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I’m not a person that usually do puzzles or other logic games. I found it boring. To spent my free time looking at small pieces, grids or other board game stuff is not my idea of fun, but there are some things that have the ability to fascinate me because of the insinuated grammars or the infinite combination potencial structure of these games. Tilling, Number and Word puzzles. These magical games that occupy our time while evaluating our knowledge of general and specific culture.
We can find different species of puzzles and games: ancient or recent, original or clones, analogic and digital. Games of skill, strategy, chance or mixed type. Solitary or group games. Board, cards, pen and paper, etc. Several different types that can suit every single necessity or condition. Some are well know and some are restricted, transforming their players into some kind of card and board fanatics.
I’m particularly interested in three types of puzzle games. Jigsaw Puzzles, Su Do Ku and Crosswords. Why? Because these are the most known puzzle games in the world. Widely sold and daily published in newspapers and magazines across the entire world, they have fans everywhere. Games that distract us while commuting between home and work place, or the countless hours in a waiting in a doctor's office looking at ¡Hola! magazine. Simple, basic games, with clear and precise rules that have the ability to complexify their contents. A clear case where the sum of the simplicity of the pieces is inferior to the global linked and cross-referenced result.

A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling game that assembles numerous small strangely shaped pieces. Each one of these pieces have a small part of a picture that interconnect with others, producing a complete image.
Su Do Ku was invented around 1892 by an american architect. This is a simple numeric puzzle with basic rules to attend. Nonetheless, some logical reasoning is necessary to reach the final solution. Usually designed as 9x9 grid, is composed of 3x3 subgrids called “regions” or “quadrants”. The final goal is to fill the empty cells, with a number in each one so that each column, row and region contains the numerals from 1 to 9 only once. Each of this numbers appears only once in each of the “directions”, thus the “single numbers” implicit in its japanese name.
The Crossword is nowadays the most common variety of word puzzle in the world. Created around 1913, the first puzzles appeared in The New York World, a newspaper property of the Pulitzer family. It’s a matrix of black and white squares filled with letters that give answer to clues, configurating words or phrases that can be read down or across, depending on the style of puzzle and country of publication.
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What’s the difference between these three puzzles, one might ask? I’m using these images to bridge a concept presented in the Metapolis dictionary under the definition of Disposition, that suits the Pau Picasso Square and sintethize the modus operandi of ACTAR Arquitectura. They are both classed in the third kind, the Crossword. Not denying the potencial of the image as common sense say that it is worth a thousand words, the tilling puzzles have limited capacity to incorporate personal creativity on it. Numbers have a different power. Although a draconian rigor exists, they can be augmented, geometrically shaped, divided in fractions or extended until the unkown, but they can’t match the unlimited array of concepts with the potencial to shape ideas when different letters come together. Letters and Words are able to create worlds of fantasy and reality.
The Jigsaw puzzle is the Classical Order of Composition. Every piece of the puzzle as a right place to be as we can’t have a misplaced piece. This rigid and static location is the only possibility of their existence, unable to adapt to new realities. The Su Do Ku is the modernist vision of the world. “Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru" or "the numbers must only occur once" is a minimal and simple way to relate different identities, where every fragment is in their distributed location but not related to each other, as all the public places designed in the 90’s under the concept of the Olimpic Barcelona.
The Crosswords relate to an advanced order of Disposition as dynamic articulator of possibilities. This is a reference to ACTAR Arquitectura field of investigation, continuously rearranging variable elements to generate systems. Open systems as Operative systems. Open language and transformation rules that permit this open minded idea of a new informal order on the contemporary society, fitting together personal and general differences. Global and local. Old and young. Man and woman. Rich and poor. A never ending array of possibilities mirrored in the Pau Picasso Square, where a lineup of creative authors/actors can cooperate, socialize, interact in relation with the other. A matrix of concepts that cross-reference constantly, allowing for diversity to act as design generator. Hypertext or Hypersituations as catalysts of change and the puzzle as a multiple combination of diverse qualities.
The Pau Picasso Square is like a Crossword grid. A vertical sequence of strips define tipological spaces ranging from the Romantic Boulevard, Woods, Central Avenue, Public Square and Border Street preparing the setting where the events will take place. The horizontal array is a composition of puzzle clues that serve as a guides in the understanding of the potential of the place. The Craters, Beach, Games, Culture and Terrace are multidevices of communal activities in single or group mode. Multivalent, multifunctional and specially multipurpose items working as latent indicators of actions that can occur in the colective space, formerly known as public space.
In opposition to previous aesthetic references of monumental public space -overdesigned and hostile to human activities- we are now facing a paradigm shift. An operative system of ecletic possibilities like Crosswords reflect crossed lifes in this set of hypermutable events over a multigenerational and multirelational space of diverse scales. Different readings under different circumstances result in a fresh looks into the project. The overall reading of this broad assemblage of tipologies and clues turns this colective space into an Hypercontext situation. A network of individual activities linked by the principle of hypertext, where the domestic scale is merged with the city and reverse, jumping continuosly from one event to the other.
Public elements are dispositioned in a space of logical design -logical as reasoned, objective, systematic- indicating what are the possibilities to be inserted in that particular point. What activities were first thought for there. How to follow the clue left in the stage of activities. And most important, the oportunities for future actions, either single or multiple. Benchs can be simultaniously places to rest and skate ramps, suitable for older and young people. Rails also double as skate park and space boundary. The beach is a pool to watch and to play, or to sunbath in the wooden deck. The music portico can stage popular music or any irreverent teenager rock band, with only a couple friends watching or the entire neighborhood. The sun shading is a plus as background. Wooden toys are displaced in space as if moved by the kids while playing. This multilayered urban park is a true representation of the people’s necesities, where they find space for their personal interests. An old man can sit and talk with his peers. Two young lovers can hide behind the trees while skaters ride everywhere. A group of young children play and a family is walking the dog around. This is a place to go with all family, finding specific places for everyone. A good place to spend our free time…