A pattern language

If a garden is too close to the street, people won’t use it because it isn’t private enough. But if it is too far from the street, then it won’t be used either, because it is too isolated.

Start by thinking about the front gardens which you know. They are often decorative, lawns, flowers. But how often are people sitting there? Except at those special moments, when people want specifically to be watching the street, the front garden is nothing but a decoration. The half-private family groups, drinks with friends, playing ball with the children, lying in the grass—these need more protection than the typical front garden can create.

And the back gardens do not really solve the problem either. Those back gardens which are entirely isolated, entirely “in back” —are so remote from the street, that people often don’t feel comfortable there either. Often the back garden is so remote from the street, that you can’t hear people coming to the house; you have no sense of any larger, more open space, no sense of other people—only the enclosed, isolated, fenced-in world of one family. Children, so much more spontaneous and intuitive, give us a view in microcosm. How rarely they play in the full back garden; how much more often they prefer these side yards and gardens which have some privacy, yet also some exposure to the street.

within each region work toward those regional policies which will -protect the land and mark the limits of the cities:

2. THE DISTRIBUTION OF TOWNS

3. CITY COUNTRY FINGERS

4. AGRICULTURAL VALLEYS

5. LACE OF COUNTRY STREETS

6. COUNTRY TOWNS

7. THE COUNTRYSIDE

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BUILDINGS

It seems then, that the proper place for a garden is neither in front, nor fully behind. The garden needs a certain degree of privacy, yet also wants some kind of tenuous connection to the street and entrance. This balance can only be created in a situation where the garden is half in front, half in back—in a word, at the side, protected by a wall from too great an exposure to the street; and yet open enough, through paths, gates, arcades, trellises, so that people in the garden still have a glimpse of the street, a view of the front door or the path to the front door.

All this requires a revolution in the normal conception of a “lot.” Lots are usually narrow along the street and deep. But to create half-hidden gardens, the lots must be long along the street, and shallow, so that each house can have a garden at its side. This gives the following archetype for house and half-hidden.

Archetyfe of a half-hidden garden.

There are many ways of developing this idea. One version we experienced in an old house where we once had our offices was particularly interesting.

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Ill HALF-HIDDEN GARDEN

The garden that we used was to the back, but behind the next-door house. It worked perfectly as a half-hidden garden for our house. We were able to sit there privately and have our lunch, and work on warm days, and still be in touch with the main entrance and even a glimpse of the street. But our own back garden was entirely hidden—and we never used it.

Therefore:

Do not place the garden fully in front of the house, nor fully to the back. Instead, place it in some kind of half-way position, side-by-side with the house, in a position which is half-hidden from the street, and half-exposed.

If possible, use this pattern to influence the shape of house lots too, and make them as near double squares along the street as possible; build a partial wall around the garden, and locate the entrance to the house between the house and the garden, so that people in the garden can be private, yet still aware of the street, and aware of anybody coming up to the house—main entrance (iio), Carden wall (I 7 3) ; allow the garden to grow wild— garden growing wild (172), and make the passage through, or alongside it, a major part of the transition between street and house—entrance transition (I i 2). Half-hidden gardens may be courtyards which live (115), roof gardens ( i 18), or a private terrace on the street (140). . . .

I 12 ENTRANCE TRANSITION**

. . . whatever kind of building or building complex you are making, you have a rough position for its major entrances—the gateways to the site from main gateways (53) ; the entrances to individual buildings from family of entrances (102), main entrance (110). In every case, the entrances create a transition between the “outside”—the public world—and some less public inner world. If you have half-hidden gardens (ill) the gardens help to intensify the beauty of the transition. This pattern now elaborates and reinforces the transition which entrances and gardens generate.

Buildings, and especially houses, with a graceful transition between the street and the inside, are more tranquil than those which open directly off the street.

The experience of entering a building influences the way you feel inside the building. If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival, and the inside of the building fails to be an inner sanctum.

An abrupt entrance—no transition.

The following argument may help to explain it. While people are on the street, they adopt a style of “street behavior.” When they come into a house they naturally want to get rid of this street behavior and settle down completely into the more intimate spirit appropriate to a house. But it seems likely that they cannot do this unless there is a transition from one to the other which

BUILDINGS

helps them to lose the street behavior. The transition must, in effect, destroy the momentum of the closedness, tension and “distance” which are appropriate to street behavior, before people can relax completely.

Evidence comes from the report by Robert Weiss and Serge Boutcrline, Fairs, Exhibits, Pavilions, and their Audiences, Cambridge, Mass., 1962. The authors noticed that many exhibits failed to “hold” people; people drifted in and then drifted out again within a very short time. However, in one exhibit people had to cross a huge, deep-pile, bright orange carpet on the way in. In this case, though the exhibit was no better than other exhibits, people stayed. The authors concluded that people were, in general, under the influence of their own “street and crowd behavior,” and that while under this influence could not relax enough to make contact with the exhibits. But the bright carpet presented them with such a strong contrast as they walked in, that it broke the effect of their outside behavior, in effect “wiped them clean,” with the result that they could then get absorbed in the exhibit.

Michael Christiano, while a student at the University of California, made the following experiment. He showed people photographs and drawings of house entrances with varying degrees of transition and then asked them which of these had the most “houseness.” He found that the more changes and transitions a house entrance has, the more it seems to be “houselike.” And the entrance which was judged most houselike of all is one which is approached by a long open sheltered gallery from which there is a view into the distance.

