Patrick Geddes

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Patrick Geddes (1886)
Patrick Geddes' Master Plan of Tel Aviv (1925)

Sir Patrick Geddes (born October 2, 1854 in Ballater ; died April 17, 1932 in Montpellier ) was a Scottish biologist and botanist . He became known as an innovative thinker in the field of urban planning and education . His botanical author abbreviation is " Geddes ".

Life

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Milne's Court, Lawnmarket Edinburgh.jpg

Gedde's father was a simple soldier who bought a cottage called Mount Tabor in a suburb of Perth in 1857 . The young Patrick Geddes grew up there and gained his first experience in the field of botany in the mountains above the River Tay . From 1874 to 1878 he studied at the Royal College of Mines in London with Thomas Henry Huxley . By the age of 24, Geddes was a recognized biologist whose work was published by the Royal Society . In 1879 he set up a zoological institute in Stonehaven for the University of Aberdeen . Then he went on a research trip to Mexico . After an illness that almost cost him his eyesight, he turned his attention to people and their living environment. In 1888 he took over the Department of Botany at University College Dundee , which he before until 1919 had held for five years as the owner of the Department of Sociology at the University of Bombay changed. In 1924 he founded the Collège des Écossais in Montpellier in the south of France . In 1932, a few months before his death, he was raised as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir") to the personal nobility.

Like the sociologist John Ruskin, Patrick Geddes was of the opinion that social processes and spatial structures are closely linked. He therefore considered it possible to influence or initiate social processes through targeted design of the spatial environment. He proposed this theory at the beginning of the 20th century, a time when industrialization had dramatically changed the way people lived in the UK . Gedde's goal was to create an urban environment that would be optimally set up for people's needs and that would bring body and mind into harmony.

Geddes demonstrated his theories through his work in the old town of Edinburgh, among other places . In a badly dilapidated neighborhood where famous thinkers like Adam Smith lived in the 18th and 19th centuries , he set up town halls. In a tower near Edinburgh Castle , the Outlook Tower , he set up a museum for local, regional and international history. The centerpiece of the museum was a large camera obscura in the top of the tower. It should enable the visitor to see his immediate surroundings and learn to understand them as a unit. In Edinburgh he also designed Dunbar's Close Garden .

Gedde's theses influenced many thinkers of the 20th century, such as the American urban theorist Lewis Mumford . Today Geddes is often referred to as the father of urban planning .

He founded the College Des Ecossais in Montpellier , France . Together with his son-in-law, the architect Sir Frank Mears , he worked on projects in the Middle East: in 1925 he was commissioned to structure Tel Aviv with a master city map. He designed a garden city with a hierarchical road network and many squares. The Geddes Plan named after him, however, had to be changed quite a bit - because more people moved in in the first half of the 1930s than anticipated. Nevertheless, Geddes' idea can still be read in many places. According to him, this is Cape Geddes named in Antarctica. In 1880 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Educational work

Geddes developed a pedagogical model apart from the classic "3R" ( R eading, w R iting, a R ithmetic). Instead he preferred the "3H", namely H eart, H ead, H and. This education with "head, heart and hand" can already be found with Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi . Geddes developed Pestalozzi's model further by giving preference to the heart, as he felt that traditional upbringing was too focused on the head. Geddes knew the importance of feelings for motivation to learn. So he suggested that teachers should first understand what motivates their students. Geddes came to the conclusion that learning should begin with the heart, i.e. with the feelings. Then one should concentrate on the hand (learning by doing) and finally on the head ("intellectual" learning, learning from books). Geddes suggested the great outdoors as the ideal learning environment for heart and hand.

In Geddes' homeland, Scotland, this realization has led to the fact that learning can also take place “outside”, ie in nature. With the increasing popularity of Geddes' educational work, this idea spreads more and more across the borders of Scotland.

Works

  • with JA Thomson and W. Scott: The Evolution of Sex , London 1889
  • The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal , Lawnmarket, Edinburgh 1895/96
  • City Development, A Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust , Rutgers University Press 1904
  • The Masque of Learning , 1912
  • Cities in Evolution , Williams & Norgate, London 1915 ( digitized version )
  • The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C. Bose , Longman, London 1920
  • with JA Thomson, Williams & Norgate: Biology , London 1925
  • Life and work of Sir Jagadis C. Bose , Rotapfel-Verlag, Erlenbach-Zürich 1930
  • with JA Thomson, Harper & Brothers: Life: Outlines of General Biology , London 1931

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Geddes, Patrick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Geddes, Sir Patrick (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish biologist and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Ballater
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1932
Place of death Montpellier