A pattern language

Instead of building large public schools for children 7 to 12, set up tiny independent schools, one school at a time. Keep the school small, so that its overheads are low and

85 SHOPFRONT SCHOOLS

a teacher-student ratio of 1:10 can be maintained. Locate it in the public part of the community, with a shopfront and three or four rooms.

I t-

shopfront

Place the school on a pedestrian street—pedestrian street (I oo) ; near other functioning workshops—self-governing workshops and offices (80) and within walking distance of a park—accessible green (6o). Make it an identifiable part of the building it is part of—building complex (95); and give it a good strong opening at the front, so that it is connected with the street—opening to the street (165). . . .

We begin with that fart of the language which defines a town or a community. These fatterns can never be “designed” or “built” in one fell swoof—but fatient fiece-meal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helfing to create or generate these larger global fatterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years₎ make a community that has these global fatterns in it.

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The first 94 patterns deal with the large-scale structure of the environment: the growth of town and country, the layout of roads and paths, the relationship between work and family, the formation of suitable public institutions for a neighborhood, the kinds of public space required to support these institutions.

We believe that the patterns presented in this section can be implemented best by piecemeal processes, where each project built or each planning decision made is sanctioned by the community according as it does or does not help to form certain large-scale patterns. We do not believe that these large fatterns, which give so much structure to a town or of a neighborhood, can be created by centralized authority, or by laws, or by master flans. We believe instead that they can emerge gradually and organically, almost of their own accord, if every act of building, large or small, takes on the responsibility for gradually shaping its small corner of the world to make _t these larger patterns appear there.

In the next few pages we shall describe a planning

426

. . . within each neighborhood there are hundreds of children. The children, especially the young ones, are helped in their relation to the world by the patterns children in the city (57) and connected play (68). However, these very general provisions in the form of public land need to be supported by some kind of communal place, where they can stay without their parents for a few hours, or a few days, according to necessity. This pattern is a part of the network of learning (18) for the youngest children.

The task of looking after little children is a much deeper and more fundamental social issue than the phrases “babysitting” and “child care” suggest.

It is true, of course, that in a society where most children are in the care of single adults or couples, the mothers and fathers must be able to have their children looked after while they work or when they want to meet their friends. This is what child care and baby-sitting are for. It is, if you like, the adult’s view of the situation.

But the fact is that the children themselves have unsatisfied needs which are equally pressing. They need access to other adults beyond their parents, and access to other children; and the situations in which they meet these other adults and other children need to be highly complex, subtle, full of the same complexities and intensities as family life—not merely “schools” and “kindergarten” and “playgrounds.”

When we look at the children’s needs, and at the needs of the adults, we realize that what is needed is a new institution in the neighborhood: a children's home—a place where children can be safe and well looked after, night and day, with the full range of opportunities and social activities that can introduce them, fully, to society.

To a certain extent, these needs were absorbed in the large, extended families of the past. In such a family, the variety of

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adults and children of other ages had a positive value for the children. It brought them into contact with more human situations, allowed them to work out their needs with a variety of people, not j ust two.

However, as this kind of family has gradually disappeared, we have continued to hold fast to the idea that child-raising is the job of the family alone, especially the mother. But it is no longer viable. Here is Philip Slater discussing the difficulties that beset a small nuclear family focussing its attention on one or two children:

The new parents may not be as absorbed in material possessions and occupational self-aggrandizement as their own parents were. They may channel their parental vanity into different spheres, pushing their children to be brilliant artists, thinkers, and performers. But the hard narcissistic core on which the old culture was based will not be dissolved until the parent-child relationship itself is dein-tensified. . . .

Breaking the pattern means establishing communities in which (a) children are not socialized exclusively by their parents, (b) parents have lives of their own and do not live vicariously through their children (The Pursuit of Loneliness, Boston: Beacon Press, 1971, pp.1+1-42).

The children’s home we propose is a place which “de-intensi-fies the parent-child relationship” by bringing the child into authentic social relationships with several other adults and many other children.

1. Physically, it is a very large, rambling home, with a good-sized yard.

2. The house is within walking distance of the children’s own homes. Terence Lee was found that young children who walk or bike to school learn more than those who go by bus or car. The mechanism is simple and startling. The children who walk or bike, remain in contact with the ground, and are therefore able to create a cognitive map which includes both home and school. The children who are taken by car, are whisked, as if by magic carpet, from one place to the other, and cannot maintain any cognitive map which includes both home and school. To all intents and purposes they feel lost when they are at school; they are perhaps even afraid that they have lost their mothers. (T. R. Lee, “On the relation between the school journey and social and emo-

86 children’s home

tional adjustment in rural infant children,” British Journal of Educational Psychology, 27:101, 1957.)

3. There is a core staff of two or three adults who manage the home; and at least one of them, preferably more, actually lives there. In effect, it is the real home of some people; it does not close down at night.

4. Parents and their children join a particular home. And then the children may come and stay there at any time, for an hour, an afternoon, sometimes for long overnight stays.

5. Payment might be made by the hour to begin with. If we assume $1 per hour as a base fee, and assume that a child might spend 20 hours a week there, the house needs about 30 member children to generate a monthly income of about $2500.

6. The home focuses on raising children in a big extended family setting. For example, the home might be the center of a local coffee klatch, where a few people meet every day and mix with the children.

7. In line with this atmosphere, the home itself should be relatively open, with a public path passing across the site. Silver-stein has indicated that the child’s sense of his first school being “separate” from society can be reduced if the play areas of the children’s home are open to all passing adults and to all passing children. (Murray Silverstein, “The Child’s Urban Environment,” Proceedings of the Seventy-First National Convention of the Congress of Parents and Teachers, Chicago, Illinois, 1967,

PP- 39-45-)

8. To keep the young children safe, and to make it possible to give them this great freedom without losing track of them altogether, the play areas may be sunk slightly, and surrounded by a low wall. If the wall is at seat height, it will encourage people to sit on it—giving them a place from which to watch the children playing, and the children a chance to talk to passers-by.

