Urban squares have historically served as important public gathering spaces, often located at crossroads of trade routes. They function to provide shelter from traffic and represent psychological parking areas within cities. Factors that influence squares include surrounding buildings, proportions, entrance angles and central features. Squares can take different forms such as closed spaces enclosed by uniform buildings, dominated squares oriented around a focal point, nuclear squares with a central monument, grouped squares that combine into a whole, and amorphous squares without coherent shape. Over time, squares may evolve as new structures are added or old ones changed or destroyed.

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Urban Square:
• Urban square is an open public space used for
community gatherings
• The first urban formations appeared 6000 years ago
• City squares were established at the cross roads of
important trade routes
• Major places of worship were placed on squares, also
used as markets
• Served as an opportunity to exercise the power of
rulers with military processions and parades

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Function of Squares:
• Creates a gathering place for the
people
• Providing them with a shelter
against the traffic
• Freeing them from the tension of
rushing through the web of street
• Represents as a psychological
parking place within the civic
landscape

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Reasons for development of Squares:
• Climatic conditions
• Societal structure and psychological attitude of people
• led to a form of public life – and life in public
• Made street and square the natural locale for
community activities and representation

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Factors that formulate the Square:
• On the relation between the forms
of the surrounding buildings
• On their uniformity or their variety
• On their absolute dimensions
• On relative proportions in
comparison with width and length
of the open area
• On the angle of entering the
streets

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Squares – A part of living organism
• A Square is never completed
• Some may vanish, be destroyed. Others may be
replaced and new ones added
• A square, an accumulation of important buildings in past
may have developed into comprehensible form now
• Elements of square such as
surrounding structures,
monuments are subjected to
flux of time

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Reasons for changes in Square
• Physically through the erection of new buildings & the
alteration or destruction of old ones
• Through a modification of the building line
• Psychologically, through the different way in which each
generation experiences

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The Archetypes
• Square consists of three space
confining elements
• Surrounding structures, floor and
the imaginary sphere of the sky
above
• Elements are decisively defined by the two-dimensional
layout of square
• These three factors that produce final three
dimensional effect may vary in themselves

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Classification of Squares
• Closed Square – Space self contained
• Dominated Square – Space directed
• Nuclear Square – Space formed around a centre
• Grouped Squares – Space units combined
• Amorphous Square – Space unlimited
• Squares doesn't represent only one pure type, but very
often bears the characteristics of two of these types

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Closed Square:
• It is a complete enclosure interrupted only by the streets
leading to it
• Primary element of any closed square is its layout of
regular geometrical form
• The repetition of identical houses or house types, facing
the enclosed area
• Spatial balance of the square will always be achieved
by the equation of horizontal & vertical forces

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Closed Square:
Place des Vosges,
Paris, France

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Closed Square:
• Each façade fulfills a dual function
• On the one hand, it is part of an individual structure; on
the other hand, it forms part of a common urban spatial
order
• Continuity and context of the framing structures were
achieved by the Colonnade, arched arcades
• Yet, the inner courtyard with in a complex monumental
structure is not a square from the town planning view

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Closed Square:
Colonnade in Agora - Priene Arcade in Place des Vosges

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The Dominated Square:
• Characterized by one individual structure or a group of
buildings towards which the open space is directed
• Surrounding structures are related to them
• Dominated building may be a church, a palace, a town
hall, an architecturally developed fountain, a theatre
• Usually the direction of a main street which opens into
the square establishes the axis towards the dominant
building

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The Dominated Square:
Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris St. Peter’s, Rome
Place de l’Odeon,
Paris

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The Dominated Square:
• Compels the spectator to move toward and to look at
the focal architecture
• Dominant square produces a directive of motion
• The dominated structure need not necessarily be
voluminous
• Very often it is merely a gate or an arch which may
dominate a whole square
• A fountain may also dominate a square it if constitutes
an entire front in with architecture, sculpture and water

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The Dominated Square:
Piazza del Popolo, Rome
Fountain dominating the Square,
Fontana di Trevi, Rome
Pariser Platz,
Berlin
Squares subordinate to the
Street –gate axis

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The Dominated Square:
Dominating element may also be a Void
Maria Theresien strasse, Innsbruck
Dominating element is a broad river
Praca do Comercio, Lisbon
Subordinating Square to the continuous axis
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, Turin

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The Nuclear Square:
• Nuclear Square consists of a nucleus, a strong vertical
accent – a monument, a fountain, an obelisk
• It is powerful enough to charge the space around with a
tension that the impression of the square will be evoked
• It will tie the heterogeneous elements of the periphery
into one visual unit
• Dimensions of nuclear square are restricted as the
visual effect of the central monument is naturally limited

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The Nuclear Square:
Donatello’s equestrian figure
Piazza del Santo in Padua,
Italy
Nelson’s column
Trafalgar square, London

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Grouped Squares:
• In Grouped Squares, Individual squares may be fused
organically and aesthetically into one comprehensive
whole
• Each unit - the individual square, represents an entity,
aesthetically self sufficient and yet part of a
comprehensive higher order
• A sequence of squares, different in size and form,
develops in only one direction, thus establishing a
straight axis

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The Grouped Square:
Sequence of Squares developed in a
straight axis
Imperial Fora, Rome

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Grouped Squares:
• Or, in a non-axial organization, a smaller square opens
with one of its sides upon a larger square, so that the
individual axes of each square meet in a right angle
• Or, a group of three or more squares of different
shapes and proportions surround one dominant
building
• Or, two individual squares fall into a coherent pattern
although they are separated from each other by blocks
of houses, thoroughfares

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The Grouped Square:
Non-axial organization of Squares
Piazza and Piazzetta in Venice

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The Grouped Square:
Squares around one Dominant building
Palazzo Podesta in Bologna, Italy

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The Grouped Square:
Two seperated squares
with coherence
Piazza d’Erbe and Piazza dei Signori

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The Amorphous Square:
• Amorphous is formless, unorganized, having no
specific shape
• It does not represent aesthetic qualities or artistic
possibilities
• However, if it shares some elements with the
previously analyzed squares it may appear like one of
them
• New York’s Washington square is not a closed square.
Its dimensions are so large

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The Amorphous Square:
• Proportions of many of its surrounding structures are so
heterogeneous, so irregular, even contradictory
• Location and size of the small triumph arch are so
dissimilar to all the other given factors
• Unified impression
cannot result
• Disproportion in scale
destroys all aesthetic
possibilities
New York’s Washington Square

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The Amorphous Square:
• Place de l’Opera in Paris could not become a
“dominated” Square in spite of the monumental façade
of the imposing opera house
• Width of the Boulevard des Cupucines is running
through its off centre
• Presence of small structures like the entrance to the
Metro, scattered all over the area ruin any special effect
• These examples are “squares” from surveyor’s
viewpoint, although without any artistic impact

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The Amorphous Square:
Boulevard and Metro ruin Dominated Square
Place de l’Opera in Paris

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Thank You
References: The Square in space and time, Paul Zucker, Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design