Historic Patrick Geddes plans and drawings to be displayed for first time
Published on Wed 21 Oct 2015
Rarely seen work by the hugely influential Scottish planner and botanist Sir Patrick Geddes will go on show at the University of Dundee this month, some of it being placed on public display for what is thought to be the first time.
“The City is a Thinking Machine – Activism in the Built Environment” marks the centenary of the publication of Geddes’ 'Cities in Evolution’ (1915) and the associated Cities Exhibitions that ran at that time.
Geddes was a pioneering thinker on the design and evolution of cities. 'Cities in Evolution’ was a seminal text which promoted his Cities Exhibitions, which he organised from 1910 onwards. He also proposed local Cities Exhibitions as permanent institutions in each city centre which he argued were a necessary condition for participatory democracy.
Dr Lorens Holm, Director of the Geddes Institute at the University of Dundee, said, “Geddes sought to transform lives and transform environments. This new exhibition is important because it brings together Geddes’ thinking machine diagrams – a key to his thought on civics and cities – with the exemplary city plans he collected for his Exhibitions, at a time when our cities are under increasing pressure to accommodate new populations without losing sight of sustainability and citizenship, the key principles for well-being in the built environment.”
The new exhibition features original archival material, much of it never displayed or published before, plus current work by affiliates of the Geddes Institute for Urban Research at the University of Dundee.
The exhibition is a research project whose aim is to evaluate Geddes’ thinking at a time when city regions are under increasing pressure to accommodate new populations without losing sight of their natural heritage and sustainability.
The exhibition on Geddes’ thought and work has three parts: city plans from Geddes’ touring Cities Exhibitions; his thinking and lecturing diagrams, drawn from the archives at the Universities of Dundee, Edinburgh, and Strathclyde; and recent architecture and planning projects by affiliates of the Geddes Institute for Urban Research.
Geddes’ diagrams have not, to the best knowledge of the exhibition organisers, been exhibited or published before, nor have these plans been brought to the public view since the Outlook Tower closed in 1949.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of evening events titled 'Activism in the Built Environment’.
After a launch event on Friday 16th October at 5:30pm, 'The City is a Thinking Machine’ opened to the public at the Lamb Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee from Monday 19th October and runs until December 11th. It can be viewed from Monday to Friday each week from 9.30am to 6.30pm.
For more information, please visit the Geddes Institute website at:
http:///projects/citythink/
The Geddes Institute for Urban Research is the principal collegiate forum and collective platform for research and scholarship in Architecture and Planning at the University of Dundee, with participation by staff in Architecture, Planning, and Geography. Founded by Town & Regional Planning in the 1990’s, the Geddes Institute functions as host, showcase, and storefront for research and scholarship projects and activities in the Architecture and Planning programs. The polymathic planner and botanist, Patrick Geddes insisted that the city and its region must be understood together in a single synoptic view that encompassed their mutual relations and dependencies. His concern with ‘land work folk’ defines a form of latter day humanism by which we orient our research and scholarship praxis in the urban and rural manmade environments. The purpose of the Institute is to bring together researchers from disciplines from across the University with interests in the manmade environment, and to bring together the different research cultures/methodologies represented by these disciplines, in particular the social science research methodologies of geography, sociology, and planning with the creative practice led research methodologies of architecture, art, and the design disciplines.