The Image of the City
The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch is a remarkable work that defined the contemporary practice of architecture. Since its publication in 1960, The Image of the City promoted and inspire future works under its primal frame work of postmodern ideology. Kevin Lynch’s Image in the City can be considered a post-modern work for, its focus on urban forms and the everyday human’s interaction with architecture, and challenges the disregarding of the existing environment, a remarking quality from Transitional Modernism. The Image of the City is hence a meticulous introduction of postmodern ideology into the contemporary world.
Kevin Lynch in The Image in the City focuses on the ‘environmental’ image of the city. Kevin Lynch highlights the importance of current physical and mental images on any cityscape. This approach is contradictory to Modernist and Transitional Modernist whose main focus was on generating new environments, partaking from a “Tabula Raza” perspective. His approach is to describe the user, in this case the everyday individual, as the primal generator of urban elements. He argues that “public image” is key to how a city can be read. “These elements are simply the raw material of the environmental image at the city scale. They must be patterned together to provide a satisfying form.” The individual has to be able to recognize and even organize not just physical characters but mental representations in order to guide and map oneself in the city. This general view can be considered the cities “legibility”, a characteristic that Lynch pushes throughout his work denoting his postmodern approach to defining cities.
Kevin Lynch’s The Image in the City, challenges the “blank slate” ideology of Modernist and Transitional Modernist by redefining the importance of the user amongst this environments. Lynch’s superb use of human scale remarks the importance of urban elements. He argues that value and recognition of these existing conditions forms the overall context of the cityscape, as opposed to Transitional Modernist disregard for them. The human scale in turn is his most crucial element in his whole work. The entitlement of his ideas descend from the individual’s perspective and use. Lynch fascinates about the urban inhabitants ability to operate amongst these urban forms in an open-ended matter. He describes these forms as not finished, hence allowing the users to actively stage and form their own experiences, a strong contradicting sense from the Transitional Modernist where the stage would usually be made and finished already. Lynch furthermore introduces the three ‘movements’ under which users begin to mapping, learning, and shaping. This allows the people to achieve a clear mental map of the environment they are in, then to explore and eventually learn their surroundings, and finally hint for their interaction upon this environment. Lynchs idea behind mobility and traveling through any urban landscape are his main introductions to postmodern movement.
Lynch pushes the transitional modernisms idea of synthetic utopia far from his moderated interpretations of what a landscape can do. Lynch takes this personal interpretation beyond the common user and applies the overall sentiment to particular cities such as Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. With this he argues that the interpretation of urban elements are relative to their context, yet they can exceed that scope and start to define cities in an overall. This allowing for character and variations on this cities, qualities and characteristic’s that were considered inconceivable on the Transitional Modernist organizations.
Arguably, Kevin Lynch’s The Image in the City is a generator of postmodern ideologies. His separation from the tabula rasa and “form follows function” denote a great proto-postmodern character. This idea was further reinforced by Venturi and Browns work Learning from Las Vegas, were the urban form and the individuals role in architecture become the main focus. Colin Rowe’s Collage City as well precedes Lynches ideologies on the public image through visual sense, and the overall legibility of the city. Both works describe typologies as their main analytical approach in describing the city. These focuses contradict on the transitional modernist movement by having a clear interest in these typologies.
Although The Image in the City may shows features described by Transitional Modernist, Lynch’s intent tends to stay clear as a postmodern work by clearly separating his intents from the modernist “zeitgeist worship”. The Situationist movement also challenges the use of a tabula rasa and describes the living environment with relation to the user. In Debords, The Naked City the user is able to mentally guide and perceive oneself through the city. His interpretation is not described through actual metric distances but once more through the individual’s perception of distance. These characteristics though similar have a different influential end. The Naked City is focused on the individual’s perspective of functionality and its form. On the other hand Lynches approach is that of the individual’s means to feel comfort and emotional security. Through a legible city, the user has a framework for conceptual organizing and highlighting the everyday experiences.
One of Lynch’s main points in Image of the City is the introduction of a “public image”. This public image is the acknowledgement of urban elements that predate modernism and are fulfilled buy their users. Lynch develops from these public images and generates a catalogue of forms exclusive to the city and beneficial to the common individual. Lynch introduces five elements, Paths, Edges, Nodes, Districts, and Landmarks, as mnemonic devises for the individual to observe, learn and analyze when within the cityscape. These five elements show Lynches absolute interest in finding an analytical value to existing conditions as opposed to disregarding their existence. Lynch’s analysis on this urban forms are crucial to further to come works that are in contemporary time considered postmodern.
Therefore, Kevin Lynchs Image of the City is an absolute postmodern work that focuses on the effectiveness of urban forms and the everyday human’s interaction with architecture, and challenges the disregarding of the existing environment. Lynchs work furthermore introduces a stage for various future works whose focus is on the individuals experience rather than the whole.