There is another argument which helps to explain the importance of the transition: people want their house, and especially the entrance, to be a private domain. If the front door is set back, and there is a transition space between it and the street, this domain is well established. This would explain why people are often unwilling to go without a front lawn, even though they do not “use it.” Cyril Bird found that 90 per cent of the inhabitants of a housing project said their front gardens, which were some 20 feet deep, were just right or even too small—yet only 15 per cent of them ever used the gardens as a place to sit. (“Reactions to Radburn: A Study of Radburn Type Housing, in Hemel Hempstead,” RIBA final thesis, i960.)

I 12 ENTRANCE TRANSITION

So far we have spoken mainly about houses. But we believe this pattern applies to a wide variety of entrances. It certainly applies to all dwellings including apartments—even though it is usually missing from apartments today. It also applies to those public buildings which thrive on a sense of seclusion from the world: a clinic, a jewelry store, a church, a public library. It does not apply to public buildings or any buildings which thrive on the fact of being continuous with the public world.

Here are four examples of successful entrance transitions.

Each creates the transition with a different combination of elements.

As you see from these examples, it is possible to make the transition itself in many different physical ways. In some cases, for example, it may be just inside the front door—a kind of entry court, leading to another door or opening that is more definitely inside. In another case, the transition may be formed by a bend in the path that takes you through a gate and brushes past the fuchsia on the way to the door. Or again, you'might create a tran-

sition by changing the texture of the path, so that you step off the sidewalk onto a gravel path and then up a step or two and under a trellis.

In all these cases, what matters most is that the transition exists, as an actual physical place, between the outside and the inside, and that the view, and sounds, and light, and surface which you walk on change as you pass through this place. It is the physical changes—and above all the change of view—which creates the psychological transition in your mind.

Therefore:

Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.

Emphasize the momentary view which marks the transition by a glimpse of a distant place—zen view (134); perhaps make a gateway or a simple garden gate to mark the entrance—garden wall (173); and emphasize the change of light—tapestry of LIGHT AND DARK ( I 3 5) , TRELLISED WALK (174). The transition runs right up to the front door, up to the entrance room (130), and marks the beginning of the intimacy gradient (127). . . .

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I I 3 CAR CONNECTION

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. . . once you have the entrance of the building fixed and its transition clear—main entrance (ho), entrance transition (112)—it is necessary to work out how a person can approach the building by car. Of course, in a pedestrian precinct this will not apply; but generally the car itself must have a housing somewhere near the building; and when this is so, its place and character are critical.

The process of arriving in a house, and leaving it, is fundamental to our daily lives; and very often it involves a car. But the place where cars connect to houses, far from being important and beautiful, is often off to one side and neglected.

This neglect can wreck havoc with the circulation in the house, especially in those houses with the traditional “front door and back door” relationship. Both family and visitors tend, more and more, to come and go by car. Since people always try to use the door nearest the car (see Vere Hole, et al., “Studies of 800 Houses in Conventional and Radburn Layouts,” Building Research Station, Garston, Herts, England, 1966), the entrance nearest the parking spot always becomes the “main” entrance, even if it was not planned that way.

The car entrance becomes the main entrance —regardless of the flan.

If this entrance is a “back” door, then the back of the house becomes less a sanctuary for the family and perhaps the housewife feels uncomfortable about guests traipsing through. On the other hand, if this entrance is a formal “front” door, it is not really appropriate for family and good friends. In Radburn, the back doors face the parking lot, and the front doors face a pedestrian green. For families with cars, the back door, being on the car side, dominates exit and entry, yet visitors are “supposed” to come to the front door.

In order to ensure that both the kitchen and formal living room are conveniently located with respect to cars and that each space maintains its integrity in terms of use and privacy, there must be one and only one primary entrance into the house, and the kitchen and living room must be both directly accessible from this entrance. We do not mean that a house needs to have only one entrance. There is no reason why a house cannot have several entrances—indeed there are good reasons why it probably should have more than one. Secondary entrances, like patio and garden doors and teenager’s private entrances, are very important. But they should never be placed so that they are in between the main entrance and the natural place to arrive by car—otherwise, they will compete with the main entrance and, again, confuse the way the house plan works.

Finally, it is essential to make something of the space which connects the house and the car, to make it a positive space—a space which supports the experience of coming and going. Es-sentially this means making a room out of the place for the car, the path from the car door to the house, and the front door. It may be achieved with columns, low walls, the edge of the house, plants, a trellised walk, a place to sit. This is the place we call the car connection (i I 3). A proper car connection is a place where people can walk together, lean, say goodbye; perhaps it is integrated with the structure and form of the house.

An ancient inn, built in the days of coach and horses, has a layout which treats the coach as a fundamental part of the environment and makes the connection between the two a significant part of the inn—so much so that it gives the inn its character. Airports, boathouses, stables, railway stations, all do the same. But for some reason, even though the car is so important to the

2 THE DISTRIBUTION OF TOWNS

16

way of life in a modern house, the place where car and house meet is almost never treated seriously as a beautiful and significant place in its own right.

Therefore:

Place the parking place for the car and the main entrance, in such a relation to each other, that the shortest route from the parked car into the house, both to the kitchen and to the living rooms, is always through the main entrance. Make the parking place for the car into an actual room which makes a positive and graceful place where the car stands, not just a gap in the terrain.

