Project 1: What is a plaza?

The basis of this portion of the project was to gain a better understanding of existing plazas in Barcelona. Falipe and I attempted to analyze the movement of people through three very different plazas. We captured this movement by taking a series of about 100 photographs every second from one location and putting them together in a video. These videos along with some diagrams of the movement of people through the plaza showed us how people respond to different elements in the plaza. For example, people move very differently if they are in a plaza which is very large with few boundaries such as the Forum Plaza than if they are in a plaza which is smaller and walled in by tall buildings such as the Cathedral Plaza.

Here are the links to our videos:

Plaza Catalunya: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6285088724117864257

Cathedral Plaza : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6490002278646305144

Forum Plaza: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-491868742262637873

Plaza Catalunya

Cathedral Plaza

Forum Plaza

Daytime shot of Cathedral Plaza. The plaza is long and narrow with most of the traffic moving down the center.