Geddes

Patrick GeddesAn Unfinished Work

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Geddes Introduction

A Career of Engagement

The Outlook Tower: A City Observatory

An Unfinished Work

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Patrick Geddes

“Get beyond books, and even ball games, and into active

survey, always growing and extending, of the real world around

you. And seeking out, and finding out, what your life can best

do to help in that, to be of service to it”

Patrick Geddes.

Shortly after Geddes’ birth in Ballater, West Aberdeenshire 02.10.1854, his family moved to a small cottage on Kinnoull Hill overlooking Perth. Geddes was surrounded with an ‘atmosphere of family love, practical learning, and spiritual faith,’1 and as a young boy he shows a keen interest in the natural world. At the age of 20, Geddes furthered these interests through his study of Biology at the Royal School of Mines, London. Although fascinated by Darwin’s theory of evolution, Geddes was not convinced. He challenged Darwin’s theories in favour of cooperative relationships. Through the investigation of relationships existing in the natural world, Geddes distinguished between parasites and their hosts. He derived the term ‘Reciprocal Accommodation’, where the separation resulted in neither living as effectively as they did when in partnership. Geddes’ diverse career originated from these principles, and lead into his working with towns and cities. He was interested in bringing about social change by improving human life through the community. Through this work he revealed his new identity as a social thinker and activist.

1 Paddy Kitchen, An introduction to the ideas and life of Patrick Geddes, A most unsettling person, [London, Victor Gollancz LTD] 1975 p29

“vivendo discimus” By living we learn

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Geddes’ endeavour towards civic renewal could be seen in its first instance as he relocated to live in the tenement slums of Edinburgh (1886). Geddes literally took up residence in order to achieve a level of community engagement for urban renewal, ‘He persuaded neighbors to put color washes on the walls of the old dank closes, to brighten the tenement facades with window boxes ... he pointed out to the authorities the follies of demolition when it left the native citizens of a town with nowhere to live.’2 This work is an elaboration on his theory of conservative surgery, were sympathetic redevelopment could bring around urban renewal. As Geddes and his wife moved into the slums, the value with which he placed on working with the local environment was rendered visible as he engaged with community through activity. It was apparent that this action was derived from his early studies favouring cooperative relationships, where he linked his social philosophy to the problems in Edinburgh at the time. This position allowed for the development and testing of ideas in the location of Edinburgh, where Geddes over a decade constantly devised ‘thinking machines’, presenting the interconnections between the city and its residents in graphic form. Through these methods, he could present information in such a way as to highlight the inter-connections between different disciplines. ‘Folk work place’ was developed in order to explore the relationships between people, place and occupation, where the actions of the individual within a community were intrinsic to a collective transition. Geddes celebrated the Greek ‘polis’, a word deriving from the Latin ‘civitas’, meaning citizenhood. His celebration reflected his views on the combination of people place and culture, illustrated through the ‘Folk work place’ diagram.


“Geddes did not hesitate to marvel at the mysteries of life or capture them in the symbolic, imaginative forms of art or literature. Yet he always went a step further and asked how life could be improved, rather than merely understood.”1

Volker M Welter: Biopolis

1 http://architectureandurbanism.blogspot.com/2010/10/volker-m-welter-biopolis-

patrick-geddes.html

A Career of Engagement

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career. This venture inspired others to take responsibility in combining the arts and sciences for the ultimate benefit of society. His methods of working were through the framework of collaboration, where direct engagement with people and place, leads to a new public awareness of their local, and furthermore sustainable civic regeneration. Geddes admitted that not enough was known about the way the public operated within the city, the publics understanding of their locality, and the improvements that could be made to transform lives. It was his view to begin an investigation and produce “experiments” in-order to test ideas for the regeneration of the city environment. He appeals to the architect and city planner to become involved in active survey, scraping the surface of the city so that they have the provision to develop attractive solutions. In reaction against the conventional politics of opposing parties, Geddes promoted his principles of co-operation and survey as the only way to bring about real change. Geddes’ believed that ‘sociology was a discipline which must grow through an interaction of thought and action’. Today these principles seem timeless, as they remain as relevant to our cities and residents today, as they were when he was actively involved in the city of the 19th century.

The left side of the diagram accounts for the influence place has on shaping man. On the right, this is reversed, in representation of man guiding his own actions to remake place. The diagram symbolises an unending interplay between the 4 sections of life: acts, deeds facts, thoughts. We find that these ideas lead to the development of a small, self sustained community settlement, Edinburgh’s Outlook Tower. Geddes had an anarchic vision of the individual development of people and place. The community, taking responsibility for its own future, he believed, would want its own culture-institute, its Outlook Tower, its powerhouse, to co-ordinate all the activities in developing the interrelations of Folk, Work and Place. Geddes’ decade of work between 1886-1896 was remarkable. Working with Edinburgh Social Union he acquire and managing properties while instructing improvement schemes in dilapidated areas. ‘He demonstrated his conviction that education, participatory citizenship, and appreciation of the natural world, would save industrial society.’1 From this early civic work, we can see that Geddes has his sight set on long term goals, rather than focusing solely on the immediate objectives of the time. Geddes’ vision of the people’s marriage with place sets up a framework where an active community would have a responsibility for its own development. It seems that these principles are universally applicable to todays cities in need of regeneration, where the detachment of people from place results in the failure to adapt through a process of reconfiguration. Ultimately, this leads to instances of redundancy, where the lack of civic ownership results in total abandonment. The themes emerging from the inception of Geddes’ civic work were carried out throughout his entire


‘Place studied without work or folk is a matter of atlases and maps. Folk with-

out place and work are dead.’1

1 Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution (London: William & Norgate, 1949) new and revised edition, p196.