Place both kitchen and main common living room just inside the main entrance—intimacy gradient (127), common areas at the heart (129) ; treat the place for the car as if it were an actual outdoor room—outdoor room (163). If it is enclosed, build the enclosure according to structure follows social spaces (205); and make the path between this room and the front door a beautiful path, preferably the same as the one used by people who come on foot—entrance transition (112), arcades (il 9) , PATHS AND GOALS (l20), RAISED FLOWERS (245). If you can, put the car connection on the north face of the building—north face (162). . . .

I 14 HIERARCHY OF OPEN SPACE*

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. . . the main outdoor spaces are given their character by site REPAIR (104), SOUTH FACING OUTDOORS (1O5) and POSITIVE

outdoor space (106). But you can refine them, and complete their character by making certain that every space always has a view out into some other larger one, and that all the spaces work together to form hierarchies.

♦<% ♦?*

Outdoors, people always try to find a spot where they can have their backs protected, looking out toward some larger opening, beyond the space immediately in front of them.

In short, people do not sit facing brick walls—they place themselves toward the view or toward whatever there is in the distance that comes nearest to a view.

Simple as this observation is, there is almost no more basic statement to make about the way people place themselves in space. And this observation has enormous implications for the spaces in which people can feel comfortable. Essentially, it means that any place where people can feel comfortable has

1. A back.

2. A view into a larger space.

In order to understand the implications of this pattern, let us look at the three major cases where it applies.

Seat and garden.

In the very smallest of outdoor spaces, in private gardens, this pattern tells you to make a corner of the space as a “back” with a seat, looking out on the garden. If it is rightly made, this corner will be snug, but not at all claustrophobic.

I 14 HIERARCHY OF OPEN SPACE

Slightly larger in scale, there is the connection between a terrace or an outdoor room of some kind and a larger open space, the street or a square. The most common form of the pattern at this scale is the front stoop, which forms a definite enclosure and a back, off the public street.

T err ace and street or square.

At the largest scale, this pattern tells you to open up public squares and greens, at one end, to great vistas. At this scale, the square itself acts as a kind of back which a person can occupy, and from which he can look out upon an even larger expanse.

Square and vista.

Therefore:

Whatever space you are shaping—whether it is a garden, terrace, street, park, public outdoor room, or courtyard, make sure of two things. First, make at least one smaller space, which looks into it and forms a natural back for it. Second, place it, and its openings, so that it looks into at least one larger space.

When you have done this, every outdoor space will have

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a natural “back”; and every person who takes up the natural position, with his back to this “back,” will be looking out toward some larger distant view.

I

/ view to a

For example: garden seats open to gardens—garden seat (176), half-hidden garden (106); activity pockets open to public squares—activity pockets (124), small public square (61); gardens open to local roads—private terrace on the street (140), looped local road (49)) roads open to fields—green streets (51), accessible greens (60) ; fields open to the countryside, on a great vista—common land (67)) the countryside (7). Make certain that each piece of the hierarchy is arranged so that people can be comfortably settled within it, oriented out toward the next larger space. . . .

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I I 5 COURTYARDS WHICH LIVE**

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. . . within the general scheme of outdoor spaces, made positive according to the patterns positive outdoor space (106) and hierarchy of open space (114), it is necessary to pay special attention to those smallest ones, less than 30 or 40 feet across— the courtyards—because it is especially easy to make them in such a way that they do not live.

The courtyards built in modern buildings are very often dead* They are intended to be private open spaces for people to use—but they end up unused, full of gravel and abstract sculptures.

Dead courtyard.

There seem to be three distinct ways in which these courtyards fail.

1. There is too little ambiguity betiveen indoors and outdoors. If the walls, sliding doors, doors which lead from the indoors to the outdoors, are too abrupt, then there is no opportunity for a person to find himself half way between the two—and then, on the impulse of a second, to drift toward the outside. People need an ambiguous in-between realm—a porch, or a veranda, which they naturally pass onto often, as part of their ordinary life within the house, so that they can drift naturally to the outside.

2. There are not enough doors into the courtyard. If there is just one door, then the courtyard never lies between two activities inside the house; and so people are never passing through it, and enlivening it, while they go about their daily business. To overcome this, the courtyard should have doors on at least two op-

I 15 COURTYARDS WHICH LIVE

posite sides, so that it becomes a meeting point for different activities, provides access to them, provides overflow from them, and provides the cross-circulation between them.

j. They are too enclosed. Courtyards which are pleasant to be in always seem to have “loopholes” which allow you to see beyond them into some larger, further space. The courtyard should never be perfectly enclosed by the rooms which surround it, but should give at least a glimpse of some other space beyond.

Here are several examples of courtyards, large and small, from various parts of the world, which are alive.

Courtyards which live.

Each one is partly open to the activity of the building that surrounds it and yet still private. A person passing through the courtyard and children running by can all be glimpsed and felt, but they are not disruptive. Again, notice that all these courtyards have strong connections to other spaces. The photographs do not tell the whole story; but still, you can see that the courtyards look out, along paths, through the buildings, to larger spaces. And most spectacular, notice the many different positions that one can take up in each courtyard, depending on mood and climate. There are covered places, places in the sun, places

spotted with filtered light, places to lie on the ground, places where a person can sleep. The edge and the corners of the courtyards are ambiguous and richly textured; in some places the walls of the buildings open, and connect the courtyard with the inside of the building, directly.

