Ensemble and master plan
Passage
retail mixed-use building downtown block campus market
A pedestrian passage, covered or open, that crosses a block or a building and links two streets.
What it solves
It shortens routes, adds frontage for shops and gives a place sheltered from sun and rain. In large blocks it opens the city to pedestrians.
Today
Make the passage visible from end to end, with daylight, doors and shop windows on both sides and long opening hours. Place it where people already want to pass.
Common mistake
Making a long, dark corridor without shops that closes early and that no one wants to walk through.
Tomorrow
In new developments and blocks, passages can weave a cool, shaded network for walking between streets. With workshops and small businesses opening onto them they become neighborhood streets with life also at night.
Where it comes from
- 1Ottoman Empire Istanbul, Turkey, since 1455
The Grand Bazaar came to have 61 covered streets full of shops. - 219th-century city Paris, France, first half of the 19th century
Up to about 50 pedestrian passages with glass roofs and ground-floor shops crossed the blocks and were meeting places. - 3Italy Milan, Italy, 1865 to 1877
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II links Piazza del Duomo with Piazza della Scala under a vault of glass and iron.
Masters
- Lina Bo Bardi SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil, 1986
She turned an old factory into a cultural and sports center with a wide, sunny inner street that enters straight from the sidewalk. Anyone passing by can walk through it, which teaches how to open a building to the city.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Ensemble and master plan
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.