The Outsider in Retrospect: E. A. Gutkind

Abstract

Abstract When E. A. Gutkind formally began his last project, the International History of City Development, for which he is most widely known in the United States, he was already seventy years old. What is not generally known is that at that time, his accumulated works as an urban theorist and his professional experience and accomplishments as an architect and planner had already surpassed, in sheer magnitude, the creative output of most figures in the field. He had been considered one of the outstanding modern architects in prewar Germany and had been associated with some of the most brilliant and distinguished European scholars after the War. Gutkind had also participated in a number of planning projects of significant scale and impact and yet in 1968, at the time of his death, he was virtually unknown. The few people who were aware of his work, mostly colleagues, theoreticians, or scholars, considered him an anomaly–an outsider. The purpose of this retrospective is to inquire into the life and career of this extraordinary and unusual man in an attempt to understand both his work and the circumstances which made him an outsider in a field to which he devoted his life. The first part reviews some of the important facts of his life1, the second part examines his major ideas and works, and the third part assesses his significance and place in the field.