This article examines one facet of Martin Meyerson’s internationalism, by tracing the work he did with the English town planner, educator, and editor Jaqueline Tyrwhitt. Their professional association began in 1948, when Meyerson was the editor of the journal TASK. They became collaborators while both were on the faculty of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). They remained colleagues as participants in the ten annual international conferences—the Delos Symposia—hosted by Constantinos Doxiadis, beginning in1963. Consideration of their association spanning four decades illuminates the increasingly international dimension of Meyerson’s work, which parallels the internationalization of urban planning and design as a discipline, within an increasingly internationalized university.
Martin Meyerson, ‘‘Martin Meyerson,’’ in The Book of the School: 100 Years: The Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania , ed. Ann L. Strong and George E. Thomas, 166 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, ca. 1990).
2.
Ann L. Strong, ‘‘Planning Abroad,’’ in ibid., 167.
3.
This article forms part of a larger project, an intellectual biography of Tyrwhitt, and builds on my previous work on this topic. See Ellen Shoshkes, ‘‘Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: A Founding Mother Of Urban Design,’’ Planning Perspectives 21, no. 2 (April 2006): 179-97; and Ellen Shoshkes, ‘‘Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and Transnational Discourse on Modern Urban Planning and Design, 1941-1951,’’ Urban History 36, no. 2 (2009): 262-83. I am grateful to the Beverly Willis Architectural Foundation for the research support that made this article possible. Daniel Huws generously made his personal collection of Tyrwhitt papers available for my research. I would also like to thank the editor of this journal and anonymous readers for their very helpful comments. And I especially thank Sy Adler for his attentive editorial review of earlier versions of this paper.
4.
Julian Huxley , ‘‘A Philosophy for UNESCO,’’The UNESCO Courier no. 3 ( 1976): 16.
5.
Martin Meyerson‘‘Utopian Traditions and the Planning of Cities,’’Daedalus90, no. 1 (Winter 1961): 180-93, citation on 182, referring to David Riesman, ‘‘Some Observations on Community Plans and Utopia,’’The Yale Law Journal57, no. 2 (December 1947): 173-200.
6.
J Tyrwhitt Travel Diaries, USA, 1945, J Tyrwhitt Personal Papers in Daniel Huws possession, temporarily deposited at the National Library of Wales for the author’s personal use (hereafter Huws Collection).
7.
Martin Meyerson, ‘‘Martin Meyerson,’’ in The Book of the School: 100 Years: The Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania , ed. Ann L. Strong and George E. Thomas, 166 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, ca. 1990).
8.
Margy Meyerson, personal communication.
9.
Tyrwhitt’s significant role in weaving Geddes’ ideas into modern planning thought is curiously underreported in an otherwise comprehensive review of Geddes’ planning historiography by Noah Hysler Rubin, ‘‘The Changing Appreciation of Patrick Geddes: A Case Study in Planning History,’’Planning Perspectives24, No. 3 (July 2009 ): 349-66.
10.
Ray Bromley , ‘‘Doxiadis and the Ideal Dynapolis: The Limitations of Planned Axial Urban Growth,’’Ekistics69, no. 415-417 (July-December 2002): 317-30. For a discussion of the Delos Symposia that emphasizes the participants’ interest in networks as a paradigm for urban dynamics see Mark Wigley, ‘‘Network Fever,’’ Grey Room04, (Summer 2001): 82-122.
‘‘The Declaration of Delos,’’Ekistics16, no. 93 (August 1963): n.p.
13.
‘‘Report on Delos Two,’’Ekistics18, no. 107 (October 1964): 231.
14.
ibid.
15.
See Francis X. Sutton, ‘‘The Ford Foundation’s Urban Programs Overseas: Changes and Continuities’’11 (New York: Rockefeller Archive Center, 2000) and Louis Winnick, ‘‘Philanthropy’s adaptation to the urban crisis,’’ Ford Foundation Archive, Report 02158.
16.
Margaret Mead, a Delian, referred to such clusters as units of cultural micro-evolution. See Continuities in Cultural Evolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964).
17.
‘‘Greece and Europe,’’ in Constantinos A. Doxiadis: Texts, Design Drawings, Settlements, ed. Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis, (Athens: Ikaros, 2006): 447
18.
