Planners to Investigate 'Aesthetic Urban Design'

More than 200 city planners and architects will converge on Hunt and Robinson Halls April 9th and 10th for the nation's first general conference on aesthetic aspects of urban design.

The meeting will attempt to discover "how to make our cities nice to look at and a joy to live in," Mary Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, assistant professor of City Planning, said yesterday. "Some of our American cities are pretty horrid," she observed.

Sponsored by faculty and alumni of the Graduate School of Design, the two-day conference will be "exploratory, not didactic," and will try to find a common basis for the joint work of the three professions which will send representatives--city planners, architects, and landscape architects.

Miss Tyrwhitt said that initial response to invitations "has been very encouraging from everywhere," adding, "by everywhere I mean the United States. We're not interested in doing pretty things to Venice. The conference will consider practical aesthetic problems of places like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago."

"Growing in Beauty"

In line with this American theme, the Design School has asked several large cities to submit old maps and prints, air photographs, drawings and models to show urban development. One or two examples of European cities may be used to show "the unconscious way of growing in beauty--something we seem to have missed here."

"From there we want to find out who controls the aesthetic growth of a city, and why our cities must be so horrible," she added.

"The Yard is Pretty"

A history of Cambridge development in the Square area will probably be included in the conference exhibition. "Almost everyone will agree that the Yard is pretty to look at. We hope we'll find out whether it was the genius of a few men, or a gradual unconscious development, that made it so," Miss Tyrwhitt said.