A pattern language

Have you ever walked into a public building and been processed by the receptionist as if you were a package?

To make a person feel at ease, you must do the same for him as you would do to welcome him to your home; go toward him, greet him, offer him a chair, offer him some food and drink, and take his coat.

In most institutions the person arriving has to go toward the receptionist; the receptionist remains passive and offers nothing. To be welcoming the receptionist must initiate the action—come forward and greet the person, offer a chair, food, a seat by the fire, coffee. Since it is first impressions which count, this whole atmosphere should be the first thing a person encounters.

A beautiful example we know is the reception desk at Browns Hotel in London. You pass into the hotel through a small, unassuming entrance, not unlike the entrance to a house. You pass through two or three rooms; then come to the central room in which there are two old writing desks. The receptionist comes forward from an inner office, invites you to sit down in a comfortable chair at one of these writing desks, and sits down with you while you fill out the hotel register.

2. Roads. To protect the countryside from suburban encroachment, the roads running out into the countryside must be vastly reduced in number. A loose network of interconnected roads, at one-mile intervals with little encouragement for through-traffic to pass through them, is quite enough.

3. Lots. Situate homesteads, houses, and cottages along these country roads one or two lots deep, always setting them off the road with the open land behind them. The minivium land for a homestead must be approximately one-half acre to allow for basic farming. However, some of the housing could be in rows or clusters, with people working the land behind collectively. Assuming one-half acre lots around a one mile square of open land, we can have 400 households to the square mile. With four people per household, that is 1600 people per square mile; not very different from an ordinary low density suburb.

4. Footpaths. The countryside can be made accessible to city people by means of footpaths and trails running from the edge of the city and from the country roads into the countryside, across the squares of open land.

Therefore:

In the zone where city and country meet, place country roads at least a mile apart, so that they enclose squares of countryside and farmland at least one square mile in area. Build homesteads along these roads, one lot deep, on lots of at least half an acre, with the square mile of open countryside or farmland behind the houses.

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The reasons most reception areas fail completely to have this quality, is that the receptionist’s desk forms a barrier, so that the desk and equipment together help to create an institutional atmosphere, quite at odds with the feeling of welcome.

Therefore:

Arrange a series of welcoming things immediately inside the entrance—soft chairs, a fireplace, food, coffee. Place the reception desk so that it is not between the receptionist and the welcoming area, but to one side at an angle—so that she, or he, can get up and walk toward the people who come in, greet them, and then invite them to sit down.

fire

Place the fireplace most carefully, to be a focus-—the fire (18 i ) give the receptionist a workspace where she can be comfortable in her own work, and still make visitors feel welcome— workspace enclosure (183); give the space light on two sides (159); perhaps put in an alcove or a window seat for people who are waiting—a place to wait (150), alcoves (179), window place (180). Make sure that the reception point itself is lighter than surrounding areas—tapestry of light and dark (135). And for the shape of the reception space start with

THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE ( I 91). . . .

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l5 0 A PLACE TO WAIT*

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. . . in any office, or workshop, or public service, or station, or clinic, where people have to wait—interchange (34), health center (47), SMALL SERVICES WITHOUT RED TAPE (8l), OFFICE connections (82), it is essential to provide a special place for waiting, and doubly essential that this place not have the sordid, enclosed, time-slowed character of ordinary waiting rooms.

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The process of waiting has inherent conflicts in it.

On the one hand, whatever people are waiting for—the doctor, an airplane, a business appointment—has built in uncertainties, which make it inevitable that they must spend a long time hanging around, waiting, doing nothing.

On the other hand, they cannot usually afford to enjoy this time. Because it is unpredictable, they must hang at the very door. Since they never know exactly when their turn will come, they cannot even take a stroll or sit outside. They must stay in the narrow confine of the waiting room, waiting their turn. But this, of course, is an extremely demoralizing situation: nobody wants to wait at somebody else’s beck and call. Kafka’s greatest works, The Castle and The Trial, both deal almost entirely with the way this kind of atmosphere destroys a man.