Patrick Geddes Acts, Deeds, Facts, Thoughts Diagram Cities in Evolution (London: William & Norgate, 1949) new and revised edition, p194

Patrick Geddes Acts, Deeds, Facts, Thoughts, General Structure Diagram. Cities in Evolution (London: William & Norgate, 1949) new and revised edition, p195

Broadening our Architectural PracticeArchitectures Public? P 3

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The development of the tower is inseparable from Geddes’ community based activities in Edinburgh during the 1890’s. It could be described as a physical realisation Geddes’ working with communities.

Acquiring the old Observatory (1982), located at the end of Castle esplanade, Geddes set about developing it as a regional study centre, ‘drawing together both academics and townsmen into a forceful, thoughtful community.’1 Geddes’ view on sociology as an interaction of ‘thought and action’ 2 can be seen to come to fruition as he established the tower as a ‘social laboratory’. Cosmo Burton described the Tower as “the solid or three-dimensional expression of Geddes’s thought”3. Geddes transferred his theories of mutual living quite literally into a socially engaged collaboration, anchored through the Outlook Tower, which favoured an attitude of participation to that of sole authorship. It is true to say that not many knew the full extend of what Geddes aimed to achieve. To a certain extent he was walking blind as he never failed to recognize that the activities were ‘part of a scientific experiment in social evolution’.4

1 Meller, Helen Elizabeth. Patrick Geddes : Social Evolutionist and City Planner. London, New York Taylor & Francis Routledge, 1993 p130




The Outlook Tower: A City Observatory

Outlook Tower, Edinburghhttp://www.patrickgeddestrust.co.uk/oldgeddespanels.htm

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Geddes categorized the exhibition material via the numerous sequentially designed floors, leading the visitor from the local to the regional. Preferring the user to start their journey from the top, navigating progressively downward, Geddes liked to rush the users up a winding staircase, bypassing all the other rooms, arriving onto a narrow balcony. At this point they would experience panoramic views of Edinburgh, soon to be led into the darkened turret and the related view of Edinburgh through camera obscura. Geddes likened the projected image from the camera obscura to a “modern painting”, where ‘both the perspective and color being compressed into a form easily assimillable to the eye’. For Geddes, this was ‘a symbol of the change from the artist’s view - the aesthetic and emotional view - to the limitless panorama, impossible to absorb in one go, of the geographical or scientific view’1. Progressively the visitor travels back down to the streets of Edinburgh via the various floors dedicated to Edinburgh, Scotland, English speaking countries, Europe and finally the World. Due to the experimental nature of the Outlook Tower, Geddes could never see it as an end in itself, rather he was ‘forever seeing ways of modifying, expanding or changing its many faceted components. Like a sculptor, he could mould, elide, enlarge and attenuate, but he could not bring himself to the stage of completion.’2



Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics (Ernest Benn, 1915), p. 324

Operation

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An Unfinished WorkThomas Marr, who was engaged as Geddes’ winter assistant at Dundee, was invited to run the tower, taking over much of the day-to-day work. The above quotation is taken directly from Geddes’ correspondence with Marr in relation to his ambitions of the building acting as civic laboratory.

The work of Geddes was never bound to a particular place, Edinburgh could be described as the initial testing ground for his work, where further development of his civic museum movement between 1910 and 1920 resulted in exhibitions located in Britain, Europe and India. Geddes passionately believed that if man was to achieve success in creating a balanced urban environment, he was to work through collaboration. His exhibition works sought to communicate civic understanding in order that they might be part of improving their own surroundings. Geddes’ works are not as an end in themselves, but part of the long term goal promoting mutual living. This level of thinking can be applied to our view of the city today where an interaction of social processes and spatial thinking could result in the further fruition of Geddes’ work.

Geddes spoke of the city plans as a ‘system of hieroglyphics in which man has written the history of civilisation, and the more tangled their apparent confusion, the more we may be rewarded in deciphering it.’1

Geddes treated the city as an evolving archive, what if we were to engage with the city through the models and tools left at our feet. What if we are to continue the ‘unfinished work’?

1 Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution (London: William & Norgate, 1949) new and revised edition p170

“Some of you may think it finished. That has been the way with most colleges...In this connection pray look up my own notes marked “collaborations, Elaboration, Independence” and let us try to organize a real students’ workshop in which a man could steadily progress (as you yourself have been doing) from one to the other.”1


Summer meeting during the 1890’sCities in Evolution (London: William & Norgate, 1949) new and revised edition, p193

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Stephen McCullough Material 2010 | 2011 Dundee School of Architecture

www.stephenmccullough.co.uk

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