The plaza

II. The civic plaza Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares. It is often the case that important civic buildings are physically smaller than the private structures around them. Since the human species is given to mistaking size for significance, it is important to understand the ways in which civic buildings can indicate their importance without size, luxury, or hyperactive massing. The space around a civic building is the most important resource for this purpose. In Europe and Latin America, the civic plaza, with its paved or earthen surface, is widespread. In North America the civic square, with its planted surface, has been historically more common. Indeed, the image of the courthouse or capitol in the midst of a city block of grass, is an archetype of government from the Appalachians south and west. Other civic building types such as schools and churches also tended to present their faces to the world in the company of surrounding lawn. With the advent of the car and the consequent demand for parking adjacent to all buildings, including civic ones, paving everywhere trumped chlorophyll. Many a square has been given over to surface parking. Newer buildings are too often civic in function but not at all in character. In either case the hard surface for parking no longer has the considered relationship between civic structure and urban space that creates a genuine civic plaza. Since the demand for parking is not easily disregarded, the best option is often to accept the paved or hard surface and design it as a civic plaza. This can turn a merely necessary investment into a public virtue. A designed plaza can symbolize the higher purposes of the institution it adjoins, while a parking lot demeans them. Both parking lot and civic square can serve many purposes, but only the latter achieves the fundamental goal of psychologically magnifying the institution. For a paved area to be understood as a plaza, rather than being reflexively consigned to the lower, one-dimensional status of parking, it is essential that certain things be avoided, and others considered for inclusion in the design. Such techniques may culled by the observation of existing plazas, always modified or augmented by new ones that work better. The next Technical Page will discuss a number of them.