Ian Nairn (1930–1983)

The British architectural writer and critic Ian Nairn admired Paris as a whole; the city, the people, the zeitgeist. In his view the common citizens “may not be in charge of their destiny, but they are completely in charge of the way that they meet it.”

He concentrates on the architecture. It’s a guide book, but not a strictly practical one. Nairn takes his design personally. On Claude Perrault’s design for the eastern façade of the Louvre – The Colonnade: “Behind Perrault’s façade is a huge mass of building which is just about enough to put anyone off architecture for good.”

His descriptions are full of character and wit. Musée Carnavalet: “A gentle, friendly place, good for a hangover on a Sunday morning, which is how I saw it.”

Hôtel Fieubet: “Splendid nonsense,” “comic-opera style, including a lion who’s seen it all ten times over.”

Object, corner of rue des Archives and rue des Haudriettes: “An enigmatic oval thing,” “humanizing the city, making bearable the worrying fact that seven million people are living in such a very small space.”

Bois de Boulogne: “Full of ambiguous paths with ambiguous men on them.”

Panthéon: “Man proposes, events dispose, and the spirit of Paris does what it likes.”

University of Paris, Institute of Art and Architecture: “A bizarre, fretted skyline sticks up very rude indeed.”

A good book to take to Paris to supplement more practical travel guides, even if it is over fifty years old. If you’re not traveling it’s enjoyable to view the buildings and areas Nairn describes online.… (more)

I've never read Gordon Cullen's Townscape, but I'm aware of its influence, much of it happening in the decade following its publication in 1961. I've read The Italian Townscape, which came out in 1963, and now this book by Ian Nairn, the British architect and author who focused on the idea of townscape as one that planners and architects should consider in their projects. The American Landscape documents his 10,0000-mile, year-long trek through USA, via a Rockefeller Foundation grant he received in 1959. It intersperses his photos with his observations, criticisms and ideas on urban design. Actually interspersing is the wrong word, since Nairn treats the photos like words, inserting them into paragraphs and even sentences to make the visuals part of the book's grammar; this technique makes the book easy to read and weds the text and images unlike any other book I've encountered outside of a comic. Fifty years after publication, the places he visited have changed significantly, and I'd wager most not for the better in terms of Nairn's principles; such is the difficulty with espousing a townscape approach (it prioritizes visual experience and movement through space) on a country that values economy over aesthetics. Nevertheless, Nairn's text is enjoyable and eye-opening at times, written with a skill that parallels the care he wants to see in the environment.… (more)