Therefore:

Place every courtyard in such a way that there is a view out of it to some larger open space; place it so that at least two or three doors open from the building into it and so that the natural paths which connect these doors pass across the courtyard. And, at one edge, beside a door, make a roofed veranda or a porch, which is continuous with both the inside and the courtyard.

v v d"

Build the porch according to the patterns for arcade (119), gallery surround (166), and six-foot balcony (167); make sure that it is in the sun—sunny place (161); build tiic view out according to the hierarchy of open space (114) and zen view (134); make the courtyard like an outdoor room (163) and a garden wall (173) for more enclosure; make the height of the eaves around any courtyard of even height; if there arc gable ends, hip them to make the roof edge level—roof layout (2O9); put SOMETHING ROUGHLY IN THE MIDDLE (126). . . .

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*saoo>i jo aavosvo 911

. . . consider now the character of settlements within the region: what balance of villages, towns, and cities is in keeping with the independence of the region—independent regions (i)?

*1* d*

If the population of a region is weighted too far toward small villages, modern civilization can never emerge; but if the population is weighted too far toward big cities, the earth will go to ruin because the population isn’t where it needs to be, to take care of it.

Two different necessities govern the distribution of population in a region. On the one hand, people are drawn to cities: they are drawn by the growth of civilization, jobs, education, economic growth, information. On the other hand, the region as a social and ecological whole will not be properly maintained unless the people of the region are fairly well spread out across it, living in many different kinds of settlements—farms, villages, towns, and cities—with each settlement taking care of the land around it. Industrial society has so far been following only the first of these necessities. People leave the farms and towns and villages and pack into the cities, leaving vast parts of the region depopulated and undermaintained.

In order to establish a reasonable distribution of population within a region, we must fix two separate features of the distribution: its statistical character and its spatial character. First, we must be sure that the statistical distribution of towns, by size, is appropriate: we must be sure that there are many small towns and few large ones. Second, we must then be sure that the spatial distribution of towns within the region is appropriate: we must be sure that the towns in any given size category are evenly spread out across the region, not highly concentrated.

In practice, the statistical distribution will take care of itself. A large number of studies has shown that the natural demographic and political and economic processes at work in city growth and population movement will create a distribution of

. . . this pattern helps complete the building complex (95),

NUMBER OF STORIES (96), MAIN BUILDING (99), and WINGS OF light (107), and it can also be used to help create these patterns. If you are designing a building from scratch, these larger patterns have already helped you to decide how high your buildings are; and they have given you a rough layout, in wings, with an idea of what spaces there are going to be in each floor of the wings. Now we come to the stage where it is necessary to visualize the building as a volume and, therefore, above all else, as a system of roofs.

*5* *J*

Few buildings will be structurally and socially intact, unless the floors step down toward the ends of wings, and unless the roof, accordingly, forms a cascade.

This is a strange pattern. Several problems, from entirely different spheres, point in the same direction; but there is no obvious common bond which binds these different problems to one another—we have not succeeded in seizing the single kernel which forms the pivot of the pattern.

Let us observe, first, that many beautiful buildings have the form of a cascade: a tumbling arrangement of wings and lower wings and smaller rooms and sheds, often with a single highest center. Hagia Sophia, the Norwegian stave churches, and Palladio’s villas are imposing and magnificent examples. Simple houses, small

Hagia Sof/iia

II6 CASCADE OF ROOFS

informal building complexes, and even clusters of mud huts are more modest ones.

What is it that makes the cascading character of these buildings so sound and so appropriate?

First of all, there is a social meaning in this form. The largest gathering places with the highest ceilings are in the middle because they are the social centers of activities; smaller groups of people, individual rooms, and alcoves fall naturally around the edges.

Second, there is a structural meaning in the form. Buildings tend to be of materials that are strong in compression; compressive strength is cheaper then tensile strength or strength in bending. Any building which stands in pure compression will tend toward the overall outline of an inverted catenary—roof layout (209). When a building does take this form, each outlying space acts to buttress the higher spaces. The building is stable in just the same way that a pile of earth, which has assumed the line of least resistance, is also stable.

And third, there is a practical consideration. We shall explain that roof gardens (118), wherever they occur, should not be over the top floor, but always on the same level as the rooms they serve. This means, naturally, that the building tends to get lower toward the edges since the roof gardens step down from the top toward the outer edge of the ground floor.

Why do these three apparently different problems lead to the same pattern? We don’t know. But we suspect that there is some deeper essence behind the apparent coincidence. We leave the pattern intact in the hope that someone else will understand its meaning.

A sketch of Frank Lloyd. Wright’s.

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Finally, a note on the application of the pattern. One must take care, in laying out large buildings, to make the cascade compatible with wings of light (107). If you conceive of the cascade as pyramidal and the building is large, the middle section of the building will be cut off from daylight. Instead, the proper synthesis of cascades and wings of light will generate a building that tumbles down along relatively narrow wings, the wings turning corners and becoming lower where they will.

Therefore:

Visualize the whole building, or building complex, as a system of roofs.

Place the largest, highest, and widest roofs over those parts of the building which are most significant: when you come to lay the roofs out in detail, you will be able to make all lesser roofs cascade off these large roofs and form a stable self-buttressing system, which is congruent with the hierarchy of social spaces underneath the roofs.

Make the roofs a combination of steeply pitched or domed, and flat shapes—sheltering roof (117), roof garden (118). Prepare to place small rooms at the outside and ends of wings, and large rooms in the middle—ceiling height variety (190). Later, once the plan of the building is more exactly defined, you can lay out the roofs exactly to fit the cascade to individual rooms; and at that stage the cascade will begin to have a structural effect of great importance—structure follows social spaces (205), Roof layout (209). . . .

