by Rick Bell FAIA Executive Director AIA New York
Event: Stories About Squares: An Illustrated Talk by Robert F. Gatje, FAIA
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.28.10
Speaker: Robert F. Gatje, FAIA — Author, Great Public Squares, An Architect’s Selection (W.W. Norton, 2010)
Organizers: Center for Architecture; W.W. Norton; Architectural League of New York
Robert Gatje, FAIA, tells stories about squares at the Center for Architecture.
AIA New York
To author and architect Robert F. Gatje, FAIA, some of the most special urban places in the world can be ascribed to the attributes, geometries, and special qualities of city-defining squares and plazas. In his new book, Great Public Squares: An Architect’s Selection, (W.W. Norton, 2010), these places range from the Piazza Navona in Rome, the Piazza delle Erbe in Verona, the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca, and the Place des Vosges in Paris, to New York’s Rockefeller Plaza. In his recent talk at the Center for Architecture, each of these extraordinary places came alive with images of the squares in use, accompanied by plans and elevations that together spoke to the importance of perception and proportion. Gatje brought the audience into these squares by speaking, as well, of the history and mutability of significant public space.
Many learned, for example, that the curved edges of the Piazza Navona were a direct result of the circus, or arena, built by the Roman Emperor Domitian in the first century, echoed by the Baroque forms from the 1600s of Borromini’s Church of Sant’Agnese and Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers, recently made famous to the general public by Tom Hank’s cinematic dip in Angels and Demons. And who knew that the mature plantings in the Place des Vosges had previously existed in six different configurations, with the most recent version not even consistent with the official plan filed at l’Hôtel de Ville in Paris?
The edges of many of these spaces are of a fairly consistent height, partly a result of pre-elevator walk-up residential limits. Building heights of 65 feet or so mean that the street wall is much more than a ballpark fence. And, of vital importance, was the fact that the space contained within the squares “did not leak out” in the corners, according to Gatje. He is, of course, the architect of many world famous structures, done by his own firm, or designed previously when he was a partner in the offices of both Marcel Breuer and of Richard Meier, FAIA, FRIBA. He is also a past president of AIANY and has been active, over many years, with the Design Committee and Contracts Committee of AIA National.
The audience included many architects and urban designers visiting from afar, some of whom spoke with the author about repeating the talk in their own cities. Spanish architect Natalia Soubrier, one of many who talked with the author during a pre-lecture book signing, was overheard telling another visitor from Spain that the book, and talk, was “inspiring because of the street-level perception of what worked universally” in more than 25 cities around the world.
Rick Bell, FAIA, is the Executive Director of the AIA New York Chapter.