It was as a student of architecture travelling in southern France that I first realized the possibilities offered by the combination of architecture and urbanism. The amalgamation was most obvious in the medieval city of Le Puy.
The approach to the cathedral in Le Puy was a roadway lined with stone shops and houses. The cathedral was the central composition in the cityscape and as one got closer to it, the road became steeper and steeper, and along with the buildings, kept rising till the road became a ramp. The ramp became a cascade of steps, rising high and steep. As the cathedral front loomed, I realized the steps were, in fact, heading underneath the building and I was ascending below the nave. Under the building, the church floors opened and suddenly, I was face-to-face with God.
As I turned around, I saw the city far below, the entire length of the street from where I had come, and I understood how the street and the building had combined to give me the complete kaleidoscopic experience, how the cathedral’s high elevation had been used to extend the church into the city. The city, hill and cathedral merged in such a way that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. It was an architecturally gratifying and monumental experience, fashioned simply by the cathedral’s location on the hill. The hill dictated a possibility for the layout. The medieval architect multiplied it tenfold into a truly concentrated ideal.
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Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint
To attract residents to the sea, the small town of Cape May along the New Jersey shoreline oriented its entire grid of streets on a diagonal. Whatever the street, you are either going towards the beach or away from it. A plan of such astonishing simplicity, yet so effective in urban terms, was made by a mere deflection of the conventional street pattern.
A concern for new ways of orienting ordinary city life makes many builders seek unusual combinations of the public and private face for their own buildings. In Madrid, for instance, with dense and crowded ground conditions, an enterprising builder chose to move the urban dimension of his apartment block to the roof. In an unusual connection to all the apartments, the roof offers the essential pleasures of public life usually reserved for the ground level: meeting, cabanas, clubs, theatres and restaurants.