Colin Rowe and Urban Design: A Continuing Conversation

Abstract

A celebration in honor of Colin Rowe (1920–99) will be held at Cornell in Rome on Thursday, April 16, at 6 p.m. As director of the Urban Design Studio at Cornell, Rowe’s teaching career at Cornell spanned nearly three decades from 1962 to 1990. This event will highlight his contribution to urban design and the recent publication which pays tribute to that work, The Urban Design Legacy of Colin Rowe, coedited by Steven W. Hurtt and James T. Tice. A panel discussion by three distinguished urbanists will provide a commentary on the topic.

Olgu Çalişkan: “The Future of Urban Design in the Age of Complexity” will address a paradigmatic shift in contemporary urbanism, tracing the evolution of urban design practice from the idea of collage toward the logic of coding. The focus centers on code-based algorithmic thinking and computational (parametric) urban design, and its relationship to the issue of context.

Adolf Sotoca: “The Metropolitan Predicament” will highlight his research and exploratory work in the urban morphology of Mediterranean metropolitan landscapes using the lens of Colin Rowe’s urban design theories. The focus will be on the ongoing urban design initiatives in the Besòs River corridor, a metropolitan transect in Barcelona

Galina Tachieva: “The Unfinished Business of American Urbanism: Contradictions, Fragments, and Repair” invokes Rowe’s Collage City to contend that the suburb is not going away; it is a condition requiring transformation. The future metropolis will arise from collision: fragment stitched to fragment, mall to village, subdivision to neighborhood, affirming the task of repairing and civilizing what already exists.

Moderator: James Tice

Biographies

Olgu Çalişkan, Ph.D., TU Delft, Professor of Urban Design (2013) and Morphology Middle East Technical University, METU, Ankara, Turkey

Çalişkan has lectured at METU Faculty of Architecture, Department of City and Regional Planning, and as professor of urban design and morphology. In 2025, he served as a visiting professor at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Adolf Sotoca, Professor Serra Hunter in Urbanism at UPC BarcelonaTECH Barcelona, Spain

Former Professor at Luleå Tekniska Universität and Visiting Professor at University of Illinois and CUT and frequent international visiting professor and speaker, Sotoca is principal researcher of funded programs and author of several books, chapters, and articles. He served as director of the Metropolitan Plan in Barcelona and principal of CSArquitectes and is currently director of the master’s program MISMeC at UPC_BarcelonaTECH.

Galina Tachieva, CNU Fellow, AICP LEED AP, DPZ CoDesign, Miami, Florida

Galina Tachieva is the managing partner of DPZ CoDesign, directing work in the US and internationally. With three decades of experience in urban design, development, and redevelopment, she is the author of Sprawl Repair Manual, focused on transforming auto-centric places into walkable, resilient communities.

James T. Tice, Professor of Architecture Emeritus, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon

Tice has written and lectured widely on architecture and urban design. He coauthored Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles, Frank Lloyd Wright Between Principle and Form, and
Giuseppe Vasi’s Rome. With Steven W. Hurtt, he edited The Urban Design Legacy of Colin Rowe. His research has centered on the city of Rome.