Camillo Sitte

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Camillo Sitte

Camillo Sitte (17 April 1843 16 November 1903 in Vienna) was a noted Austrian architect, painter and city
planning theoretician with great influence and authority of the development of urban construction planning and
regulation in Europe.
Contents
[hide]

1 Life
2 City Planning According to Artistic Principles
(1889)
3 Books by him
4 Literature
5 External links

[edit]Life
Camillo Sitte was an art historian and architect. He traveled around the towns of Europe and tried to identify
aspects that made towns feel warm and welcoming. Architecture was a process of culturization for him. Sitte
received a lot of attention in 1889 with the publication of his book "Der Stdtebau nach seinen knstlerischen
Grundstzen" (English title: "City Planning According to Artistic Principles"). The richly illustrated book pointed
out that the urban room around the experiencing man should be the leading motif of urban planning, thus
turning away from the pragmatic, hygienic planning procedures of the time. Sitte emphasized the creation of an
irregular urban structure, spacious plazas, enhanced by monuments and other aesthetic elements.

Sitte founded the Camillo Sitte Lehranstalt and the Camillo Sitte Gasse in Vienna, and also the
magazine Stdtebau in 1904. Camillo Sitte was the son of the architect Franz Sitte (180879) and the father of
the architect Siegfried Sitte (18761945).
Sitte is also credited with having invented the cul-de-sac.[citation needed]

[edit]City

Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889)

Fountain of Hygieia in Olomouc (in Czech: kana Hygie), Camillo Sitte (plan) and Karel Lenhart (statue)

The work of Sitte is not exactly a criticism of architectural form, it is more precisely an aesthetic criticism of the
nineteenth century's end urbanism. Mainly an urban planning theory book, it has a deep influence in
architecture, as the two disciplines are deeply intertwined. It was also highly successful in its time. Between
1889 and 1922 it was edited five times. It was translated into French in 1902, but was not translated into
English until 1945.
For Sitte, the most important is not the architectural shape or form of each building, but the inherent creative
quality of urban space, the whole as much more than the sum of its parts. Sitte contended that many urban
planners had neglected to consider the vertical dimension of planning, instead focusing too much on paper, and
that this approach hindered the efficacy of planning in an aesthetically conscious manner. Athens and the
ancient Greekspaces, like the agora and the forum are his preferred examples of good urban spaces. He
makes a study of the spatial structures of the cities, squares, monuments, and confronts the living beauty and
creativity of the most ancient ones with the sterility of the new cities. In general:

Sitte makes an analysis based on sensitivity aesthetics and is not concerned with the historical
circumstances that generated such forms. Urbanism is to be lived today and thus must be judged
according to today's needs and aesthetics;

Criticizes the regular and obsessive order of the new squares, confronting it with the irregularity of the
medieval city. "A square should be seen as a room: it should form an enclosed space";

Criticizes the isolated placement of Churches and monuments, and confronts it with how monuments
were formerly presented to the viewer;

With examples from Italy, Austria and Germany, he defines a square typology, an "enclosed squares'
system of the ancient times". He studies from a psychological viewpoint the perception of the proportions
between the monuments and its surroundings, opposing the fashion of very wide streets and squares, and
the dogma of orthogonality and symmetry;

He fears that Urbanism would have become a mere technical task without any artistic involvement. He
acknowledges an antagonism between the picturesque and the pragmatic, and states that these restrain
the works of the artists. The building of another Acropole would become impossible, not only because of
the financial means, but also the lack of the basic artistic generating thought;

He stated that an urban planner should not be too concerned with the small design. The city should
only take care of the general streets and structure, while the rest would be left to private initiative, just as in
ancient cities;

He Provides an example of his theories at the end of one of his books in the form of the redesign
of Vienna's Ring, a circular avenue.

His theories were widely influential for many practiticians, like Karl Henrici and Theodor Fischer. Modernist
movements rejected these thoughts and Le Corbusier is known for his energetic dismissals of the work.
Nevertheless, his work is often used and cited as a criticism of the Modernist movement, its importance
reemerging in the post-modernist movement of the late sixties.

[edit]Books

by him

City Planning According to Artistic Principles, 1889

The Birth of Modern City Planning. Dover Publications, 2006, ISBN 978-0-486-45118-3

Gesamtausgabe. Schriften und Projekte. Hrsg. v. Klaus Semsroth, Michael Mnninger und Christine
Crasemann-Collins. 6 Bnde. Bhlau, Wien 20032007

[edit]Literature

Karin Wilhelm, Detlef Jessen-Klingenberg (Hrsg.): Formationen der Stadt. Camillo Sitte
weitergelesen (= Bauwelt Fundamente; Bd. 132). Birkhuser, Basel; Bauverlag, Gtersloh u. a. 2006,ISBN
3-7643-7152-8

George R. Collins & Christiane Crasemann Collins. Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern City
Planning. Random House: New York, 1965.

Michael Mnninger: Vom Ornament zum Nationalkunstwerk. Zur Kunst- und Architekturtheorie Camillo
Sittes. Vieweg, Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-528-02423-2

Leif Jerram: From Page to Policy: Camillo Sitte and Planning Practice in Munich. Manchester Papers
in Economic and Social History, No. 57, September 2007. ISSN 1753-7762. An introduction to Sitte,
alongside an analysis of how his ideas were actually used. Available online
at http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/history/research/manchesterpapers/ .

