Grammarsof urban space: A. Perret’s project for Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in Le Havre

This study identifies the issue of the definition of urban public spaces through the residential collective building, and recognizes in the Auguste Perret’s project for Le Havre a paradigm in the relationship between building typology, urban morphology and physical geography. This foundational relation seems to be achieved through the establishment of an appropriate grammar of urban form, which simultaneously recognizes the value of open space and the one of enclosed space. It seems possible to argue that in the monumental places that structure the urban form, built almost exclusively through the residential collective building, the ‘internal’ space of the city defines a significant relationship with the ‘open’ spaces of the nature and with the great forms of physical geography. In particular, the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville is the place where the city, thanks to the extraordinary expansion of the open space, defines its relation with the cliff, which in this way is introjected in the urban form. On the other hand, the definition of those spaces more contracts, such as the courts of the residential collective building, seems to recognizes the value of the circumscribed space. However the analytical definition of the parts that make up the edge of the void and the typological variation of these builings, ‘bars’ and towers, makes intelligible the relations between the ‘internity’ of residential spaces, the dilated size of public places and the great forms of physical geography. In this way the urban space assumes the character of urbanity and the condition of finiteness of the historical city, but defines a significant relationship with the outdoor spaces of nature, thus acquiring the ‘dimension’ and those characters of the contemporary city.