Kevin
Andrew Lynch, 1918-1984.
Papers, 1934-1988.
Manuscript Collection - MC 208
Kevin Andrew Lynch, 1918-1984, studied at Yale University, 1935-1937; Taliesin (under Frank Lloyd Wright), 1937-1939; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1939-1940; and received the B.C.P. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1947. He was appointed instructor in city planning at MIT in 1948, assistant professor in 1949, associate professor in 1955, and professor in 1963. Lynch influenced the field of city planning through his work on the theory of city form, and on the perception of the city environment and its consequences for city design. He consulted for many cities in the United States and abroad on projects including Boston's Government Center and Waterfront Park, Detroit's Riverfront, major art institutions in Dallas, and urban design plans in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. Lynch's seven books and many articles include Image of the City (1960), which summarizes a 5-year study he co-directed with Gyorgy Kepes on how people perceive their cities; What Time is This Place (1972), which examines how time may be passed in cities, as well as urban conservation; and Growing Up in Cities (1977), which he edited and which explores how environments affect children.
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Memory cannot retain everything; if it could, we would be overwhelmed with data. Memory is the result of a process of selection and of organizing what is selected so that it is within reach in expectable situations. There must also be some random accumulations to enable us to discover unexpected relationships. But serendipity is possible only when recollection is essentially a holding fast to what is meaningful and a release of what is not.
Kevin Lynch
What Time Is This Place?
MIT Press, 1972
13 records cartons, 2 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box
Lynch's career as a city planner is documented in correspondence, reports to planning groups, project files, drawings, photographs, and clippings of projects he worked on, including the Boston waterfront redevelopment and Government Center, and studies of San Diego, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Guyana, some of which were done by Carr, Lynch Associates, his consulting firm. Also included are photographs and other working materials gathered for the UNESCO International Study of the Impact of Economic Development on the Spatial Environment of Children.
Research notes and working papers on urban form and development include transcripts of interviews about perceptions of the city, and a collection of student essays on childhood memories of environment. Lynch's writings are documented in correspondence, and in drafts and copies of his publications, including articles on waste, land reclamation, and recycling; original art work for Growing Up in Cities (1977) and A Theory of Good City Form (1981), and bibliographies for Wasting Away (1990), his book about refuse and refuse disposal. His activities as a professor at MIT are recorded in course notes for classes he taught, including Urban Landscapes (11.321) and City Design (13.322), and in student papers and examinations. The collection also includes poetry and papers written by Lynch while a student, high school philosophy notes, four volumes of European trip diaries (1952-1953), and a 1980 videocassette interview with Lynch conducted by Ann Buttimer entitled "Dream and Reality: Architecture and Urban Planning" about influences on Lynch's life and social concerns in architecture and city planning.
The European trip diaries, the index to the diaries, and high school philosophy notes are also available on microfilm.
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