Camillo Sitte (1843-1903): City Building According to Artistic Principles

First published as Der Stdtebau nach seinen knstlerischen Grundstzen in 1889

A prcis by Rabaz Khoshnaw

Sittes book City Building According to Artistic Principles established basic principles of urban design.
He strongly criticized the modern city planning that valued logic and mathematical solutions over artistic
considerations. He considered contemporary gridiron subdivisions as monotonous and leading to the
maximizing of land exploitation. He considered the proportions of town squares, monuments, and
churches. Planning should be a creative art and the interplay between public buildings and open spaces
was paramount to good planning.

The relationship between buildings, monuments and their plazas

Sitte emphasized that the centre of plazas must remain permanently vacant, simply because of the desire
to leave the line of vision free and not blocked by monuments. Otherwise, in his opinion, not only would
such monuments interfere with the view of buildings but the buildings would present the worst type of
background for the monuments.

He also criticized the way of building churches or public buildings in the centre of the plazas, because they
spoiled the view of the plaza and there would be no adequate space distance to see the faade of the
building very well. Simply he called this as representing a lack of judgment.

Proportional relationship between the buildings faade and the dimensions of the squares
In a very large square the mutual relationship between the plaza and its surrounding buildings dissolves
completely, and they hardly impress one as a city plaza. However, he admitted that this kind of proper
relation is a very uncertain matter, since every thing appears on the subjective viewpoint and not at all on
how the plaza appears in plan, a point which is often overlooked.

The size and shape of plazas

According to Sittes classification there are two categories of city squares, the deep type and wide type,
and to know whether a plaza is deep or wide the observer needs to stand opposite the major building that
dominates the whole lay out.
Thus Piazza S.Croce in Florence should be regarded as a deep plaza since all of it is components are
designed according to their relationship to the main faade. So the classification is not about dimensions
but is dependent on the relationship between the plaza and its surroundings.

Streets and visual succession

Streets in old cities have grown through the gradual development of the main routes of communication
leading from countryside to their organic centres, therefore avoiding an infinite perspective view by the
frequent displacing of the axis.
An examples for this is the Rue des Pierres in Bruges leading from the Grand Place to the cathedral of
Saint-Sauveur. There is nothing of the uniformity of modern streets and all the faades pass in succession
before the eye. Another example is Breite Strasse at Lubeck where a steeple dominates the entire street.
For the pedestrians walking along the street the steeple is brought out at one moment. Afterwards it
disappears again and the structure of the church never dominates the view because of the curving street
path.
It is necessary to emphasize that straight streets cannot offer such scenery. Therefore the lack of this kind
of charming route and visual succession is one of the reasons which has lead to the lack of picturesque
effects in our modern urban plans.

Modern cities

In Sittes view the main problem of contemporary planning was the ignoring of aesthetic values and the
absence of concern with city planning as an art. It was increasingly treated as only a technical problem
with the straight lines and right angles of the gridiron characterising cities, and therefore urban life. For
example the modern boulevard, often miles long, seems boring even in the most beautiful surroundings,
simply because it is unnatural.
In contemporary city planning Sitte states that there are three major methods. They are the gridiron
system, the radial system, and the triangular system. Artistically speaking not one of them is of any
interest, for in their veins pulses not a single drop of artistic blood. A network of streets always serves only
the purposes of communication, never of art, while the demands of art do not necessarily run contrary to
the dictates of modern living (traffic, hygiene, etc.).

Plazas in the modern system

What artistic value is there in an open plaza when it is congested with foliage? So, as one of the basic
principles of design trees should not be an obstruction to the line of sight. Sitte criticized the modern
public garden which was surrounded by open streets. It was exposed to wind and weather and was coated
with street dust. Formerly there were private gardens that belonged to palaces and were secluded from
traffic, and such gardens fulfilled their hygienic purpose despite their small size. Thus all these open
modern parks failed completely in their hygienic purpose and the fundamental reason for this was the
block system of planning.
The relationship between the built-up and open spaces is exactly reversed. Formerly the empty spaces
(streets and plazas) had an entity and impact. In the contemporary planning process of laying out
buildings the left-over irregular wedges of plots often become plazas!

Artistic limitation of modern city planning

Sittes analysis developed in response to the following contextual factors. Commercial activity had
increasingly abandoned public open space. Public affairs were discussed in the daily paper instead of
plaza. Economic growth led to the regular parcelling of lots based on purely economic consideration.
Works of art were straying increasingly from streets and plazas into the art cages of the museums. And
above all the enormous size to which the larger cities grew led to a consequent inflation in the size of
streets and squares.

City Planning According to Artistic Principles, Camillo Sitte.

Originally published in 1889, Camillo Sitte intended his book as a guide for locating monuments
in public spaces, particularly Vienna, but what resulted is a criticism of modern city planning that
valued logic and mathematical solutions over artistic considerations. He looks to Italy and its
Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque spaces as ideals (especially the Piazza della Signoria in
Florence and Piazza San Marco in Venice), though he realizes that simply copying historical city
spaces into modern plans would not work. Although he has an apparent affection of these and
other spaces, they were generated under much different conditions than his own, so he tries to
learn from their principles and find appropriate solutions to specific area of concern in Vienna.
He concludes the book with a plan for reshaping a portion of the Austrian city; along the way he
generates a number of rules pertinent to public spaces, such as not locating churches, public
buildings, or monuments in the middle of squares, and that nearby buildings shouldn't compete
with the important building of the square. Piazza San Marco (on the cover, at left) is a telling
example: the Church of San Marco is definitely the important building of the piazza, engaged
with its surrounding rather than isolated in the middle of the space, with the remaining building
subservient to the church via repetitious bays and other means. While these rules may no longer
apply over 100 years after the book's publication, they are still a fitting way of reframing
historical spaces as a way to improve contemporary spaces in a fitting manner.