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Ancient Origins of the Mexican Plaza : From Primordial Sea to Public Space / Hal Box, Logan Wagner, Susan Kline Morehead.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Roger Fullington Series in ArchitecturePublisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©2013Description: 1 online resource (273 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780292721487
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 711.550972 23
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Authors’ Note -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One The Primordial Sea Forming Open Space in Mesoamerica -- Chapter Two Forming Spanish Towns in Mesoamerican Culture -- Chapter Three Sixteenth-Century Communal Open Spaces (Five Hundred Years Later) -- Chapter Four Origins and Evolution -- Epilogue Plazas in the Twenty-First Century -- Appendix Measured Drawings: Plans of Towns -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: The plaza has been a defining feature of Mexican urban architecture and culture for at least 4,000 years. Ancient Mesoamericans conducted most of their communal life in outdoor public spaces, and today the plaza is still the public living room in every Mexican neighborhood, town, and city—the place where friends meet, news is shared, and personal and communal rituals and celebrations happen. The site of a community’s most important architecture—church, government buildings, and marketplace—the plaza is both sacred and secular space and thus the very heart of the community. This extensively illustrated book traces the evolution of the Mexican plaza from Mesoamerican sacred space to modern public gathering place. The authors led teams of volunteers who measured and documented nearly one hundred traditional Mexican town centers. The resulting plans reveal the layers of Mesoamerican and European history that underlie the contemporary plaza. The authors describe how Mesoamericans designed their ceremonial centers as embodiments of creation myths—the plaza as the primordial sea from which the earth emerged. They discuss how Europeans, even though they sought to eradicate native culture, actually preserved it as they overlaid the Mesoamerican sacred plaza with the Renaissance urban concept of an orthogonal grid with a central open space. The authors also show how the plaza’s historic, architectural, social, and economic qualities can contribute to mainstream urban design and architecture today.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780292721487

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Authors’ Note -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One The Primordial Sea Forming Open Space in Mesoamerica -- Chapter Two Forming Spanish Towns in Mesoamerican Culture -- Chapter Three Sixteenth-Century Communal Open Spaces (Five Hundred Years Later) -- Chapter Four Origins and Evolution -- Epilogue Plazas in the Twenty-First Century -- Appendix Measured Drawings: Plans of Towns -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

The plaza has been a defining feature of Mexican urban architecture and culture for at least 4,000 years. Ancient Mesoamericans conducted most of their communal life in outdoor public spaces, and today the plaza is still the public living room in every Mexican neighborhood, town, and city—the place where friends meet, news is shared, and personal and communal rituals and celebrations happen. The site of a community’s most important architecture—church, government buildings, and marketplace—the plaza is both sacred and secular space and thus the very heart of the community. This extensively illustrated book traces the evolution of the Mexican plaza from Mesoamerican sacred space to modern public gathering place. The authors led teams of volunteers who measured and documented nearly one hundred traditional Mexican town centers. The resulting plans reveal the layers of Mesoamerican and European history that underlie the contemporary plaza. The authors describe how Mesoamericans designed their ceremonial centers as embodiments of creation myths—the plaza as the primordial sea from which the earth emerged. They discuss how Europeans, even though they sought to eradicate native culture, actually preserved it as they overlaid the Mesoamerican sacred plaza with the Renaissance urban concept of an orthogonal grid with a central open space. The authors also show how the plaza’s historic, architectural, social, and economic qualities can contribute to mainstream urban design and architecture today.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jun 2022)

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