Archives of the Royal Institute of British Architects (hereafter, RIBA), Jaqueline Tyrwhitt Collection (hereafter, TYJ), Box 15 Folder 6 Letter from J.T. to M. Meyerson, May 1, 1951.
19.
Margy Meyerson, personal communication. See also Winnick op. cit.
20.
‘‘Report on Delos Two,’’ op. cit.
21.
See Ellen Shoshkes , ‘‘East-West: Interactions between the United States and Japan and Their Effect on Utopian Realism,’’Journal of Planning History, 3, no. 3 (August 2004): 215-40.
22.
On the continuation of CIAM discourse at the Delos symposia see also Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
23.
Richard Meier , ‘‘Notes on the Creation of an Efficient Megalopolis: Tokyo,’’Ekistics23, no. 138 (May 1967 ): 294-307.
24.
Sigfried Giedion , Space, Time and Architecture: the growth of a new tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967 ed.): xxxviii.
25.
Margy Meyerson, personal communication.
26.
‘‘The Declaration of Delos,’’ op. cit.
27.
Ford Foundation Annual Report 1969 (New York : Ford Foundation, 1969): 6.
28.
Sound Recording: ‘‘AEM 1969-Seventh Delos Symposium-Lecture on Modern Universities’’ (July 14, 1969), Doxiadis Archive, Item # 15839.
29.
‘‘James Perkins Obituary,’’ Cornell Chronicle, August 27, 1988.
For a critique of Ekistics in particular and the environmental consciousness of the 1960s in general, see Panayiota Pyla, ‘‘Gray-Areas in Green Politics: Reflections on the Modern Environmental Movement,’’ Thresholds 14 (1997): 48-53. For a critique of the Delos Symposia focusing on Doxiadis’ concept of Ecumenopolis see P. Pyla, ‘‘Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics,’’ Grey Room 36, (Summer 2009): 6-35.
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt , ‘‘Personal Note on S. Giedion,’’ RIBA TYJ/60/2.
36.
Martin Meyerson , ‘‘Bucky as a Leonardo-like World Fellow in Residence,’’ in Buckminster Fuller Anthology for the New Millennium, ed. Thomas T.K. Zung , (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001): 43-7.
37.
Editorial statement, TASK 3 (1942): printed inside front cover.
38.
‘‘Editorial: On Unity in the Planning Profession.’’ TASK 3 (1942): 20.
39.
‘‘Editorial: Unity for Planning,’’ TASK 5, (1944): 1
40.
Martin Meyerson , ‘‘Postwar Plans: A Survey,’’TASK5 (1944): 8-11.
J. Tyrwhitt, ‘‘Editor’s Note,’’ in Patrick Geddes, Geddes in India, ed. J. Tyrwhitt ( Lund Humphries, London1947): 6.
47.
Lewis Mumford, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Geddes in India , 9.
48.
Walter Taylor , ‘‘Book Review: Planning 1948,’’Land Economics25, no. 3 (1939): 328-29, here 328.
49.
Martin Meyerson , ‘‘Utopian Traditions and the Planning of Cities,’’Daedelus90, no. 1The Future Metropolis (Winter, 1961): 180-93, here 191.
50.
Letter from Herbert Emmerich to J. Tyrwhitt, 21 October 1948, RIBA TYJ/47/6.
51.
Sigfried Giedion, op. cit: 702.
52.
Martin Meyerson, ‘‘Martin Meyerson,’’ op. cit: 166.
53.
This textbook was considered ‘‘the sum of town planning theory and practice at that time.’’ Brenda White. 1974. The Literature and Study of Urban and Regional Planning (London: Routledge), 45.
54.
Michael Hebbert , ‘‘The daring experiment: social scientists and land-use planning in 1940s Britain,’’Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 10, (1983): 3-17, here 7.
55.
‘‘Notes on the ASPO National Planning Conference in Pittsburgh, 25, October, 1951 memo to Weissmann from A.C. Kayanan,’’ Harvard Loeb Library Archive, CIAM Collection, Correspondence 1951, October-December.
56.
Letter from J. Trywhitt to S. Giedion, November 11, 1957. Huws Collection, Tyrwhitt Giedion Correspondence.
57.
See: Jaqueline Tyrhwitt, ‘‘Education for urban design, origin and concepts of the Harvard program,’’ in The architect and the city, papers from the AIA-ACSA Teacher Seminar Cranbrook Academy of Art June 11-12, 1962, ed. Marcus Whiffen, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966): 121-38.