The children’s home pattern has been tried, successfully, in a far more extreme form than we imagine here, in many kibbutzim where children are raised in collective nurseries, and merely visit their parents for a few hours per week. The fact that this very extreme version has been successful should remove any doubts about the workability of the much milder version which we are proposing.

Therefore:

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In every neighborhood, build a children’s home—a second home for children—a large rambling house or workplace—a place where children can stay for an hour or two, or for a week. At least one of the people who run it must live on the premises; it must be open 24 hours a day; open to children of all ages; and it must be clear, from the way that it is run, that it is a second family for the children —not just a place where baby-sitting is available.

children of all ages

• • •

... _%.

Treat the building as a collection of small connected buildings —building complex (95) ; lay an important neighborhood path right through the building, so that children who are not a part of the school can see and get to know it by meeting the children who are—building thoroughfare (ioi) ; attach it to the local adventure PLAYGROUND (73); make the teachers’ house an integral part of the interior—your own home (79)5 and treat the common space itself as the hearth of a larger family—the family (75), COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART (l 29) . . . .

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87 INDIVIDUALLY OWNED

SHOPS**

432

. . . the street cafe (88) and corner grocery (89) and all the individual shops and stalls in shopping streets (32) and markets of many shops (46) must be supported by an ordinance which guarantees that they will stay in local private hands, and not be owned by absentee landlords, or chain stores, or giant franchise operations.

When shops are too large, or controlled by absentee owners, they become plastic, bland, and abstract.

The profit motive creates a tendency for shops to become larger. But the larger they become, the less personal their service is, and the harder it is for other small shops to survive. Soon, the shops in the economy are almost entirely controlled by chain stores and franchises.

The franchises are doubly vicious. They create the image of individual ownership; they give a man who doesn’t have enough capital to start his own store the chance to run a store that seems like his; and they spread like wildfire. But they create even more plastic, bland, and abstract services. The individual managers have almost no control over the goods they sell, the food they serve; policies are tightly controlled; the personal quality of individually owned shops is altogether broken down.

Communities can only get this personal quality back if they prohibit all forms of franchise and chain stores, place limits on

the actual size of stores in a community, and prohibit absentee owners from owning shops. In short, they must do what they can to keep the wealth generated by the local community in the hands of that community.

Even then, it will not be possible to maintain this pattern unless the size of the shop spaces available for rent is small. One of the biggest reasons for the rise of large, nationally owned franchises is that the financial risks of starting a business are so enormous for the average individual. The failure of a single owner’s business can be catastrophic for him personally; and it happens, in large part because he can’t afford the rent. Many hundreds of tiny shops, with low rents, will keep the initial risk for a shop keeper who is starting, to a minimum.

Shops in Morocco, India, Peru, and the oldest parts of older towns, are often no more than 50 square feet in area. Just room for a person and some merchandise—but plenty big enough.

Therefore:

Do what you can to encourage the development of individually owned shops. Approve applications for business licenses only if the business is owned by those people who actually work and manage the store. Approve new commercial building permits only if the proposed structure includes many very very small rental spaces.

434

INDIVIDUALLY OWNED SHOPS

some no more than 50 square feet 4* »!♦

Treat each individual shop as an identifiable unit of a larger building complex (95); make at least some part of the shop part of the sidewalk, so that people walk through the shop as they are going down the street—opening to the street (165); and build the inside of the shop with all the goods as open and available as possible—the shape of indoor space (191), thick WALLS ( I 97), OPEN SHELVES (200) . . . .

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process which we believe is compatible with this piecemeal approach.

1. The core of the planning process we propose is this: The region is made up of a hierarchy of social and political groups, from the smallest and most local groups —families, neighborhoods, and work groups—to the largest groups—city councils, regional assemblies.

Imagine for example a metropolitan region composed very roughly of the following groups, each group a coherent political entity:

A. The region: 8,000,000 people.

B. The major city: 500,000 people.

C. Communities and small towns: 5-10,000 people each.

D. Neighborhoods: 500-1000 people each.

E. House clusters and work communities: 30-50 people each.

F. Families and work groups: 1-15 people each.

2. Each grouf makes its own decisions about the environment it uses in common. Ideally, each group actually owns the common land at its "level.” And higher groups do not own or control the land belonging to lower groups—they only own and control the common land that lies between them, and which serves the higher group. For instance, a community of 7000 might own the public land lying between its component neighborhoods, but not the neighborhoods themselves. A co-operative house cluster would own the common land between the houses, but not the houses themselves.

3. Each of these groups takes responsibility for those patterns relevant to its own internal structure.

Thus, we imagine, for example, that the various

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436

. . . neighborhoods are defined by identifiable neighborhood (14); their natural points of focus are given by activity nodes (30) and small public squares (61). This pattern, and the ones which follow it, give the neighborhood and its points of focus, their identity.

*£•

The street cafe provides a unique setting, special to cities: a place where people can sit lazily, legitimately, be on view, and watch the world go by.

The most humane cities are always full of street cafes. Let us try to understand the experience which makes these places so attractive.

We know that people enjoy mixing in public, in parks, squares, along promenades and avenues, in street cafes. The preconditions seem to be: the setting gives you the right to be there, by custom; there are a few things to do that are part of the scene, almost ritual: reading the newspaper, strolling, nursing a beer, playing catch; and people feel safe enough to relax, nod at each other, perhaps even meet. A good cafe terrace meets these conditions. But it has in addition, special qualities of its own: a person may sit there for hours—in public! Strolling, a person must keep up a pace; loitering is only for a few minutes. You can sit still in a park, but there is not the volume of people passing, it is more a private, peaceful experience. And sitting at home on one’s porch is again different: it is far more protected; and there is not the mix of people passing by. But on the cafe terrace, you can sit still, relax, and be very public. As an experience it has special possibilities; “perhaps the next person . . .”; it is a risky place.