The classic “waiting room” does nothing to resolve this problem. A tight dreary little room, with people staring at each other, fidgeting, a magazine or two to flip—this is the very situation which creates the conflict. Evidence for the deadening effect of this situation comes from Scott Briar (“Welfare From Below: Recipients’ Views of the Public Welfare System,” in Jacobus Tenbroek, ed., The Law and the Poor, San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1966, p. 52). We all know that time seems to pass more slowly when we are bored or anxious or restless. Briar found that people waiting in welfare agencies consistently thought they had been waiting for longer than they really had. Some thought they had been wating four times as long.

The fundamental problem then, is this. How can the people

who are waiting, spend their time wholeheartedly—live the hours or minutes while they wait, as fully as the other hours of their day—and yet still be on hand, whenever the event or the person they are waiting for is ready?

It can be done best when the waiting is fused with some other activity: an activity that draws in other people who are not there essentially to wait—a cafe, pool tables, tables, a reading room, where the activities and the seats around them are within earshot of the signal that the interviewer (or the plane, or whatever) is ready. For example, the Pediatrics Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital built a small playground beside the entrance, to serve as a waiting area for children and a play area for the neighborhood.

Waiting room at the -pediatrics clinic.

In another example we know, a horseshoe pit was built alongside a terrace where people came to wait for appointments. The people waiting inevitably started pitching horseshoes, others joined in, people left as their appointments came up—there was an easy flow between the horseshoe pit, the terrace, and the offices.

Waiting can also be a situation where the person waiting finds himself with free time, and, with the support of the surroundings, is able to draw into himself, become still, meditative—quite the opposite of the activity described above.

The right atmosphere will come naturally if the waiting area provides some places that are quiet, protected, and do not draw out the anxiety of the wait. Some examples: a seat near a bus

stop, under a tree, protected from the street; a window seat that looks down upon a street scene below; a protected seat in a garden, a swing or a hammock; a dark place and a glass of beer, far enough away from passages so that a person is not always looking up when someone comes or goes; a private seat by a fish tank.

In summary, then, people who are waiting must be free to do what they want. If they want to sit outside the interviewer’s door, they can. If they want to get up and take a stroll, or play a game of pool, or have a cup of coffee, or watch other people, they can. If they want to sit privately and fall into a daydream, they can. And all this without having to fear that they are losing their place in line.

Quiet 'waiting.

Therefore:

In places where people end up waiting (for a bus, for an appointment, for a plane), create a situation which makes the waiting positive. Fuse the waiting with some other activity—newspaper, coffee, pool tables, horseshoes; something which draws people in who are not simply waiting. And also the opposite: make a place which can draw a person waiting into a reverie; quiet; a positive silence.

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activitie:

150 A PLACE TO WAIT
	within earshot if some signal
c

quiet corners for private waiting

The active part might have a window on the street—street

WINDOWS (164.), WINDOW PLACE (l8o), a Cafe-STREET CAFE

(88), games, positive engagements with the people passing by— opening to the street (165). The quiet part might have a quiet garden seat—garden seat (176), a place for people to doze—sleeping in public (94), perhaps a pond with fish in it—still water (71). To the extent that this waiting space is a room, or a group of rooms, it gets its detailed shape from LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM (159) and THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE (191). . . .

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I 5 I SMALL MEETING ROOMS*

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. . . within organizations and workplaces—university as a

MARKETPLACE (43), LOCAL TOWN HALL (44), MASTER AND APPRENTICES (83), FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE (146), SMALL WORK

groups (148), there will, inevitably, be meeting rooms, group rooms, classrooms, of one kind or another. Investigation of meeting rooms shows that the best distribution—both by size and by position—is rather unexpected.

The larger meetings are, the less people get out of them. But institutions often put their money and attention into large meeting rooms and lecture halls.

