I checked the courtyard before I dropped it, and I hit the X I drew on the ground on the very first attempt, I might add.

We're going to have to re-learn what the building blocks of these things are: the street, the block, how to compose public space that's both large and small, the courtyard, the civic square and how to really make use of this property.

When I went to the site, the first design operation we did was to extend the existing streets, creating 12 initial blocks similar in size and characteristics to the ones we have in Barcelona and other cities in Europe with these courtyards.

(Applause) The High Line was an elevated railway that ran through three neighborhoods on Manhattan's West Side, and when the train stopped running, it became a self-seeded landscape, a kind of a garden in the sky.

Enters the courtyard and talks to the custodian, who tells him that there's been a disaster in the palazzo; nobody's TVs are working and there's a big soccer game coming up, and the crowd is getting a little restless and a little nervous.

It has these courtyards in the middle so that all of the rooms have daylight and fresh air, and the rooms are big and they have high ceilings, so they just feel more comfortable to be in.

I came back home, a little after midnight, shocked to see that several high-caste elderly people were sitting in my courtyard.

And a long time ago, about '82 or something, after my house -- I designed a house for myself that would be a village of several pavilions around a courtyard -- and the owner of this lot worked for me and built that actual model on the left.

(Laughter) I was self-obsessed and thoroughly unpleasant to know, until one day I saw across the courtyard a girl who was everything that I wasn't.

The thing that makes this building uniquely cohousing are not the homes, but rather, what happens here -- the social interactions that happen in and around that central courtyard.

From our homes, we look down into the courtyard, and depending on the time of year, we see this: kids and grownups in various combinations playing and hanging out with each other.

This area of Barcelona is characterized by its strict grid pattern, apartments with communal courtyards and these octagonal intersections which allow for more sunlight, better ventilation and additional parking at street level.