I 17 SHELTERING ROOF**

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. . . over the wings of light (107), within the overall cascade of roofs (1 16), some parts of the cascade are flat and some are steeply pitched or vaulted. This pattern gives the character of those parts which are steeply pitched or vaulted; the next one gives the character of those which must be flat.

d*

The roof plays a primal role in our lives. The most primitive buildings are nothing but a roof. If the roof is hidden, if its presence cannot be felt around the building, or if it cannot be used, then people will lack a fundamental sense of shelter.

This sheltering function cannot be created by a pitched roof, or large roof, which is merely added to the top of an existing structure. The roof itself only shelters if it contains, embraces, covers, surrounds the process of living. This means very simply, that the roof must not only be large and visible, but it must also include living quarters within its volume, not only underneath it.

Compare the following examples. They show clearly how different roofs are, when they have living quarters within them and when they don’t.

One roof lived In, the other stuck on.

The difference between these two houses comes largely from the fact that in one the roof is an integral part of the volume of the building, while in the other it is no more than a cap that has been set down on top of the building. In the first case, where the

I I 7 SHELTERING ROOF

building conveys an enormous sense of shelter, it is impossible to draw a horizontal line across the facade of the building and separate the roof from the inhabited parts of the building. But in the second case, the roof is so separate and distinct a thing, that such a line almost draws itself.

We believe that this connection between the geometry of roofs, and their capacity to provide psychological shelter, can be put on empirical grounds: first, there is a kind of evidence which shows that both children and adults naturally incline toward the sheltering roofs, almost as if they had archetypal properties. For example, here is Amos Rapoport on the subject:

. . . “roof” is a symbol of home, as in the phrase “a roof over one’s head,” and its importance has been stressed in a number of studies. In one study, the importance of images—i.e., symbols—for house form is stressed, and the pitched roof is said to be symbolic of shelter while the flat roof is not, and is therefore unacceptable on symbolic grounds. Another study of this subject shows the importance of these aspects in the choice of house form in England, and also shows that the pitched, tile roof is a symbol of security. It is considered, and even shown in a building-society advertisement, as an umbrella, and the houses directly reflect this view. (Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; Prentice-Hall, 1969, p. 134.)

George Rand has drawn a similar point from his research. Rand finds that people are extremely conservative about their images of home and shelter. Despite 50 years of the flat roofs of the “modern movement,” people still find the simple pitched roof the most powerful symbol of shelter. (George Rand, “Children’s Images of Houses: A Prolegomena to the Study of Why People Still Want Pitched Roofs,” Environmental Design: Research and Practice, Proceedings of the EDRA 3/AR 8 Conference, University of California at Los Angeles, William J. Mitchell, ed., January 1972, pp. 6-9-2 to 6-9-10.)

And the French psychiatrist, Menie Gregoire, makes the following observation about children:

At Nancy the children from the apartments were asked to draw a house. These children had been born in these apartment slabs which stand up like a house of cards upon an isolated hill. Without exception they each drew a small cottage with two windows and smoke curling up from a chimney on the roof. (M. Gregoire, “The Child in the High-Rise,” Ekistics, May 1971, pp. 33 1—33-)

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Such evidence as this can perhaps be dismissed on the grounds that it is culturally induced. But there is a second kind of evidence, more obvious, which lies in the simple fact of making the connection between the features of a roof and the feeling of shelter completely clear. In the passage which follows, we explain the geometric features which a roof must have in order to create an atmosphere of shelter.

Two roof sections.

I. The space under or on the roof must be useful space, space that people come into contact with daily. The whole feeling of shelter comes from the fact that the roof surrounds people at the same time that it covers them. You can imagine this taking either of the following forms. In both cases, the rooms under the roof are actually surrounded by the roof.

2. Seen from afar, the roof of the building must be made to form a massive part of the building. When you see the building, you see the roof. This is perhaps the most dramatic feature of a strong, sheltering roof.

What constitutes the charm to the eye of the old-fashioned country barn but its immense roof—a slope of gray shingle exposed to the weather like the side of a hill, and by its amplitude suggesting a bounty that warms the heart. Many of the old farmhouses, too, were modelled on the same generous scale, and at a distance little was visible but their great sloping roofs. They covered their inmates as a hen covereth her brood, and are touching pictures of the domestic spirit in its simpler forms. (John Burroughs, Signs and Seasons, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1914, p. 252.)

3. And a sheltering roof must be placed so that one can touch it—touch it from outside. If it is pitched or vaulted, some

I 17 SHELTERING ROOF

part of the roof must come down low to the ground, just in a place where there is a path, so that it becomes a natural thing to touch the roof edge as you pass it.
Roof edges you can touch-.Therefore:

Slope the roof or make a vault of it, make its entire surface visible, and bring the eaves of the roof down low, as low as 6V' or 6^/6^// at places like the entrance, where people pause. Build the top story of each wing right into the roof, so that the roof does not only cover it, but actually surrounds it.

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Get the exact shape of the cross section from roof vaults (220) use the space inside the top of the sloped roof for bulk storage (14.5); where the roof comes down low, perhaps make it continuous with an arcade (119) or gallery surround (166). Build the roof flat, not sloped, only where people can get out to it to use it as a garden—roof gardens (118); where rooms are built into the roof, make windows in the roof—dormer windows (231). If the building plan is complex, get the exact way that different sloped roofs meet from roof layout (209). . . .

I I 8 ROOF GARDEN *
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towns with many small towns and few large ones; and indeed, the nature of this distribution does correspond, roughly, to the logarithmic distribution that we propose in this pattern. Various explanations have been given by Christaller, Zipf, Herbert Simon, and others; they are summarized in Brian Berry and William Garrison, “Alternate Explanations of Urban Rank-Size Relationships,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 48, March 1958, No. 1, pp. 83-91.