It is this experience that the street cafe supports. And it is one of the attractions of cities, for only in cities do we have the concentration of people required to bring it off. But this experience need not be confined to the special, extraordinary parts of town. In European cities and towns, there is a street cafe in every neighborhood—they are as ordinary as gas stations are in the United

States. And the existence of such places provides social glue for the community. They become like clubs—people tend to return to their favorite, the faces become familiar. When there is a successful cafe within walking distance of your home, in the neighborhood, so much the better. It helps enormously to increase the identity of a neighborhood. It is one of the few settings where a newcomer to the neighborhood can start learning the ropes and meeting the people who have been there many years.

The ingredients of a successful street cafe seem to be:

1. There is an established local clientele. That is, by name, location, and staff, the cafe is very much anchored in the neighborhood in which it is situated.

2. In addition to the terrace which is open to the street, the cafe contains several other spaces: with games, fire, soft chairs, newspapers. . . . This allows a variety of people to start using it, according to slightly different social styles.

3. The cafe serves simple food and drinks—some alcoholic drinks, but it is not a bar. It is a place where you are as likely to go m the morning, to start the day, as in the evening, for a nightcap.

When these conditions are present, and the cafe takes hold, it offers something unique to the lives of the people who use it: it offers a setting for discussions of great spirit—talks, two-bit lectures, half-public, half-private, learning, exchange of thought.

When we worked for the University of Oregon, we compared the importance of such discussion in cafes and cafe-like places, with the instruction students receive in the classroom. We interviewed 30 students to measure the extent that shops and cafes contributed to their intellectual and emotional growth at the University. We found that “talking with a small group of students in a coffee shop” and “discussion over a glass of beer” scored as high and higher than “examinations” and “laboratory study.” Apparently the informal activities of shops and cafes contribute as much to the growth of students, as the more formal educational activities.

We believe this phenomenon is general. The quality that we tried to capture in these interviews, and which is present in a neighborhood cafe, is essential to all neighborhoods—not only student neighborhoods. It is part of their life-blood.

Therefore:

Encourage local cafes to spring up in each neighborhood. Make them intimate places, with several rooms, open to a busy path, where people can sit with coffee or a drink and watch the world go by. Build the front of the cafe so that a set of tables stretch out of the cafe, right into the street.

several rooms

tables

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terrace

newspapers

busy path

**• *5*

Build a wide, substantial opening between the terrace and the indoors—opening to the street (165); make the terrace double as a place to wait (150) for nearby bus stops and offices; both indoors and on the terrace use a great variety of different kinds of chairs and tables—different chairs (251); and give the terrace some low definition at the street edge if it is in danger of being interrupted by street action—stair seats (125), sitting wall (243), perhaps a canvas roof (244). For the shape of the building, the terrace, and the surroundings, begin with building complex (95). . . .

44O

. . . the major shopping needs, in any community, are taken care of by the market of many shops (46). However, the web of shopping (19) is not complete, unless there are also much smaller shops, more widely scattered, helping to supplement the markets, and helping to create the natural identity of identifiable NEIGHBORHOODS ( I 4) .

-h V

It has lately been assumed that people no longer want to walk to local stores. This assumption is mistaken.

Indeed, we believe that people are not only willing to walk to their local corner groceries, but that the corner grocery plays an essential role in any healthy neighborhood: partly because it is just more convenient for individuals; partly because it helps to integrate the neighborhood as a whole.

Strong support for this notion comes from a study by Arthur D.'Little, Inc., which found that neighborhood stores are one of the two most important elements in people’s perception of an area as a neighborhood (Community Renezoal Program, New York: Praeger Press, 1966). Apparently this is because local stores are an important destination for neighborhood walks. People go to them when they feel like a walk as well as when they need a carton of milk. In this way, as a generator of walks, they draw a residential area together and help to give it the quality of a neighborhood. Similar evidence comes from a report by the management of one of San Francisco’s housing projects for the elderly. One of the main reasons why people resisted moving into some of the city’s new housing projects, according to the rental manager, was that the projects were not located in “downtown locations, where . . . there is a store on every street corner.” (San Francisco Chronicle, August 1971.)

To find out how far people will walk to a store we interviewed 20 people at a neighborhood store in Berkeley. We found that 80 per cent of the people interviewed walked, and that those who walked all came three blocks or less. Over half of

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them had been to the store previously within two days. On the other hand, those who came by car usually came from more than four blocks away. We found the pattern to be similar at other public facilities in the neighborhoods that we surveyed. At distances around four blocks, or greater, people who rode outnumbered those who walked. It seems then, that corner groceries need to be within walking distance, three to four blocks or I 200 feet, of every home.

But can they survive? Are these stores doomed by the economics of scale? How many people does it take to support one corner grocery? We may estimate the critical population for grocery stores by consulting the yellow pages. For example, San Francisco, a city of 750,000, has 638 neighborhood grocery stores. This means that there is one grocery for every 1160 people, which corresponds to Berry’s estimate—see web of shopping (19)—and corresponds also to the size of neighborhoods— See IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD (14).

It seems, then, that a corner grocery can survive under circumstances where there are 1000 people within three or four blocks—a net density of at least 20 persons per net acre, or six houses per net acre. Most neighborhoods do have this kind of density. One might even take this figure as a lower limit for a viable neighborhood, on the grounds that a neighborhood ought to be able to support a corner grocery, for the sake of its own social cohesion.

Finally, the success of a neighborhood store will depend on its location. It has been shown that the rents which owners of small retail businesses are willing to pay vary directly with the amount of pedestrian traffic passing by, and are therefore uniformly higher on street corners than in the middle of the block. (Brian J. L. Berry, Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution, Prentice Hall, 1967, p. 49.)

Therefore:

Give every neighborhood at least one corner grocery, somewhere near its heart. Place these corner groceries every 200 to 800 yards, according to the density, so that each one serves about 1000 people. Place them on corners, where

large numbers of people are going past. And combine them with houses, so that the people who run them can live over them or next to them.

Prevent franchises and pass laws which prevent the emergence of those much larger groceries which swallow up the corner groceries—individually owned shops (87). Treat the inside of the shop as a room, lined with goods—the shape of indoor SPACE (191), THICK WALLS ( 197) , OPEN SHELVES (200); give it a clear and wide entrance so that everyone can see it—main ENTRANCE (110), OPENING TO THE STREET ( 16 5) . And for the shape of the grocery, as a small building or as part of a larger building, begin with building complex (95). . . .

