Camillo Sitte

Camillo Sitte (17 April 1843 – 16 November 1903) was a noted Austrian architect, painter and city planning theoretician with great influence and authority of the development of urban construction planning and regulation in Europe.

Camillo Sitte was born and died in Vienna. He was an art historian and architect. He traveled around the towns of Europe and tried to identify aspects that made towns feel warm and welcoming. Architecture was a process of culturization for him. Sitte received a lot of attention in 1889 with the publication of his book "Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen" (English title: "City Planning According to Artistic Principles"). The richly illustrated book pointed out that the urban room around the experiencing man should be the leading motif of urban planning, thus turning away from the pragmatic, hygienic planning procedures of the time. Sitte emphasized the creation of an irregular urban structure, spacious plazas, enhanced by monuments and other aesthetic elements.

Sitte founded the Camillo Sitte Lehranstalt and the Camillo Sitte Gasse in Vienna, and also the magazine Städtebau in 1904. Camillo Sitte was the son of the architect Franz Sitte (1808–79) and the father of the architect Siegfried Sitte (1876–1945).

The work of Sitte is not exactly a criticism of architectural form, it is more precisely an aesthetic criticism of the nineteenth century's end urbanism. Mainly an urban planning theory book, it has a deep influence in architecture, as the two disciplines are deeply intertwined. It was also highly successful in its time. Between 1889 and 1922 it was edited five times. It was translated into French in 1902 but was not translated into English until 1945.

For Sitte, the most important is not the architectural shape or form of each building, but the inherent creative quality of urban space, the whole as much more than the sum of its parts. Sitte contended that many urban planners had neglected to consider the vertical dimension of planning, instead focusing too much on paper, and that this approach hindered the efficacy of planning in an aesthetically conscious manner. Athens and the ancient Greek spaces, like the agora and the forum are his preferred examples of good urban spaces. He makes a study of the spatial structures of the cities, squares, monuments, and confronts the living beauty and creativity of the most ancient ones with the sterility of the new cities. In general:

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