Let us assume, then, that towns will have the right distribution of sizes. But are they adjacent to one another, or are they spread out? If all the towns in a region, large, medium, and small, were crammed together in one continuous urban area, the fact that some are large and some are small, though interesting politically, would have no ecological meaning whatsoever. As far as the ecology of the region is concerned, it is the spatial distribution of the towns which matters, not the statistics of political boundaries within the urban sprawl.

Two arguments have led us to propose that the towns in any one size category should be uniformly distributed across the region: an economic argument and an ecological argument.

Economic. All over the world, underdeveloped areas are facing economic ruin because the jobs, and then the people, move toward the largest cities, under the influence of their economic gravity. Sweden, Scotland, Israel, and Mexico are all examples. The population moves toward Stockholm, Glasgow, Tel Aviv, Mexico City —as it does so, new jobs get created in the city, and then even more people have to come to the city in search of jobs. Gradually the imbalance between city and country becomes severe. The city becomes richer, the outlying areas continuously poorer. In the end the region may have the highest standard of living in the world at its center, yet only a few miles away, at its periphery, people may be starving.

This can only be halted by policies which guarantee an equal sharing of resources, and economic development, across the entire region. In Israel, for example, there has been some attempt to pour the limited resources with which the government can subsidize economic growth into those areas which are most backward economically. (See “Urban Growth Policies in Six

. . . in between the sloping roofs created by sheltering roof (117), the roofs are flat where people can walk out on them. This pattern describes the best position for these roof gardens and specifies their character. If they are correctly placed, they will most often form the ends of wings of light (107) at different stories and will, therefore, automatically help to complete the overall cascade of roofs (116).

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A vast part of the earth’s surface, in a town, consists of roofs. Couple this with the fact that the total area of a town which can be exposed to the sun is finite, and you will realize that is is natural, and indeed essential, to make roofs which take advantage of the sun and air.

However, as we know from sheltering roof (117) and roof vaults (220), the flat shape is quite unnatural for roofs from psychological, structural, and climatic points of view. It is therefore sensible to use a flat roof only where the roof will actually become a garden or an outdoor room; to make as many of these “useful” roofs as possible; but to make all other roofs, which cannot be used, the sloping, vaulted, shell-like structures specified by sheltering roof (11 7) and roof vault (220).

H ere is a rule of thumb: if possible, make at least one small roof garden in every building, more if you are sure people will actually use them. Make the remaining roofs steep roofs. Since, as we shall see, the roof gardens which work are almost always at the same level as some indoor rooms, this means that at least some part of the building’s roofs will always be steep. We shall expect, then, that this pattern will generate a roof landscape in which roof gardens and steep roofs are mixed in almost every building.

We now consider the flat roof, briefly, on its own terms. Flat roof gardens have always been prevalent in dry, warm climates, where they can be made into livable environments. In the dense parts of towns in Mediterranean climates, nearly every roof is

habitable: they are full of green, private screens, with lovely views, places to cook out and eat and sleep. And even in temperate climates they are beautiful. They can be designed as rooms without ceilings, places that are protected from the wind, but open to the sky.

However, the flat roofs that have become architectural fads during the last 40 years are quite another matter. Gray gravel covered asphalt structures, these flat roofs are very rarely useful places; they are not gardens; and taken as a whole, they do not meet the psychological requirements that we have outlined in sheltering roof (117). To make the flat parts of roofs truly useful, and compatible with the need for sloping roofs, it seems necessary to build flat roof gardens off" the indoor parts of the buildings. In other words, do not make them the highest part of the roof; let the highest parts of the roof slope; and make it possible to walk out to the roof garden from an interior room, without climbing special stairs. We have found that roof gardens that have this relationship are used far more intensely than those rooftops which must be reached by climbing stairs. The explanation is obvious: it is far more comfortable to walk straight out onto a roof and feel the comfort of part of the building behind and to one side of you, then it is to climb up to a place you cannot see.

Therefore:

Make parts of almost every roof system usable as roof gardens. Make these parts flat, perhaps terraced for planting, with places to sit and sleep, private places. Place the roof gardens at various stories, and always make it possible to walk directly out onto the roof garden from some lived-in part of the building.

Remember to try and put the roof gardens at the open ends of wings of light (107) so as not to take the daylight away from lower stories. Some roof gardens may be like balconys or galleries or terraces—private terrace on the street (140), gallery surround (166), six-foot balcony (167). In any case, place the roof garden so that it is sheltered from the wind—sunny place (161), and give part of the roof some extra kind of shelter —perhaps a canvas awning—so that people can stay on the roof but keep out of the hot sun—canvas roofs (244). Treat each individual garden much the way as any other garden, with flowers, vegetables, outdoor rooms, canvas awnings, climbing plants—outdoor rooms (163), vegetable garden (177), raised flowers (245), climbing plants (246). . . .

when the major farts of buildings and the outdoor areas have been given their rough shape₎ it is the right time to give more detailed attention to the •paths and squares between the buildings.

I I 9. ARCADES

I 20. PATHS AND GOALS

I 21. PATH SHAPE

122. BUILDING FRONTS

123. PEDESTRIAN DENSITY

124. ACTIVITY POCKETS

125. STAIR SEATS

126. SOMETHING ROUGHLY IN THE MIDDLE

I 19 ARCADES**

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. . . the cascade of roofs (116) may be completed by arcades. Paths along the building, short paths between buildings, pedestrian street (ioo), paths between connected buildings (108), and parts of circulation realms (98) are all best as arcades. This is one of the most beautiful patterns in the language; it affects the total character of buildings as few other patterns do.