44+

. . . in an occasional neighborhood, which functions as the focus of a group of neighborhoods, or in a boundary between neighborhoods—neighborhood boundary (15)—or on the promenade which forms the focus of a large community—promenade (31), night life (33)—there is a special need for something larger and more raucous than a street cafe.

Where can people sing, and drink, and shout and drink, and let go of their sorrows?

A public drinking house, where strangers and friends are drinking companions, is a natural part of any large community. But all too often, bars degenerate and become nothing more than anchors for the lonely. Robert Sommer has described this in “Design for Drinking,” Chapter 8 of his book Personal Space, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

... it is not difficult in any American city to find examples of the bar where meaningful contact is at a minimum. V. S. Pritchett describes the lonely men in New York City sitting speechlessly on a row of barstools, with their arms triangled on the bar before a bottle of beer, their drinking money before them. If anyone speaks to his neighbor under these circumstances, he is likely to receive a suspicious stare for his efforts. The barman is interested in the patrons as customers—he is there to sell, they are there to buy. . . .

Another visiting Englishman makes the same point when he describes the American bar as a “hoked up saloon; the atmosphere is as chilly as the beer . . . when I asked a stranger to have a drink, he looked at me as if I were mad. In England if a guy’s a stranger, . . . each guy buys the other a drink. You enjoy each other’s company, and everyone is happy. . . .” (Tony Kirby, “Who’s Crazy?” The Village Voice_f January 26, 1967, p. 39.)

Let us consider drinking more in the style of these English pubs. Drink helps people to relax and become open with one another, to sing and dance. But it only brings out these qualities when the setting is right. We think that there are two critical qualities for the setting:

I. The place holds a crowd that is continuously mixing be-

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groups we have named might choose to adopt the following patterns:

A. Region: independent regions

DISTRIBUTION OF TOWNS

CITY COUNTRY FINGERS . . .

B. City: mosaic of subcultures

SCATTERED WORK

THE MAGIC OF THE CITY . . .

C. Community: community of 7000

SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY . . .

4. Each neighborhood, community, or city is then free to find various ways of persuading its constituent groups and individuals to implement these patterns gradually.

In every case this will hinge on some kind of incentive. However, the actual incentives chosen might vary greatly, in their power, and degree of enforcement. Some patterns, like city country fingers, might be made a matter of regional law—since nothing less can deter money-hungry developers from building everywhere. Other patterns, like main gateway, birth places, still water, might be purely voluntary. And other patterns might have various kinds of incentives, intermediate between these extremes.

For example, network of paths and cars, accessible greens, and others might be formulated so that tax breaks will be given to those development projects which help to bring them into existence.

5. As far as possible, implementation should be loose and voluntary, based on social responsibility, and not on legislation or coercion.

Suppose, for example, that there is a citywide decision

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tween functions—the bar, the dance floor, a fire, darts, the bathrooms, the entrance, the seats; and these activities are concentrated and located round the edge so that they generate continual criss-crossing.

2. The seats should be largely in the form of tables for four to eight set in open alcoves—that is, tables that are defined for small groups, with walls, columns, and curtains—but open at both ends.

The open alcove—supports the fluidity of the scene.

This form helps sustain the life of the group and lets people come in and out freely. Also, when the tables are large, they invite people to sit down with a stranger or another group.

Therefore:

Somewhere in the community at least one big place where a few hundred people can gather, with beer and wine, music, and perhaps a half-dozen activities, so that people are continuously criss-crossing from one to another.

♦J*

Put the tables in two-ended alcoves, roomy enough for people to pass through on their way between activities—alcoves (179) ; provide a fire, as the hub of one activity—the fire (1 8 1) ; and a variety of ceiling heights to correspond to different social groupings—ceiling height variety (190). For the shape of the building, gardens, parking, and surroundings, begin with BUILDING COMPLEX (95) . . . .

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. . . any town or city has visitors and travelers passing through, and these visitors will naturally tend to congregate around the centers of activity—magic of the city ( i o), activity nodes

(30), PROMENADE (31), NIGHT LIFE (33), WORK COMMUNITY

(41). This pattern shows how the hotels which cater to these visitors can most effectively help to sustain the life of these centers.

4* 4* 4*

A man who stays the night in a strange place is still a member of the human community, and still needs company. There is no reason why he should creep into a hole, and watch TV alone, the way he does in a roadside motel.

At all times, except our own, the inn was a wonderful place, where strangers met for a night, to eat, and drink, play cards, tell stories, and experience extraordinary adventures. But in a modern motel every ounce of this adventure has been lost. The motel owner assumes that strangers are afraid of one another, so he caters to their fear by making each room utterly self-contained and self-sufficient.

But behind the fear, there is a deep need: the need for company—for stories, and adventures, and encounters. It is the business of an inn to create an atmosphere where people can experience and satisfy this need. The most extreme version is the Indian pilgrim’s inn, or the Persian caravanserai. There people eat, and meet, and sleep, and talk, and smoke, and drink in one great space, protected from danger by their mutual company, and given entertainment by one another’s escapades and stories.

The inspiration for this pattern came from Gita Shah’s description of the Indian pilgrim’s inn, in The Timeless Way of Building:

In India, there are many of these inns. There is a courtyard where the people meet, and a place to one side of the courtyard where they eat, and also on this side there is the person who looks after the Inn, and on the other three sides of the courtyard there are the rooms—in front of the rooms is an arcade, maybe one step up from

towns

the courtyard, and about ten feet deep, with another step leading into the rooms. During the evening everyone meets in the courtyard, and they talk and eat together—it is very special—and then at night they all sleep in the arcade, so they are all sleeping together, round the courtyard.

And of course, the size is crucial. The atmosphere comes mainly from the fact that the people who run the place themselves live there and treat the entire inn as their household. A family can’t handle more than 30 rooms.

Therefore:

Make the traveler’s inn a place where travelers can take rooms for the night, but where—unlike most hotels and motels—the inn draws all its energy from the community of travelers that are there any given evening. The scale is small—30 or 40 guests to an inn; meals are offered communally; there is even a large space ringed round with beds in alcoves.

