Customer Reviews

Great Public Squares: An Architect's Selection

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What makes a vibrant and memorable gathering place? In architect Robert Gatje's visually compelling and insightful new book Great Public Squares (W. W. Norton, 2010) -- a collection of his drawings and writings - it has to do with material, pattern, scale, and spatial dynamism, not to mention history and complex socio-economic forces. Mr. Gatje forces us to think more deeply about why certain public places are so memorable to us.

He has drawn forty public squares to scale so you can compare each central place with its surroundings -- to understand how each functions within its context.

His cover image of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, essentially a remodel by Michaelangelo, is especially seductive and thought-provoking. It captures the force field that is the swirling oval pattern at the center appearing to pull the two flanking facades off kilter, crimping them toward the entrance even as they appear to slide past the building at the center. This intense play between space and structure, which is a function of all great public spaces, has always interested architects.

The book helps us see public space in new ways or as if for the first time. Highly recommended.

Coffee table books about architecture very often focus on eye-catching photographs and neglect two dimensional drawings. As an architecture student, the best thing about this book is that the author devoted so much time and effort to creating beautiful plan drawings of each square. The text and photographs are helpful for understanding each more fully, but I would be perfectly happy with purchasing only the 40 exquisite drawings.

I hate to disagree both with the Amazon reviews and those on the book jacket, but the subject of everyone's praise - the graphics of the drawings - was actually my big problem with the book. The drawings are extremely bold, heavy, saturated, and colorful. I would have appreciated simple, cleaner, Nolli-style plans much more for purpose of comparison and analysis. When the bright green trees on the plan jump off the page more than the square itself, I have to question his graphic hierarchy. It may be a personal preferenance, but I found the drawings to be visualy distracting and hard on the eyes.

Similarly, I wish that Robert Gatje had utilized professional photography. He took almost all the photos himself, which is admirable, but ultimately many of them look more like tourist photos than architectural documents.

I still give thie 3 stars because the selection, content, and research were all very interesting.