New Life in Public Squares

Marie Burns

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000033267
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

New Life in Public Squares investigates the evolution of the public square within the urban form and its meaning to a city's image. It explores what is driving investment in the creation of new or re-designed existing squares: the economic and social benefits, city image to attract tourism, investment and attracting major events. Taking a design practitioners perspective, a series of in-depth case studies, including discussions with clients and designers, on an international array of public squares will analyse and the use of public spaces and the impact they have on their immediate surroundings. It shows readers how quality design of public squares can be achieved and, importantly, how they can be delivered to enable positive changes in the way public spaces are used and experienced.

CHAPTER 1
The historic development of the square

Squares are places of social interaction, destinations for communal experiences and expression. Squares become depositories of a collective memory that evolve to being synonymous with a city, for example St Peter’s Square in Rome, Trafalgar Square in London or the Piazza del Campo in Siena.

City squares are places where people want to gather, to celebrate and also to protest. The image of Tiananmen Square from 5 June 1989 of the lone peace demonstrator and the tank is still vivid, as is the gathering of Egyptians in Tahrir Square in 2011 to show solidarity with the Arab Spring anti-government protests. In 1980, five years after General Franco’s death, the new Catalan regional government reinstated Catalonia’s National Day, known locally as La Diada Nacional de Catalunya, which had been prohibited in 1939. The Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona is the focus of celebration. In 1969 in Prague, the continued occupancy of Wenceslas Square, the city’s 14th century historic square, by protesters against Czechoslovakia’s government led to its Velvet Revolution.

Other squares have an iconic image yet were disappointing when visited before their redesigns. These include Leicester Square in London, which was unattractive and in a poor condition; the Place de la République in Paris had become a huge traffic roundabout; and Times Square, which despite its name was not a place within Manhattan but in fact a crossroads.

Public squares are now seen as being fundamental to the creation of attractive and sustainable cities, enabling the vision of quality city living to be achieved. This chapter provides a brief background to the changing role of urban spaces, their evolution and recent renaissance.

This section explores the historic development of public squares and, although not exhaustive, it charts how public squares became important to cities and then why their role changed and investment in squares diminished, only for them to be rediscovered as essential urban spaces during the late 20th century.

The beginnings of outdoor city spaces

Small embryonic urban clusters sporadically developed at different times and in different places across the world from the Neolithic Age. Episodes of urbanity were followed by decline, often reflecting the flourish of a civilisation and its subsequent disappearance. Many early city forms were built on expressions of power and politics, with the density of people living together enabling ‘attractions’ to be created that have become synonymous with city living. For example, in the 6th century BC the Greeks created the agora in Athens as a space of assembly, for the city’s citizens to gather and listen to orators and exchange ideas. The agora was a planned space that was representative of Greek society and its approach to public life within its democracy. Markets were also held in the agora, so combining political and social importance with commercial interactions. The Romans had the equivalent space in their cities, the forum (meaning an outdoor public space in Latin), where markets, meetings of the courts and political events took place, as well as religious celebrations. The most well-known was the Roman Forum, which was destroyed in 410 AD.

The Middle Ages

The fall of the Roman Empire led to the development of public spaces that were associated with the emerging power of the church, city states, and the commercial strengths of trade – markets and merchant guilds. During medieval times settlements were developing within protective city walls. The squares were associated with landmark buildings, whether religious, such as cathedrals, or political, like palaces, town halls and barracks. The public spaces become extensions to these institutions, enabling displays of power, religious celebrations and gatherings to take place as well as markets (see Figure 1.01). These squares, in combination with their religious and civic buildings, introduced a spatial hierarchy within the city form, as well as providing social and place identity.

FIGURE 1.01 The Grand Place, Brussels, a market square since the 12th century, is surrounded by decorative guild houses, the Town Hall and the King’s House, now the Brussels City Museum.

In contrast, the Piazza del Campo in Siena was created on neutral ground outside three hilltop villages, as a space that was large enough to accommodate the whole commune for political rallies and social celebrations. In 1297 a series of design guidelines were produced to enclose the square and provide an integrated backdrop. The subsequent expansion of the villages around the Piazza del Campo and the space limitations created by the surrounding city walls resulted in a dense network of streets and alleys with the piazza being accessed through nine narrow routes, creating a sense of drama on arrival, with the sloping ground to the Palazzo Pubblico further heightening the visual experience (see Figure 1.02).

FIGURE 1.02 Photograph from 1860 showing the Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del Mangia.

