25 Sep

What is the difference between a big building and a small city?

First I must define each of these terms. To me a small city has a list of necessary components in order to be considered a small city. It needs to have homes, business and commerce, source of food like restaurants and markets, system of utilities, parks and other public spaces, streets for circulation, and buildings to house many of these components. A Big Building has many similar components. A big building usually houses business and commerce on the lower level as well as homes above. There are often cafes and restaurants are usually provided on the lower level and there is a system of utilities interlaced into the building. Big buildings also usually have courtyards or lobby space and maybe even a roof top garden as well as a system of corridors for circulation. The only criteria left that the city has and a big building doesn’t is a series of buildings. Of course this distinction can often become blurred. Two weeks ago when we visited Castelvechio Calviso I was under the impression we were visiting an old and quite small city. After exploring however I began to understand it more as a large building. Everything was connected. All the “buildings” or modules touched whether side-to-side, back-to-back or arched over a “street” which seemed more like a corridor of a building with private stairs to residences above. The “city” was completely walled in so it appeared to be one large building from the outside. But around the “large building” were smaller and newer buildings that had grown up around the center “building” making it seem even more so like one big building in the center of a small city. So what is the difference between a small city and a big building? Milieu.