Power to the Plaza
Over coffee at Sweetish Hill on West 6th St in Austin, Architect Hal Box shared his thoughts on the new book he’s writing about plazas in Mexico. He and coauthor Logan Wagner (Texas A&M University School of Architecture) have measured 90 plazas and have an extensive collection of drawings and photographs to accompany the drawings.
I asked about the Spanish influence on South Texas towns and he mentioned the plaza in Laredo, but went back to the origins of the project’s theme.
“The plaza actually originates in Meso-American sacred sites, or we’re working on proving that,” Box explains. “For example, the open space adjacent to a pyramid might actually (mythologically) represent the primordial sea where the gods lived and from which the people themselves emerged,” he adds.
“When the Spanish came, they built around those spaces. In colonial cities and towns, the plaza evolved to become the heart of the town, where people went every day to share information, keep up with the news, and just experience the life of the community,”
“The courthouse square in Texas is not quite the same, but that’s another aspect of the plaza concept we’re working on. And the last chapter of the book will include some ideast for how to adapt the plaza to today’s cities – in the hope that we can reclaim some of the suburban space where there is little community identity.” The book will be published by The University of Texas Press (www.utexas.edu/utpress Look for Hal Box’s last book, Think Like an Architect which was a featured title in the 2008 Texas Book Festival – www.texasbookfestival.org)
January 29th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
On my last trip to Piedras Negras, I noticed a particular void of people on the streets and in the shops (August). I wound my way through town on foot, camera in hand for about an hour before rounding a corner and finding what seemed like half the population of the town in the shade of the town square. Mariachis were performing on a corner with a hat on the sidewalk for tips; teenage boys were learning to juggle; old men smoked and talked of past glory with wild hand motions and women ate their lunches, comparing their shopping finds. Children chasing pigeons linked the scene to our own parks and plazas where similar activities can always be found. In my own small town of Smithville, we have a gazebo and park area at the end of Main Street next to the railroad tracks. If you want to find a local, just hang around there for a while on a Saturday and you’ll find them or someone that knows them. It’s a great place to take a sandwich and a drink and watch the trains come and go, a reminder of a time when life was simpler.