Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green

Abstract

This book is the first publication in English which gives a general survey of the development of the inner structure of the town from a dual point of view: that of the function of the square in the life of the community and that of its conception in purely aesthetic terms.Squares have played an important part in civic life from the agora of Greek towns to the green or common of New England villages; from the small public square to the monumental plaza of a metropolis. The square, as the heart of the city, has been a basic factor in city planning.But beyond this, the square represents an artistic creation in its own right. Artistically relevant squares are more than mere voids; they form organized space. A history of the square is actually a history of space as the subject matter of artistic creation and has to be considered separately from a history of architectural design.Starting from this new and original concept of the meaning of spatial relations, Dr. Zucker shows how the visual and aesthetic concept of the Square has varied with its function in the community and traces the development of both in civic life and in artistic appearance.Dr. Zucker shows a continuous development from Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to the creative heights of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, periods which he considers the culmination of this development. A concluding chapter, contributed by Carl Feiss, surveys the role of the square in early American life. Adding greatly to the beauty and the usefulness of the book are 55 line cuts in the text and 96 pages of illustration.

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