We first discuss the sheer size of meetings. It has been shown that tire number of people in a group influences both the number who never talk, and the number who feel they have ideas which they have not been able to express. For example, Bernard Bass (Organizational Psychology, Boston: Allyn, 1965, p. 200) has conducted an experiment relating group size to participation. The results of this experiment are shown in the following graph.

As size of group grows, more and more people hold back.

There is no particularly natural threshold for group size; but it is clear that the number who never talk climbs very rapidly. In a group of 12, one person never talks. In a group of 24, there are six people who never talk.

We get similar thresholds when we consider comfortable distances for talking. Edward Hall has established the upper

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range for full casual voice at about 8 feet; a person with 20/20 vision can see details of facial expression up to 12 feet; two people whose heads are 8 to 9 feet apart, can pass an object if they both stretch; clear vision (that is, macular vision) includes 12 degrees horizontally and 3 degrees vertically—which includes one face but not two, at distances up to about 10 feet. (See Edward Hall, The Silent Language, New York: Doubleday, 1966, pp. 118—19.)

Thus a small group discussion will function best if the members of the group are arranged in a rough circle, with a maximum diameter of about 8 feet. At this diameter, the circumference of the circle will be 25 feet. Since people require about 27 inches each for their seats, there can be no more than about 1 2 people round the circle.

Next we shall present evidence to show that in institutions and workgroups, the natural history of meetings tends also to converge on this size.

The following histograms show the relative numbers of different sized classes held at the University of Oregon in the Fall of 1970 and the relative numbers of available classrooms in the different size ranges. We believe these figures are typical for many universities. But it is obvious at a glance that there are too many large classrooms and too few small classrooms. Most of the classes actually held are relatively small seminars and “section” meetings, while most of the classrooms are in the 30 to I 50 size range. These large classrooms may have reflected the teaching methods of

actual classes held 34-9
class size

Histogram: Classes don’t fit the classrooms.

I 5 I SMALL MEETING ROOMS

an earlier period, but apparently they do not conform to the actual practice of teaching in the I970’s.

We found that the meetings of official committees, boards, and commissions in the City of Berkeley have a similar distribution. Among the various city boards, commissions, and committees, 73 per cent have an average attendance of I 5 or less. Yet of course, most of these meetings are held in rooms designed for far more than 15 people. Here again, most of the meetings are held in rooms that are too large; the rooms are half-empty; people tend to sit at the back; speakers face rows of empty seats. The intimate and intense atmosphere typical of a good small meeting cannot be achieved under these circumstances.

Finally, the spatial distribution of meeting rooms is often as poorly adapted to the actual meetings as the size distribution. The following histograms compare the distribution of classrooms in different sectors of the University of Oregon with the distribution of faculty and student offices. ₄₇%

DISTRIBUTION OF FACULTY OFFICES DISTRIBUTION OF CLASSROOMSThe meeting rooms are not located where people work.

Once again, this discrepancy has a bad effect on the social life of small meetings. The meetings work best when the meeting rooms are fairly near the participants’ offices. Then discussions which begin in the meeting rooms are able to continue in the office or the laboratory. When the meeting rooms are a long walk from offices, the chances of this kind of informal business are drastically reduced.

Therefore:

Make at least 70 per cent of all meeting rooms really small—for 12 people or less. Locate them in the most public parts of the building, evenly scattered among the workplaces.

Make each square mile of countryside, both farm and park, open to the public—the countrysde (7) ; arrange the half acre lots to form clusters of houses and neighborhoods, even when they are rather spread out—identifiable neighborhood (14),

HOUSE CLUSTER (37). . . .

evenly distributed through working areas		70 per cent small meeting rooms
A

Shape meeting rooms like any other rooms, perhaps with special emphasis on the fact that there must be no glare—light on two sides of every room (159)—and on the fact that the rooms should be roughly round or square, and not too long or narrow—sitting circle (185). People will feel best if many of the chairs are different, to suit different temperaments and moods and shapes and sizes—-different chairs (251). A light over the table or over the center of the group will help tie people together—pools of light (252). For the shape of the room in detail, start with the shape of indoor space

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