58.
Reginald Isaacs, then Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Chairman of the Department of City Planning and Landscape Architecture at Harvard GSD, led the development of ACTION’s research program in 1954. Landscape architect Hideo Sasaki prepared the design research projects; Isaacs subsequently invited Sasaki to join the GSD faculty as assistant professor. See Hideo Sasaki, ‘‘Urban Renewal and Landscape Architecture,’’ Landscape Architecture 45 (1955): 100-101. Isaacs reportedly first offered this junior position-to help establish the newly merged department of city planning and landscape architecture-to Meyerson, with whom he had worked in Chicago. Meyerson encouraged him to hire someone more ‘‘design-oriented.’’ See Cammie McAtee, ‘‘From the Ground Up: Hideo Sasaki’s Contributions to Urban Design,’’ in Josep Luis Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, ed. Eric Mumford and Hashim Sarkis 167-97 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
59.
Dean Jose Luis Sert and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, ‘‘The Shape of Our Cities: A Series of Experimental Study-Discussion Programs on Urbanism, 1957.’’ RIBA TYJ 23/6.
60.
Harvard University Loeb Library Archives, Sert Collection, ‘‘Shape of American Cities’’ 3-b.
61.
Editorial, Ekistics 7, no. 44 (June 1959): 444.
62.
Letter from J. Tyrwhitt to Sert, March 17, 1960; letter from Sert to J. Tyrwhitt, March 24, 1960, RIBA Archive TYJ 18 File 6.
63.
Martin Meyerson , Face of the Metropolis, ( New York: Random House, 1963): 9.
64.
Ibid., 7-8.
65.
‘‘Third Urban Design Conference, General report of Proceedings. April 1959,’’ in Ekistics 8, no. 46 (August 1959): 112-29.
Constantinos Doxiadis Archives, ATI Correspondence (1958-1959).
68.
Letter from M. Meyerson to J. Tyrwhitt, July 27, 1960, RIBA TYJ/42/8.
69.
Memo from M. Meyerson to J. Epstein 27 July 1960, RIBA TYJ/42/8.
70.
‘‘Fifth Urban Design Conference, General report of Proceedings. April 1961,’’ Harvard University Loeb Library Archives, Sert Collection, UD Conferences File.
71.
Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bagian Tata Pembangunan Daerah & Kota Division of Regional and City Planning, RIBA Archives, TYJ/33/1.
72.
William Doebele Jr., ‘‘Education for Planning in Developing Countries: The Bandung School of Regional and City Planning,’’ Town Planning Review 33, no. 2, (July, 1962): 95-114, here 97.
73.
Letter from J. Tyrwhitt to S. Giedion, n.d. ca. December1958. Huws Collection, Tyrwhitt Giedion Correspondence.
Letter from W. Doebele to Martin Meyerson June 3, 1959, RIBA TYJ/19/3.
76.
J. Tyrwhitt diary 1960. Huws Collection, Tyrwhitt Travel Diaries and Desk Calenders.
77.
Letter from J. Tyrwhitt to Sert, March 17, 1960, RIBA TYJ/18/6.
78.
‘‘Final Report submitted 28 July 1960 by Professor J. Tyrwhitt, Division of Regional and City Planning, Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia,’’ RIBA TYJ/33/2.
79.
Letter from M. Meyerson to J. Tyrwhitt, July 8, 1960, RIBA TYJ/20/5.
80.
Letter from J. Tyrwhitt to W. Doebele, August 29, 1961, RIBA TYJ/33/5.
81.
Report: Conference for Future Faculty, Harvard University, May 28-30, 1961 RIBA TYJ/33/1.
82.
Letter from J. Tyrwhitt to M. Meyerson, July 13, 1962, RIBA TYJ/33/5.
83.
‘‘Excerpt of letter from J. Tyrwhitt to Sert, July 25, 1963,’’ Ekistics 52, no. 314/315 (September-December 1985): 407.
Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution (1915), 397, as cited in J. Tyrwhitt, ‘‘Society and Environment: A Historical Review,’’ Town and Country Planning Textbook (London: Architectural Press, 1950): 96-145, here 139.
86.
See Martin Meyerson , ‘‘Ethical Issues Involved in Changing the Physical Environment,’’ in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, A Symposium: The Ethics of Change (Toronto : CBC Publications, 1969).
