of contextualism has asserted itself and has nowadays a very important place in the design work. Indeed, this article tells us about a finding made in the 60s and early 70s, when collective housing flourished, in the form of bars in the middle of islets. At the moment I think that architects have a very strong awareness of urbanism and context,for example the architect Jean Nouvel. Nevertheless, I adhere to this stream of thought that I think has been necessary for the evolution of urban planning and architecture.

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