ABSTRACT

Camillo Sitte’s City Planning According to Artistic Principles and Rem Koolhaas’s essay “Junk Space” seem to stand for contrary positions on status, form and function of the city.1 Affirming the tradition, Sitte derived his urban design principles from pre-industrial European cities. In his mind, a narrowly rationalist approach to planning and the dominance of economic interests occasioned a disruptive effect on the city and society. In addition to leading to a general anomie and the erosion of social relations, the modern metropolis even affected the health of the citizens, inducing such novel maladies as neurasthenia and agoraphobia. According to an ironic remark made by Sitte, even statues would suffer from the latter disease.2 In order to provide a cure, he proposed an artistic approach with an emphasis on human scale and the psychology of perception. As Karin Wilhelm has pointed out, Sitte’s agenda resonates with the cultural criticism of the late nineteenth century, especially as regards the danger of losing the communal and civic functions of pre-modern public spaces.3