The heart of the conviviality is the central area, where everyone can meet and talk and dance and drink—common areas at THE HEART (129), DANCING IN THE STREET (65), and BEER hall (90). Provide the opportunity for communal eating, not a restaurant, but common food around a common table—communal eating (147); and, over and above the individual rooms there are at least some areas where people can lie down and sleep in public unafraid—sleeping in public (94), communal sleeping (186). For the overall shape of the inn, its gardens, parking, and surroundings, begin with building complex (95). . . .

451

. . . within a town whose public transportation is based on minibuses (20), genuinely able to serve people, almost door to door, for a low price, and very fast, there need to be bus stops within a few hundred feet of every house and workplace. This pattern gives the form of the bus stops.

•i* *5* *5*

Bus stops must be easy to recognize, and pleasant, with enough activity around them to make people comfortable and safe.

Bus stops are often dreary because they are set down independently, with very little thought given to the experience of waiting there, to the relationship between the bus stop and its surroundings. They are places to stand idly, perhaps anxiously, waiting for the bus, always watching for the bus. It is a shabby experience; nothing that would encourage people to use public transportation.

The secret lies in the web of relationships that are present in the tiny system around the bus stop. If they knit together, and reinforce each other, adding choice and shape to the experience, the system is a good one: but the relationships that make up such a system are extremely subtle. For example, a system as simple as a traffic light, a curb, and street corner can be enhanced by viewing it as a distinct node of public life: people wait for the light to change, their eyes wander, perhaps they are not in such a hurry. Place a newsstand and a flower wagon at the corner and the experience becomes more coherent.

The curb and the light, the paperstand and the flowers, the awning over the shop on the corner, the change in people’s pockets—all this forms a web of mutually sustaining relationships.

The possibilities for each bus stop to become part of such a web are different—in some cases it will be right to make a system that will draw people into a private reverie—an old tree; another time one that will do the opposite—give shape to the social possibilities—a coffee stand, a canvas roof, a decent place to sit for people who are not waiting for the bus.

Two bus stofs.

Therefore:

Build bus stops so that they form tiny centers of public life. Build them as part of the gateways into neighborhoods, work communities, parts of town. Locate them so that they work together with several other activities, at least a newsstand, maps, outdoor shelter, seats, and in various combinations, corner groceries, smoke shops, coffee bar, tree places, special road crossings, public bathrooms, squares. . . .

gateway

Make a full gateway to the neighborhood next to the bus stop, or place the bus stop where the best gateway is already—main gateway (53); treat the physical arrangement according to the patterns for public outdoor room (69), path shape (121), and a place to wait (150) ; provide a food stand (93): place the seats according to sun, wind protection, and view—seat spots (241). . . .

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. . . throughout the neighborhood there are natural public gathering places—activity nodes (30), road crossings (54), RAISED WALKS (55), SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES (6 I ) , BUS STOPS (92). All draw their life, to some extent, from the food stands, the hawkers, and the vendors who fill the street with the smell of food.

4* 4*

Many of our habits and institutions are bolstered by the fact that we can get simple, inexpensive food on the street, on the way to shopping, work, and friends.

The food stands which make the best food, and which contribute most to city life, are the smallest shacks and carts from which individual vendors sell their wares. Everyone has memories of them.

But in their place we now have shining hamburger kitchens, fried chicken shops, and pancake houses. They are chain operations, with no roots in the local community. They sell “plastic,” mass-produced frozen food, and they generate a shabby quality of life around them. They are built to attract the eye of a person driving: the signs are huge; the light is bright neon. They are insensitive to the fabric of the community. Their parking lots around them kill the public open space.

If we want food in our streets contributing to the social life of the streets, not helping to destroy it, the food stands must be made and placed accordingly.

We propose four rules:

1. The food stands are concentrated at road crossings (54) of the network of paths and cars (52). It is possible to see them from cars and to expect them at certain kinds of intersections, but they do not have special parking lots around them—see nine per cent parking (22).

2. The food stands are free to take on a character that is compatible with the neighborhood around them. They can be

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to increase industrial uses in certain areas. Within the process here defined, the city could not implement this policy over the heads of the neighborhoods, by zoning or the power of eminent domain or any other actions. They can suggest that it is important, and can increase the flow of money to any neighborhoods willing to help implement this larger pattern. They can implement it, in short, if they can find local neighborhoods willing to see their own future in these terms, and willing to modify their own environment to help make it happen locally. As they find such neighborhoods, then it will happen gradually, over a period of years, as the local neighborhoods respond to the incentives.

6. Once such a process is rolling, a community, having adopted the pattern health center, for example, might invite a group of doctors to come and build such a place. The team of users, designing the clinic would work from the health center pattern, and all the other relevant patterns that are part of the community’s language. They would try to build into their project any higher patterns that the community has adopted—nine

PER CENT PARKING, LOCAL SPORTS, NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS, ACCESSIBLE GREEN, etC.

7. It is of course possible for individual acts of build-ing to begin working their way toward these larger communal patterns, even before the neighborhood, community, and regional groups are formed.

Thus, for example, a group of people seeking to get rid of noisy and dangerous traffic in front of their houses might decide to tear up the asphalt, and build a green street there instead. They would present their case to

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freestanding carts, or built into the corners and crevices of existing buildings; they can be small huts, part of the fabric of the street.

3. The smell of the food is out in the street; the place can be surrounded with covered seats, sitting walls, places to lean and sip coffee, part of the larger scene, not sealed away in a plate glass structure, surrounded by cars. The more they smell, the better.

4. They are never franchises, but always operated by their owners. The best food always comes from family restaurants; and the best food in a foodstand always comes when people prepare the food and sell it themselves, according to their own ideas, their own recipes, their own choice.

Therefore:

Concentrate food stands where cars and paths meet— either portable stands or small huts, or built into the fronts of buildings, half-open to the street.