Arcades—covered walkways at the edge of buildings, which are partly inside, partly outside—play a vital role in the way that people interact with buildings.

Buildings are often much more unfriendly than they need to be. They do not create the possibility of a connection with the public world outside. They do not genuinely invite the public in; they operate essentially as private territory for the people who are inside.

The problem lies in the fact that there are no strong connections between the territorial world within the building and the purely public world outside. There are no realms between the two kinds of spaces which are ambiguously a part of each— places that are both characteristic of the territory inside and, simultaneously, part of the public world.

The classic solution to this problem is the arcade: arcades create an ambiguous territory between the public world and the private world, and so make buildings friendly. But they need the following properties to be successful.

I. To make them public, the public path to the building must itself become a place that is partly inside the building; and this place must contain the character of the inside.

If the major paths through and beside the buildings are genuinely public, covered by an extension of the building, a low arcade, with openings into the building—many doors and windows and half-open walls—then people are drawn into the building; the action is on display, they feel tangentially a part of it. Perhaps they will watch, step inside, and ask a question.

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2. To establish this place as a territory which is also apart from the public world, it must be felt as an extension of the building interior and therefore covered.

The arcade is the most simple and beautiful way of making such a territory. Arcades run along the building, where it meets the public world-_} they are open to the public, yet set partly into the building and at least seven feet deep.

3. Arcades don’t work if the edges of the ceiling are too high. Keep the edges of the arcade ceilings low.

The edges oj the ceiling are too high.

4. In certain cases, the effect of the arcade can be increased if the paths open to the public pass right through the building. This is especially effective in those places where the building wings are narrow—then the passage through the building need be no more than 25 feet long. It is very beautiful if these “tunnels” connect arcades on both sides of the wing. The importance of these arcades which pass right through a building, depends on the same functional effects as those described in building THOROUGHFARE (lOl).

Arcades which pass through buildings.

In those parts of the world where this pattern has taken hold, there are miles of linked and half-linked arcades and covered walks passing by and through the public parts of the town. This covered space then becomes the setting for much of the informal business of the city. Indeed, Rudofsky claims that such space “takes the place of the ancient forum.” A good deal of his book,

I 19 ARCADES

Streets for People, is concerned with the arcade and the marvelous ambiguities of its space:

It simply never occurs to us to make streets into oases rather than deserts. In countries where their function has not yet deteriorated into highways and parking lots, a number of arrangements make streets fit for humans \ pergole and awnings (that is, awnings spread across a street), tentlike structures, or permanent roofs. All are characteristic of the Orient, or countries with an oriental heritage, like Spain. The most refined street coverings, a tangible expression of civic solidarity—or, should one say, of philanthropy—are arcades. Unknown and unappreciated in our latitudes, the function of this singularly ingratiating feature goes far beyond providing shelter against the elements or protecting pedestrians from traffic hazards. Apart from lending unity to the streetscape, they often take the place of the ancient forums. Throughout Europe, North Africa, and Asia, arcades are a common sight because they also have been incorporated into “formal” architecture. Bologna’s streets, to cite but one example, are accompanied by nearly twenty miles of portici. (Bernard Ru-dofsky, Streets for People, New York: Doubleday, 1969, p. 13.)

Simple and beautiful.

Therefore:

Wherever paths run along the edge of buildings, build arcades, and use the arcades, above all, to connect up the buildings to one another, so that a person can walk from place to place under the cover of the arcades.

continuous arcades

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Keep the arcade low—ceiling height variety (190) ; bring the roof of the arcade as low as possible—sheltering roof (1 17) ; make the columns thick enough to lean against—column place (226) ; and make the openings between columns narrow and low—low doorway (224), column connection (227) — either by arching them or by making deep beams or with lattice work—so that the inside feels enclosed—building edge (160), half-open wall (193). For construction see structure follows social spaces (205) and thickening the outer walls (211). . . .

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120 PATHS AND GOALS*

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2 THE DISTRIBUTION OF TOWNS

European Countries,” Urban Growth Policy Study Group, Office of International Affairs, HUD, Washington, D.C., 1972.)

Ecological. An overconcentrated population, in space, puts a huge burden on the region’s overall ecosystem. As the big cities grow, the population movement overburdens these areas with air pollution, strangled transportation, water shortages, housing shortages, and living densities which go beyond the realm of human reasonableness. In some metropolitan centers, the ecology is perilously close to cracking. By contrast, a population that is spread more evenly over its region minimizes its impact on the ecology of the environment, and finds that it can take care of itself and the land more prudently, with less waste and more humanity:

This is because the actual urban superstructure required per inhabitant goes up radically as the size of the town increases beyond a certain point. For example, the fer cafita cost of high rise flats is much greater than that of ordinary houses; and the cost of roads and other transportation routes increases with the number of commuters carried. Similarly, the fer cafita expenditure on other facilities such as those for distributing food and removing wastes is much higher in cities than in small towns and villages. Thus, if everybody lived in villages the need for sewage treatment plants would be somewhat reduced, while in an entirely urban society they are essential, and the cost of treatment is high. Broadly speaking, it is only by decentralization that we can increase self-sufficiency— and self-sufficiency is vital if we are to minimize the burden of social systems on the ecosystems that support them. The Ecologist, Bluefrint for Sur} England: Penguin, 1972, pp. 52-53.)

