Street and city

Plaza

Historicmain square · central park · zócalo (Mexico) · agora (Greek)

city center town neighborhood in front of a church or public building

An open, public space at the heart of a neighborhood or a city, surrounded by buildings and streets.

Solves

Nowhere to meet

What it solves

It brings the community together for the market, celebrations, protest and daily encounters. In the tropics it needs trees and shaded edges to be used by day.

Today

Design the plaza with active edges of shops and services, plenty of shade, places to sit and surfaces that let water through. It should be possible to cross it without steps and use it at any hour.

Common mistake

Building a concrete esplanade without trees or seats that no one uses at midday.

Tomorrow

Plazas can be climate refuges with shade, drinking water and ground that absorbs rain. When neighbors program fairs, games and music, the plaza is cared for because it always has people.

Fact The Ordinances of 1573 set a plaza of at least 200 by 300 feet and no more than 530 by 800 feet, with 400 by 600 as a good proportion.

Where it comes from

1Ancient Greece Athens, 10th to 4th centuries BC
The agora was the center of the city’s social, commercial, religious and political life.
2Spanish colonial period The Americas, 1573
The Ordinances of Philip II called for laying out each new town from a square or rectangular main plaza, one and a half times longer than wide, with streets oriented according to the winds.

Masters

Michelangelo Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome, Italy, 1538
He redesigned the square with a stepped access ramp and an oval spiral paving with a star at the center. He teaches how to give an open space a clear center and order.
Lina Bo Bardi São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil, 1968
She raised the museum over a large clear span and left beneath it a multipurpose public plaza open to the avenue. The building gives its ground to the city.

Appears in the routes

Sources