I Almost Forgot Unpublished Colin Rowe

Unpublished writings of Colin Rowe—letters, essays, lectures, and a postcard—clarify his thinking on key concepts while revealing his wit and erudition.

Colin Rowe (1920–1999) was one of the great architectural theorists of the twentieth century, publishing the influential works The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays (1976) and Collage City (1978). While his written work was rigorous and authoritative, his lectures and letters were more casual, “carefully careless,” both witty and erudite. I Almost Forgot gathers twenty-four such writings—letters, essays, lectures, a postcard, and a eulogy. Both edifying and entertaining, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, occasionally scathing, they fill in personal details and clarify key concepts in Rowe’s work.
 
In these writings, Rowe tells of the “Corbu superstructure upon a beaux-arts base” that refugee Polish architects and their students introduced to his alma mater, the University of Liverpool, in the early 1940s. He characterizes his controversial essay “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa” as a “pretty clever but, otherwise, perfectly innocent little article,” and reports that Le Corbusier’s Villa Schwob “played an entirely disproportionate role in my mental life.” Rowe’s voice and opinions are strong in his discussions of architecture, current events, and his own life and work. Each piece begins with a brief introduction by the volume editor. The writings are illustrated by images of Rowe’s drawings, letters, and postcards; photographs and drawings of Rowe’s only built work; and illustrations chosen by Rowe for lectures.

Daniel Naegele is an architect and Associate Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University. His essays and articles have appeared in AA Files, Harvard Design Magazine, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and other publications. He is the editor of The Letters of Colin Rowe and the author of Naegele’s Guide to the Only Good Architecture in Iowa and Who Shot Le Corbusier? Zhengyang Hua holds a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xix
1 Letters to the Editor 1
2 Two Letters to Mark Girouard (28 and 29 November 1972) 5
3 Excursus on Contessa Priuli-Bon (c. 1997-98) 11
4 Intellectual vs. Intelligent (1990s) 31
5 What Did Colin Rowe Design? 35
6 Letter to William H. Jordy (14 September 1954) 45
7 Letters to Louis I. Kahn (7 February 1956) 49
8 Letter to Alvin and Elizabeth Boyarsky (29 October 1958) 55
9 Letter to Alan Colquhoun (2 May 1973) 63
10 Even the Villa Schwob (25 November 1974) 69
11 Program: Fact or Fantasy? (18 March 1975) 91
12 On Bernhard Horsli and the Graphic Redesign of Collage City (September 1996) 123
13 Letter to Rodolfo Machado (1 November 1984) 133
14 Postcard to J. O. Mahoney (24 April 1984) 137
15 Memorandum: "English Architecture" Lecture Course (24 December 1986) 139
16 Letter to Mark Hinchman (20 January 1996) 145
17 A Nostalgia for the Avant-Garde (c. 1996) 155
18 Letter to David Rowe (20 March 1996) 161
19 William Wetmore Story (28 April 1996) 171
20 The Tyranny of the Coffee Table (28 April 1996) 177
21 'History' and 'Theory': Two Contradictory Categories? (26 June 1997) 205
22 Eulogy for Werner Seligmann (6 December 1998) 225
23 The Existential Predicament 233
Editor's Notes 241
Biographical Notes 285
Select Published Colin Rowe 297
Illustration Credits 303
Index 307