The appearance of intimacy and privacy in homes in Paris and London, and soon after even in such out-of-the-way places as Oslo, was an unwitting, almost unconscious, reaction to the changing conditions of urban life, and it appeared to be more a question of popular attitudes than of anything else.

Witold Rybczynski

The Barcelona’s attitude toward design, and the fact that global precedence in this field is in a way attributed to that city, are not new. What is new is the way in which the city has treated it in recent years. Plaza de las Glorias, like no other place, symbolizes the spirit the current administrators of Barcelona want to impress into immediate future. Funcioning as a park, more than a square, the Canopia Urbana project, the recent winner of the competition for an urban project on the free space at Plaça de les Glòries, suggests that this place should be turned into an ecological link able to make nature comfortable in the service of citizens. The term comfort appears, perhaps as a hint, already on an urban scale.