Treat these food stands as activity pockets (124) when they are part of a square; Use canvas roofs to make a simple shelter over them—canvas roof (244); and keep them in line with the precepts of individually owned shops (87): the best food always comes from people who are in business for themselves, who buy the raw food, and prepare it in their own style. . . .

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. . . this pattern helps to make places like the interchange (34), SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES (6l), PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOMS (69), STREET CAFE (88), PEDESTRIAN STREET (lOO), BUILDING

thoroughfare (ioi), a place to wait (150) completely public.

«£«

It is a mark of success in a park, public lobby or a porch, when people can come there and fall asleep.

In a society which nurtures people and fosters trust, the fact that people sometimes want to sleep in public is the most natural thing in the world. If someone lies down on a pavement or a bench and falls asleep, it is possible to treat it seriously as a need. If he has no place to go—then, we, the people of the town, can be happy that he can at least sleep on the public paths and benches; and, of course, it may also be someone who does have a place to go, but happens to like napping in the street.

But our society does not invite this kind of behavior. In our society, sleeping in public, like loitering, is thought of as an act for criminals and destitutes. In our world, when homeless people start sleeping on public benches or in public buildings, upright citizens get nervous, and the police soon restore “public order.”

Thus we cleared these difficult straits, my bicycle and I, together. But a little further on I heard myself hailed. I raised my head and saw a policeman. Elliptically speaking, for it was only later, by way of induction, or deduction, I forget which, that I knew what it was. What are you doing there? he said. Pm used to that question, I understood it immediately. Resting, I said. Resting, he said. Resting, I said. Will you answer my question? he cried. So it always is when Pm reduced to confabulation. I honestly believe I have answered the question I am asked and in reality I do nothing of the kind. I won’t reconstruct the conversation in all its meanderings. It ended in my understanding that my way of resting, my attitude when at rest, astride my bicycle, my arms on the handlebars, my head on my arms, was a violation of I don’t know what, public order, public decency. . . .

What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my

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94 SLEEPING IN PUBLIC

feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a deplorable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground. (Samuel Beckett, Molloy.)

It seems, at first, as though this is purely a social problem and that it can only be changed by changing people’s attitudes. But the fact is, that these attitudes are largely shaped by the environment itself. In an environment where there arc very few places to lie down and sleep people who sleep in public seem unnatural, because it is so rare.

Therefore:

away from traffic

soft benches

Keep the environment filled with ample benches, comfortable places, corners to sit on the ground, or lie in comfort in the sand. Make these places relatively sheltered, protected from circulation, perhaps up a step, with seats and grass to slump down upon, read the paper and doze off.

Above all, put the places for sleeping along building edges (160); make seats there, and perhaps even a bed alcove or two in public might be a nice touch—bed alcove (188), seat spots (241) ; but above all, it will hinge on the attitudes which people have—do anything you can to create trust, so that people feel no fear in going to sleep in public and so that other people feel no fear of people sleeping in the street.

BUILDINGS

This completes the global patterns which define a town or a community. We now start that part of the language which gives shape to groups of buildings, and individual buildings, on the land> in three dimensions. These are the patterns which can be “designed” or ^Ubuilt^)y—the patterns which define the individual buildings and the space between buildings, where we are dealing for the first time with patterns that are under the control of individuals or small groups of individuals, who are able to build the patterns all at once.

•i* •$*

We assume that, based on the instructions in “Summary of the Language,” you have already constructed a sequence of patterns. We shall now go through a step-by-step procedure for building this sequence into a design.

1. The basic instruction is this: Take the patterns in the order of the sequence, one by one, and let the form grow from the fusion of these patterns, the site, and your own instincts.

2. It is essential to work on the site, where the project is to be built; inside the room that is to be remodeled; on the land where the building is to go up; and so forth. And as far as possible, work with the people that are actually going to use the place when it is finished: if you are the user, all the better. But, above all, work on the site, stay on the site, let the site tell you its secrets.

3. Remember too, that the form will grow gradually as you go through the sequence, beginning as something very loose and amorphous, gradually becoming more and more complicated, more refined and more differentiated, more finished. Don’t rush this process. Don’t

BUILDINGS

give the form more order than it needs to meet the patterns and the conditions of the site, each step of the way. In effect, as you build each pattern into the design, you will experience a single gestalt that is gradually becoming more and more coherent.

4. Take one pattern at a time. Open the page to the first one and read it again. The pattern statement describes the ways in which other patterns either influence this pattern, or are influenced by it. For now, this information is useful only in so far as it helps you to envision the one 'pattern before you, as a whole.

5. Now, try to imagine how, on your particular site, you can establish this pattern. Stand on the site with your eyes closed. Imagine how things might be, if the pattern, as you have understood it, had suddenly sprung up there overnight. Once you have an image of how it might be, walk about the site, pacing out approximate areas, marking the walls, using string and cardboard, and putting stakes in the ground, or loose stones, to mark the important corners.

6. Complete your thought about this pattern, before you go on to the next one. This means you must treat the pattern as an “entity”; and try to conceive of this entity, entire and whole, before you start creating any other patterns.

7. The sequence of the language will guarantee that you will not have to make enormous changes which cancel out your earlier decisions. Instead, the changes you make will get smaller and smaller, as you build in more and more patterns, like a series of progressive refinements, until you finally have a complete design.

8. Since you are building up your design, one pattern

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BUILDINGS

at a time, it is essential to keep your design as fluid as possible, while you go from pattern to pattern. As you use the patterns, one after another, you will find that you keep needing to adjust your design to accommodate new patterns. It is important that you do this in a loose and relaxed way, without getting the design more fixed than necessary, and without being afraid to make changes. The design can change as it needs to, so long as you maintain the essential relationships and characteristics which earlier patterns have prescribed. You will see that it is possible to keep these essentials constant, and still make minor changes in the design. As you include each new pattern, you readjust the total gestalt of your design, to bring it into line with the pattern you are working on.

9. While you are imagining how to establish one pattern, consider the other patterns listed with it. Some are larger. Some are smaller. For the larger ones, try to see how they can one day be present in the areas you are working on, and ask yourself how the pattern you are now building can contribute to the repair or formation of these larger patterns.

