Barcelona's urban area is divided into a grid of blocks, much like Kyoto. The corner blocks, called manzanas, are surrounded by residential buildings, and in the middle there is a space with a hole in the middle that allows light to enter.
This picturesque landscape is common in Barcelona. If you go indoors in one of the buildings facing the street and go toward the courtyard on the opposite side of the street, you will see this space outside the window. Laundry drying on the balcony over there and numerous antennas growing like plants from the rooftop. The hustle and bustle of the street is cut off by the apartment buildings surrounding it on all sides, and here a quiet, calm time passes.
The use of the ground floor varies from parcel to parcel. They include covered parking lots, low-rise residences, school yards, and parks. In this manzana, occupied by the civic library, you can see the divided low-rise residences and their respective small courtyards, and on the rooftops of the residences walk the free people of this world, the cats.
Drawn with a marker from a library window.