The Italian Renaissance

The Renaissance was the period of a classical revival in the arts, architecture and the creation of public squares. In Italy the role of the patron, in the form of the Papacy, wealthy families such as the Medici, the Este and the Sforza, and city kingdoms during the 14th to 16th centuries, redefined cities through their funded building projects and the introduction of formal public squares that created the context for their new palazzos, the location for monuments, statues and fountains and their use for parades and celebrations. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V instigated an urban plan for Rome based on easing the movement of people, particularly pilgrims, through the city. Streets were widened and ancient monuments located in squares as wayfinding markers.

The Piazza Navona was created by reusing an oval space that had previously been the site of a Roman stadium. The enclosed square has as its centrepiece Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, which was completed in 1651, and creates a plinth for an obelisk that dominates the square (see Figure 1.03). The Obelisco Flaminio, erected in 1589, is the focal point of Piazza del Popolo, which also has a fountain at its base. The piazza evolved behind the Porta del Popolo, from which three roads radiate into the city, and is defined by the twin churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria di Montesanto.

FIGURE 1.03 Piazza Navona with Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi as its focal point and the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone in the background. The façade by Borromini (1657) was part of the square’s redesign by Pope Innocent X.

One of the most iconic squares in the world is Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. He was asked by Pope Paul II in 1536 to create a new space in preparation for the expected visit of Charles V in 1538. Michelangelo created a unified context for the square by redesigning the façades of the existing Palazzo del Senatore and Palazzo dei Conservatori and introducing the Palazzo Nuovo (see Figure 1.04). The square was enclosed on three sides with its back to the Roman Forum (the past) and its open side facing St Peter’s Basilica (the new Rome). A stepped ramp, the Cordonata, was built on the axis of the square, which has the statue of Marcus Aurelius at its centre. This was the first time such a design device had been used. The piazza is an oval that accommodates the different levels of the surrounding buildings, while the stellate black and white paving integrates the square with its architecture (see Figure 1.05).

FIGURE 1.04 Piazza del Campidoglio, engraved by Giacomo Lauro in 1610.

FIGURE 1.05 Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio with its iconic paving pattern that unifies its surrounding architecture with the public space.

The London square

While the city building projects in Europe continued, another building form was developed in London. As city populations increased and their medieval walls were removed, the opportunity to build new planned developments was created, the first of which was Inigo Jones’s Covent Garden in London. Designed in 1630 for the Duke of Bedford, the scheme referenced the city piazzas of Italy and the architecture of Palladio’s arcades and churches (see Figure 1.06). The development began in 1631 with its central piazza, providing a setting for shops and houses. A market was introduced in 1661 as an additional revenue source for the Bedford Estate.

FIGURE 1.06 Historic view of Covent Garden Piazza, London, from 1745, showing the square and early market stalls.

This approach of having a square within a development to enhance its commercial value by introducing a sense of place was adopted by the Great Estates as London extended westwards. The location of these private squares served to give a hierarchy to the monetary values within the developments, as well as providing a spatial centrepiece. The design of the original squares was based on their Italian origins and they were laid out as open spaces with a gravel surface. The squares were subsequently enclosed by railings and planted with trees and shrubs in the picturesque landscape style of the early 18th century, for example the design by Humphry Repton for Russell Square in Bloomsbury (see Figure 1.07).

FIGURE 1.07 Russell Square in Bloomsbury, London, originally laid out in 1804 and redesigned in 2002 based on the picturesque landscape design of Humphry Repton.

Architectural features such as fountains and sculptures were added to the squares as focal points and to celebrate monarchs and military figures. Originally the London squares themselves, including their streets, were gated. Only people with business in them could approach the houses. Later the streets around the garden squares were opened for public access, with the gardens remaining gated, as some of them still are. However, although many squares have remained in private ownership with no public access, others, such as Leicester Square, became public spaces or, as with Grosvenor Square, are private but permit public access.

19th-century city projects

The impact of the Industrial Revolution was to attract more people to live in cities, in ever worsening living conditions. The increasing city populations needed to access employment and improved transport systems required more space to operate effectively. During the 19th century the response to these issues was city projects that reconfigured existing cities with the introduction of wide boulevards and large squares, as designed by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann in Paris between 1853 and 1870, or extended city areas through large-scale development programmes, such as the Cerdà Grid in Barcelona. The purpose of the introduction of wide streets and expansive squares was to accommodate traffic and to improve the quality of the city environment through better air and more sunlight.

This period saw the internationalisation of design styles and approaches to city planning, the exchange of ideas made possible by improved transport connections, especially railways, which facilitated travel with...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The historic development of the square
• Chapter 2 A new agenda for public squares
• Chapter 3 Redesign of historic squares
• Chapter 4 New squares within an existing urban fabric
• Chapter 5 Squares within new city quarters
• Chapter 6 New squares that extend the city experience
• Chapter 7 Squares that reconfigure a city’s structure
• Chapter 8 What have we learnt
• Bibliography
• Index