10. For the smaller ones, make sure that your conception of the main pattern will allow you to make these smaller patterns within it later. It will probably be helpful if you try to decide roughly how you are going to build these smaller patterns in, when you come to them.

11. Keep track of the area from the very beginning so that you are always reasonably close to something you can actually afford. We have had many experiences in which people try to design their own houses, or other buildings, and then get discouraged because the final cost

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the traffic department based on the arguments presented in the pattern, and on an analysis of the existing street pattern.

Another group wanting to build a small communal workshop, in a neighborhood currently zoned for residential use only, can argue their case based on scattered work, settled work, etc., and possibly get the city or zoning department to change the zoning regulation on this matter, and thereby slowly work toward introducing patterns, one at a time within the current framework of codes and zoning.

We have worked out a partial version of this process at the Eugene campus of the University of Oregon. That work is described in Volume 3, The Oregon Experiment. But a university is quite different from a town, because it has a single centralized owner, and a single source of funds. It is inevitable, therefore, that the process by which individual acts can work together to form larger wholes without restrictive planning from above, can only partly be put into practice there.

The theory which explains how large patterns can be built piecemeal from smaller ones, is given in Chapters 24 and 25 of The Timeless Way of Building.

At some time in the future, we hope to write another volume, which explains the political and economic processes needed to implement this process fully, in a town.

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BUILDINGS

is too high, and they have to go back and change it.

To do this, decide on a budget, and use a reasonable average square foot cost, to translate this budget into square feet of construction. Say for the sake of argument, that you have a budget of $30,000 for construction. With help from builders, find out what kind of square foot cost is reasonable for the kind of building you are making. For example, in 1976, in California, a reasonable house, compatible with the patterns in the last part of the language, can be built for some $28/ square foot. If you want expensive finishes, it will be more. With $36,000 for construction, this will give you some 1300 square feet.

12. Now, throughout the design process, keep this 1300-square-foot figure in mind. If you go to two stories, keep the ground area to 650 square feet. If you use only part of the upstairs volume, the ground floor can go as high as 800 or 900 square feet. If you decide to build rather elaborate outdoor rooms, walls, trellises, reduce the indoor area to make up for these outdoor costs— perhaps down to 1100 or 1200. And, each time you use a pattern to differentiate the layout of your building further, keep this total area in mind, so that you do not, ever, allow yourself to go beyond your budget.

13. Finally, make the essential points and lines which are needed to fix the pattern, on the site with bricks, or sticks or stakes. Try not to design on paper; even in the case of complicated buildings find a way to make your marks on the site.

More detailed instructions, and detailed examples of the design process in action, are given in chapters 20, 21, and 22 of The Timeless Way of Building.

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The first group of patterns helps to lay out the overall arrangement of a group of buildings: the height and number of these buddings, the entrances to the sitCy main parking areas _y and lines of movement through the complex;

468

. . . this pattern, the first of the 130 patterns which deal specifically with buildings, is the bottleneck through which all languages pass from the social layouts of the earlier patterns to the smaller ones wdiich define individual spaces.

Assume that you have decided to build a certain building. The social groups or institutions which the building is meant to house are given—partly by the facts peculiar to your own case, and partly, perhaps, by earlier patterns. Now this pattern and the next one—number of stories (96), give you the basis of the building’s layout on the site. This pattern show's you roughly how to break the building into parts, number of stories helps you decide how high to make each part. Obviously, the two patterns must be used together.

A building cannot be a human building unless it is a complex of still smaller buildings or smaller parts which manifest its own internal social facts.

A building is a visible, concrete manifestation of a social group or social institution. And since every social institution has smaller groups and institutions within it, a human building will always reveal itself, not as a monolith, but as a complex of these smaller institutions, made manifest and concrete too.

A family has couples and groups within it; a factory has teams of workers; a town hall has divisions, departments within the large divisions, and working groups within these departments. A building which shows these subdivisions and articulations in its fabric is a human building—because it lets us live according to the way that people group themselves. By contrast, any monolithic building is denying the facts of its own social structure, and in denying these facts it is asserting other facts of a less human kind and forcing people to adapt their lives to them instead.

We have tried to make this feeling more precise by means of the following conjecture: the more monolithic a building is, and the less differentiated, the more it presents itself as an in-

BUILDINGS

human, mechanical factory. And when human organizations are housed in enormous, undifferentiated buildings, people stop identifying with the staff who work there as personalities and think only of the institution as an impersonal monolith, staffed by personnel. In short, the more monolithic the building is, the more it prevents people from being personal, and from making human contact with the other people in the building.

The strongest evidence for this conjecture that we have found to date comes from a survey of visitors to public service buildings in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Preliminary Program for Massing Studies, Document 5: Visitor Survey, Environmental Analysis Group, Vancouver, B.C., August 1970.) Two kinds of public service buildings were studied—old, three story buildings and huge modern office buildings. The reactions of visitors to the small building differed from the reactions of visitors to the large buildings in an extraordinary way. The people going to the small buildings most often mentioned friendly and competent staff as the important factor in their satisfaction with the service. In many cases the visitors were able to give names and describe the people with whom they had done business. Visitors to the huge office buildings, on the other hand, mentioned friendliness and staff competence rather infrequently. The great majority of these visitors found their satisfaction in “good physical appearance, and equipment.”

In the monoliths, the visitors’ experience is depersonalized. They stop thinking primarily of the people they are going to see and the quality of the relationship and focus instead on the building itself and its features. The staff becomes “personnel,” interchangeable, and indifferent, and the visitors pay little attention to them as people—friendly or unfriendly, competent or incompetent.

We learn also from this study that in the large buildings visitors complained frequently about the “general atmosphere” of the building, without naming specific problems. There were no such complaints among the visitors to the smaller buildings. It is as if the monoliths induce a kind of free-floating anxiety in people: the environment “feels wrong,” but it is hard to give a reason. It may be that the cause of the uneasiness is so simple— the place is too big, it is difficult to grasp, the people are like bees in a hive—that people are embarrassed to say it outright.

95 BUILDING COMPLEX

(“If it is as simple as that, I must be wrong—after all, there are so many of these buildings.”)

