TOWN SQUARE STUDY

By:Larry Wright

?TOWN SQUARE?

"Creating a gathering place for the people, himanizing them by mutual contact, providing them with a shelt3er against the haphazard traffic, and freeing them fro the tension of rushing through the web of streets. Making a comunity a comunity and not merely an agregate of individuals." (Town and Square by Paul Zucker)


ALEXANDER NOTIONS
WORK COMMUNITY --
Build or encourage the formation of work communities- each one a collection of smaller clusters of workplaces which have their own courtyards, gathered round a larger common square or common courtyard which contains shops and lunch counters. The total work community should have no more than 10 or 20 workplaces in it.
SOMETHING ROUGHLY IN THE MIDDLE
 Surround public gathering places with pockets of activity- small partly enclosed areas at the edges, which jut forward into the open space between the paths, and contain activities which make it natural for people to pause and get involved.




ACTIVITY POCKETS
 Between the natural paths which cross a public square or courtyard or a piece of common land choose something to stand roughly in the middle: a fountain, a tree, a statue, a clock-tower with seats, a windmill, a bandstand. Make it something which gives a strong and steady pulse to the square, drawing people in toward the center. Leave it exactly where it falls between the paths; resist the impulse to put it exactly in the middle.


TYPOLOGIES


CLOSED SQUARE-- Complete enclosure broken only by the streets leading into it.
SCOLLY SQUARE, Chicago

DOMINATED SQUARE-- one building or group of buildings around which the whole square is orgagized
PIAZZA DEI CAVALLI, Piacenza, Italy

NUCLEAR SQUARE-- a square with a central organizing element
BUFFALO SQUARE, NewYork

GROUPED SQUARE-- a group of smaller spaces that additively form the square
ST. PAULS PRECINCT, London, England

AMORPHOUSE SQUARE-- a space the serves the function of town square, but is irregular in shape
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