TOWNSCAPE 65

Gordon Cullen Study Day & Book Launch marking 65 years of Gordon Cullen’s Townscape

This year, 2026, Gordon Cullen’s Townscape is 65-years old. To discuss why the book is not ready for retirement, and retains such cross-disciplinary appeal across the world as a method of describing, analysing, and visualising place (there are two translations in Mandarin alone), the University of Westminster Archives and School of Architecture + Cities’ Architectural Humanities Research Group are holding a Gordon Cullen Study Day on Friday 29 May.

The day will centre around the opportunity to see Cullen’s original drawings, photographs, and writings which were brought to Westminster from Cullen’s home in Wraysbury in 2015, and which are now held in the University’s Gordon Cullen Archive

Speakers include: Alistair Barr, Barr Gazetas Architects and Academy of Urbanism, on Townscape and current practice; Harry Charrington, Professor University of Westminster, on the Cullen Archive; Gillian Darley, writer and broadcaster, on Gordon Cullen and Ian Nairn; Clément Orillard, Professor Ecole d'urbanisme de Paris, on Cullen abroad; Alan Powers, Professor LSA and author, on Cullen the obliging sharrawag; Peter Rees, Professor UCL and former Chief Planning Officer of the City of London, on a Good Pub Guide to Townscape, place-making career cast in the Cullen mould.

The event also celebrates the launch of Gordon Cullen's Townscape in USA edited by Carla Molinari & Marco Spada, the first ever publication of Townscape in USA which Cullen wrote in the early 1960s, and the manuscript of which, along with his sketches and photographs, is held in the Gordon Cullen Archive. The book will be introduced by Dr Carla Molinari, Anglia Ruskin University & Dr Marco Spada, University of Suffolk.