However it is, we take this evidence to indicate deep disaffection from the human environment in the huge, undifferentiated office buildings. The buildings impress themselves upon us as things: objects, commodities; they make us forget the people inside, as people; yet when we use these buildings we complain vaguely about the “general atmosphere.”

It seems then that the degree to which a building is broken into visible parts does affect the human relations among people in the building. And if a building must, for psychological reasons, be broken into parts, it seems impossible to find any rr ore natural way of breaking it down, than the one we have suggested. Namely, that the various institutions, groups, subgroups, activities, are visible in the concrete articulation of the physical building, on the grounds that people will only be fully able to identify with people in the building, when the building is a building complex.

A gothic cathedral—though an immense building—is an example of a building complex. Its various parts, the spire, the aisle, the nave, the chancel, the west gate, are a precise reflection of the social groups—the congregation, the choir, the special mass, and so forth.

And, of course, a group of huts in Africa, is human too, because it too is a complex of buildings, not one huge building by itself.

For a complex of buildings at high density, the easiest way of all, of making its human parts identifiable, is to build it up from narrow fronted buildings, each with its own internal stair. This is the basic structure of a Georgian terrace, or the brownstones of New York.

Therefore:

Never build large monolithic buildings. Whenever possible translate your building program into a building complex, whose parts manifest the actual social facts of the situation. At low densities, a building complex may take the form of a collection of small buildings connected by arcades, paths, bridges, shared gardens, and walls.

At higher densities, a single building can be treated as a

47i

building complex, if its important parts are picked out and made identifiable while still part of one three-dimensional fabric.

Even a small building, a house for example, can be conceived as a “building complex”—perhaps part of it is higher than the rest with wings and an adjoining cottage.

❖ *5*

At the highest densities, 3 or 4 stories, and along pedestrian streets, break the buildings into narrow, tall separate buildings, side by side, with common walls, each with its own internal or external stair. As far as possible insist that they be built piecemeal, one at a time, so that each one has time to be adapted to its neighbor. Keep the frontage as low as 25 or 30 feet, long thin

HOUSE (1O9), BUILDING FRONTS (l22); MAIN ENTRANCE (iio)

and perhaps a part of an arcade ( i i 9) which connects to next door buildings.

Arrange the buildings in the complex to form realms of movement—circulation realms (98) ; build one building from the collection as a main building—the natural center of the site— main building (99) ; place individual buildings where the land is least beautiful, least healthy—site repair (104); and put them to the north of their respective open space to keep the gardens sunny—south-facing outdoors (105); subdivide them further, into narrow wings, no more than 25 or 30 feet across— wings of light (107). For details of construction, start with STRUCTURE FOLLOWS SOCIAL SPACES (205). . . .

473

. . . assume now, that you know roughly how the parts of the building complex are to be articulated—building complex (95), and how large they are. Assume, also, that you have a site. In order to be sure that your building complex is workable within the limits of the site, you must decide how many stories its different parts will have. The height of each part must be constrained by the four-story limit (21). Beyond that, it depends on the area of your site, and the floor area which each part needs.

4*

Within the four-story height limit, just exactly how high should your buildings be?

To keep them small in scale, for human reasons, and to keep the costs down, they should be as low as possible. But to make the best use of land and to form a continuous fabric with surrounding buildings, they should perhaps be two or three or four stories instead of one. In this pattern we give rules for striking the balance.

Rule i: Set a four-story height limit on the site. This rule comes directly from four-story limit (21) and the reasons for establishing this limit are described there.

Rule 2: For any given site, do not let the ground area covered by buildings exceed 50 fer cent of the site. This rule requires that for any given site, where it belongs to a single household or a corporation, or whether it is a part of a larger site which contains several buildings, at least half of the site is left as open space. This is the limit of ground coverage within which reasonable site planning can take place. The rule therefore determines the maximum floor area that can be built with any given number of stories on a given site. The ratio of indoor area to site area (far—for floor area ratio) cannot thus exceed 0.5 in a single story building, i.O in a two story, 1.5 in a three story and 2.0 in a four story building.

If the total floor area you intend to build plus the built floor area that exists on the site is more than twice the area of the

474 9 6 NUMBER OF STORIES

site itself, then you are exceeding this limit. In this case, we advise that you cut back your program; build less space; perhaps build some of your project on another site.

Rule y Do not let the height of your building(s) vary too much from the 'predominant height of surrounding buildings. A rule of thumb: do not let your buildings deviate more than one story from surrounding buildings. On the whole, adjacent buildings should be roughly the same height.

I live in a small one-story garden cottage at the back of a large house in Berkeley. All around the cottage there are two-story houses, some as close as thirty feet. I thought when I moved in, that a garden cottage would be secluded and I would have some private outdoor space. But instead I feel that I’m living in a goldfish bowl— every one of the second-story windows around me looks right down into my living room, or into my garden. The garden outside is useless, and I don’t sit near the window.

Therefore:

First, decide how many square feet of built space you need, and divide by the area of the site to get the floor area ratio. Then choose the height of your buildings according to the floor area ratio and the height of the surrounding buildings from the following table. In no case build on more than 50 per cent of the land.

♦

BUILDINGS

Once you have the number of stories and the area of each part clear, decide which building or which part of the building will be the main building (99). Vary the number of floors within the building—cascade of roofs (116). Place the buildings on the site, with special reverence for the land, and trees, and sun—site repair (104), south facing outdoors (105), tree places (171). In your calculations, remember that the effective area of the top story will be no more than three-quarters of the area of lower floors if it is in the roof, according to SHELTERING ROOF ( I I 7) .

If the density is so high all around, that it is quite impossible to leave 50 per cent of the site open (as might be true in central London or New York), then cover the ground floor completely, but devote at least 50 per cent of the upper floors to open gardens—roof garden ( i 18).

Give each story a different ceiling height—bottom story biggest, top story smallest—and vary the column spacings accordingly— final column distribution (21 3). The same building system applies, whether there are I, 2, 3 or 4 stories—structure follows social spaces (205). . , .