Abstract
The concept of ‘organised complexity’ was adopted by Jane Jacobs in 1961 as a new way of understanding city planning, drawn from developing biological sciences. In 1949, the article ‘Townscape’ by I. de Wolfe (H. de C. Hastings) in the Architectural Review is interpreted in terms of its references to biological sources and theories of ‘higher organisation’ and ‘differentiation’. These are used as the basis for re-interpreting Townscape’s historical and theoretical grounding, in relation to science and the growth of systems thinking, giving possible contemporary sources that Hastings might have used. The biological interests of former Bauhaus staff in London in the mid 1930s are discussed, as are links among Architectural Review contributors to Anarchism and Social Credit are proposed as ways of seeing the Townscape project in political terms, with references to an ecologically-based leisure society, as envisaged in later writings by Hastings.
Published Version
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