Squares: A Public Place Design Guide for Urbanists

By Mark C. Childs University of New Mexico Press, 2004, 230 pp., hardcover $45. At first, Squares annoyed me. The Table of Contents fills five entire pages, the “Table of Queries” goes on for seven more, and then the Table of Figures consumes another three. Who wants to wade through so many pages of preliminaries? But once I started reading the main text, my resistance soon changed to admiration. Squares is amazingly thoughtful and comprehensive; it could well become the standard source for learning and teaching about squares — one of the most important components of traditional urbanism. Mark C. Childs, a faculty member and director of the Design and Planning Assistance Center in the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning, seems to know everything about squares, which for centuries have been the social or symbolic centers of many cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Squares, says Childs, who six years ago published Parking Spaces, “is intended to help designers, planners, public officials, students, developers, and community leaders understand the history and theories of public places, elicit community dialog and desires, respond to the natural and built environment, and design compelling places.” The introduction starts with the basics: a look at why human beings need settings for conviviality. A section titled “Schools of Thought” does an admirable job of examining rationales for civic spaces, including one rationale often ignored when new urban squares are created and controlled by private developers: the need for a place where people can protest. A truly public place upholds individuals’ rights to free speech and assembly, despite any inconvenience. The book’s remaining sections explore three topics: • Civitas (how designers elicit and understand the complex and often poorly articulated desires of a particular community for a set of civic places?) • Genius loci (how these places relate to the landscape, the built environment, and the climate and how can the materials for the floors, walls, and furniture of civic rooms be selected) • Urbanitas (how designers create clearly legible spaces that are “strategically located, inviting, and adaptable”) principal civic rooms Childs is an adept organizer and categorizer. He identifies five principal kinds of civic rooms or chambers, calling them squares, “civic coves,” forecourts, courtyards, and “civic lots.” (A civic lot is a place that was not purposely designed to serve as a commons but that has nonetheless been used that way, such as a high school parking lot.) Often Childs starts with an elementary concept, telling readers, for instance, that a civic room has enclosing walls — but he quickly goes on to make important points that are less obvious or that may not be obvious at all. For example, in discussing the “frame” and the center of the civic room, he observes that the frame is “the first place people sit, hang out, eat, and watch the activities in the central field.” Such observations can help designers create spaces that live up to the goal of conviviality. He probes specimens ranging from the classical to the contemporary — one of the latter being Portland, Oregon’s well-populated Pioneer Courthouse Square, where a free-standing line of columns defines the Square’s inner edge and creates proportions more intimate than the Square would otherwise possess. Interspersed throughout the book are useful short observations by other authors. Childs, who was involved in a plan for a plaza in Dona Ana, New Mexico, that won a 2003 CNU award, pays close attention to human comfort. He recounts how Moule & Polyzoides Architects used a tower that would draw air from high above the ground, add moisture to it, and let the air naturally sink and cool a dormitory courtyard at the University of Arizona. His explanation of what makes an open space feel enclosed is nuanced and deep, enriched by a familiarity with a myriad of places, ideas, and books, from Gestalt theory to Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space. He emphasizes the need for “background buildings” that make open spaces feel like outdoor rooms. Background buildings, he notes, “often do not get the press garnered by figural and monumental buildings. This potential lack of attention can be a problem for a client who desires an iconic building and for a designer building a career.” A potential solution: “Like the Oscars’ best-supporting-actor awards, perhaps the architectural community needs to create awards for ‘best supporting building,’” Childs suggests. Squares is filled with such ideas and insights. This book deserves to be a new urbanist bestseller.