Deeply lived-in plazas

Edited by Chris Wilson and Stefanos Polyzoides
Photographs by Miguel Gandert
Trinity University Press, 2011, 338 pp. $45 hardcover

“How was your day?” I ask my visitor, who splits his time between Maui and Shanghai. “It was amazing,” he says. “I never experienced any place like the Santa Fe plaza, and yet I felt at home. Are there any other places like it in New Mexico?”

“Sure,” I say, “dozens of them. On your way to Arizona, eat lunch in Albuquerque’s Old Town Plaza, then drive an hour west to Acoma Pueblo’s 1,000-year old mesa, where all the homes are sited around the plaza 5 degrees east of due south, perfect for passive solar gain. Just before you leave the Land of Enchantment, stop in Gallup to check out the brand-new courthouse square, featuring a round space in its middle ideal for dancing and selling crafts.”

Such is life in New Mexico, home to dozens of compelling public spaces. The Plazas of New Mexico, a book ten years in creation on a topic evolving for ten centuries, unearths why plazas work so well you feel at home from the first time you arrive, and why you have such a keen sense of

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