Colin Rowe

Colin Rowe (1920 – 1999) was an ar­chi­tec­tural his­to­rian, critic, the­o­reti­cian, and teacher. In the 1950s and 60s, as the aesthetic of modernism was seemingly on the decline, with the appropriation of some of its principles by corporate America, Rowe was there to promote architecture which could embrace form for form's sake. He mentored a group of students at Cornell University in formalism, including Richard Meier, designer of the Getty Center.

Rowe is also known for a paper in which he drew comparisons between Palladio's 16th-Century Villa Malcontenta and Le Corbusier's Villa de Monzie, highlighting the similarities between the two structures across centuries of design and architecture.

Rowe collaborated with Alfred Koettler on their work, Collage City, in which they analyzed numerous cities, finding that their aesthetic appeal often was borne of successive fragmentation and rejuvenation and diverse ideas, rather than any single vision.