Therefore:

Encourage a birth and death process for towns within the region, which gradually has these effects:

1. The population is evenly distributed in terms of different sizes—for example, one town with 1,000,000 people, 10 towns with 100,000 people each, 100 towns with 10,000 people each, and 1000 towns with 100 people each.

2. These towns are distributed in space in such a way that within each size category the towns are homogeneously distributed all across the region.

. . . once buildings and arcades and open spaces have been roughly fixed by building complex (95), wings of light (107), positive outdoor space (106), arcades (119)—it is time to pay attention to the paths which run between the buildings. This pattern shapes these paths and also helps to give more detailed form to degrees of publicness (36), network of paths and cars (52), and circulation realms (98).

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The layout of paths will seem right and comfortable only when it is compatible with the process of walking. And the process of walking is far more subtle than one might imagine.

Essentially there are three complementary processes:

I. As you walk along you scan the landscape for intermediate destinations—the furthest points along the path which you can see. You try, more or less, to walk in a straight line toward these points. This naturally has the effect that you will cut corners and take “diagonal” paths, since these are the ones which often form straight lines between your present position and the point which you are making for.

(rtT6*M6J>IA-|T£goal.

Path to a goal.

2. These intermediate destinations keep changing. The further you walk, the more you can see around the corner. If you always walk straight toward this furthest point and the furthest point keeps changing, you will actually move in a slow curve, like a missile tracking a moving target.

- -O' "

Series of goals.

- o - -A8The actual faih.

3. Since you do not want to keep changing direction while you walk and do not want to spend your whole time re-calculating your best direction of travel, you arrange your walking process in such a way that you pick a temporary “goal”—some clearly visible landmark—which is more or less in the direction you want to take and then walk in a straight line toward it for a hundred yards, then, as you get close, pick another new goal, once more a hundred yards further on, and walk toward it. . . . You do this so that in between, you can talk, think, daydream, smell the spring, without having to think about your walking direction every minute.

In the diagram above a person begins at A and heads for point

E. Along the way, his intermediate goals are points B, C, and

D. Since he is trying to walk in a roughly straight line toward

E, his intermediate goal changes from B to C, as soon as C is visible; and from C to D, as soon as D is visible.

The proper arrangements of paths is one with enough intermediate goals, to make this process workable. If there aren’t enough intermediate goals, the process of walking becomes more difficult, and consumes unnecessary emotional energy.

Therefore:

To lay out paths, first place goals at natural points of interest. Then connect the goals to one another to form the

BUILDINGS

paths. The paths may be straight, or gently curving between goals; their paving should swell around the goal. The goals should never be more than a few hundred feet apart.

All the ordinary things in the outdoors—trees, fountains, entrances, gateways, seats, statues, a swing, an outdoor room—can be the goals. See family of entrances (102), main entrance ( I IO) , TREE PLACES (171), SEAT SPOTS (241), RAISED FLOWERS

(245); build the “goals” according to the rules of something roughly in the middle (126); and shape the paths according to path shape (I 2 I). To pave the paths use paving with cracks BETWEEN THE STONES (247) . . . .

I 21 PATH SHAPE*
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. . . paths of various kinds have been defined by larger patterns-PROMENADE (3l)> SHOPPING STREET (32), NETWORK OF

PATHS AND CARS ($2), RAISED WALK (55), PEDESTRIAN STREET

(100), and paths and goals (I 20). This pattern defines their shape: and it can also help to generate these larger patterns piecemeal, through the very process of shaping parts of the path.

* * *

Streets should be for staying in, and not just for moving through, the way they are today.

For centuries, the street provided city dwellers with usable public space right outside their houses. Now, in a number of subtle ways, the modern city has made streets which are for “going through/’ not for “staying in.” This is reinforced by regulations which make it a crime to loiter, by the greater attractions inside the side itself, and by streets which are so unattractive to stay in, that they almost force people into their houses.

From an environmental standpoint, the essence of the problem is this: streets are “centrifugal” not “centripetal”: they drive people out instead of attracting them in. In order to combat this effect, the pedestrian world outside houses must be made into the kind of place where you stay, rather than the kind of place you move through. It must, in short, be made like a kind of outside public room, with a greater sense of enclosure than a street.

This can be accomplished if we make residential pedestrian streets subtly convex in plan with seats and galleries around the edges, and even sometimes roof the streets with beams or trellis-work.

Here are two examples of this pattern, at two different scales. First, we show a plan of ours for fourteen houses in Peru. The street shape is created by gradually stepping back the houses, in plan. The result is a street with a positive, somewhat elliptical shape. We hope it is a place that will encourage people to slow down and spend time there.

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The path shape formed by fourteen houses.

The second example is a very small path, cutting through a neighborhood in the hills of Berkeley. Again, the shape swells out subtly, just in those places where it is good to pause and sit.

A spot along a path in the hills of Berkeley.

Therefore:

Make a bulge in the middle of a public path, and make the ends narrower, so that the path forms an enclosure which is a place to stay, not just a place to pass through.

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Above all, to create the shape of the path, move the building fronts into the right positions, and on no acount allow a set-back between the building and the path—building fronts (122); decide on the appropriate area for the “bulge” by using the arithmetic of pedestrian density (123); then form the details of the bulge with arcades (119), activity pockets (124) and stair seats (125); perhaps even with a public outdoor room (69) ; and give as much life as you can to the path all along its length with windows—street windows (164). . • .