Analysis of Plaza de Armas and surrounding buildings
Today we visited Plaza de Armas, which was a unique landscape unlike any I had ever seen before. I included my diagram of the plaza in this post, and I found it very interesting to analyze the space and the very clear system with which it was designed and constructed. In its simplest form, Plaza de Armas is a datum of trees, however when we got the chance to walk around the plaza, I noticed that there were several other datums overlapping the datum of trees, such as benches and planters. I also found it interesting that the density of trees increased as you move southward into the park. As a class we concluded that this was to allow sunlight in from the north, but I also thought that it could have been designed in this way to allow a clear view of the cathedral, which is located at the northwest corner of the plaza. In my diagram I also drew each of the 4 facades next to their corresponding cardinal direction. I thought that this was an interesting way to view the facades because in the real world they can never be viewed all at once next to each other because of the tall trees blocking the view. When the facades are viewed next to each other I noticed several differences and similarities among them. The north and west facades are much more ornate and formal than the east and south facades, which read more as a datum of windows and don’t have any towers protruding upwards. I really enjoyed analyzing Plaza de Armas and this exercise made me realize the conscious design decisions that were made in the construction of this plaza.
Hi Sam,
First off your inclusion of the four facades in your sketch and analysis was a great idea because those four buildings truly define the whole reason for the Plaza de Armas to be there and be such a social gathering space. I agree that there are definitely both strong similarities and differences amongst the four facades which I appreciated because it didn’t seem that one building didn’t belong nor did it feel too repetitive. I think it is interesting that the similar relationships you found were between north/west and east/south and it leads me to wonder how the Plaza might feel and appear different had the similar facades been directly across from each other and led to more symmetry. But nonetheless, I think the way the facades are currently organized suits the organization of the Plaza which is only loosely controlled by datums in my opinion since there was still a sense of randomness or natural deviation from order.