Cerda as Geometrician

Abstract

For the author, Cerda, besides giving us new ideas upon the making of cities like those formulated in his theory, also provided us with a technical instrument with his self-regulating lay out. This step from theory on to practice is here held to be an even greater gift for modern C&T Planning as there are few explanations that are as detailed and explicative of the technical decision making process that the setting out of a city's communication web should entail. It is here held that this most important instrument owes its lasting validity to the mathematical and geometric analysis made during its elaboration of more than 17 cities world-wide, to the attention it paid to the weather of the Barcelona Plain and especially its prevalent wind conditions, to its minute study of that city's lots, constructions and urban density and the correlations it then established as between streets, blocks, lots and density in order to then finally suggest parameters for a from thence projected«Ensanche». Cerda is here seen to have anticipated the work of what is known as the Cambridge Geometricians by more than a hundred years, a school that was, in its turn, to have much influenced the Barcelona School of Architecture which, in its turn, was material in the rise of that in depth research into the lay-out of ensanches/New Towns undertaken by the Laboratorio de Urbanismo.