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BOUNDED YET UNBOUND

There is one very special type of urban space that is park yet not-park, bounded yet unbound. It depends on an osmotic membrane, which draws people in instead of keeping them out. As urban designers are seriously infatuated with this type of space, there have been endless tiffs and tribulations. So little has their essence been appreciated, they are named simply as The Place, Plaz, Plaza, or Piazza, depending upon which European language you are speaking. Where a Place just grows, it often succeeds. Where urban planners make a forced marriage between a people and a Place, they usually fail. The Places they plan do not attract those gay crowds of smartly dressed fun-loving folk who appear in the slick sketches that persuade clients to implement such schemes. This has led to great anguish, to a little research, and to a few worthwhile conclusions.

Camillo Sitte launched our modern debate on Places (Sitte, 1938). As an architect, he took the problem to be geometrical. Systematic studies of the old squares of Europe led him to conclude that the main factors behind a good place were plan, section and layout. Plans, he believed, should be irregular but enclosed. The typical size of 'the great squares of the old cities' was found to be 142 m by 58 m (465 ft by 190 ft). Christopher Alexander accepted that such large spaces could work in great cities but argued that most squares should have a diameter of about 18 m (60 ft). Otherwise 'they look good on drawings; but in real life they end up desolate and dead' (Alexander, 1977). In cross-section, Sitte believed the width should be equal to the height of the principal building, while the length should be no more than twice this dimension. In layout, Sitte took it as a cardinal principle that statues should be placed on the edges of Places, never in the centres which, as Vitruvius said, should be left for gladiators.

 


Date: 2015-02-03; view: 963


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