A pattern language

Our current ways of getting rid of sewage poison the great bodies of natural water, and rob the land around our buildings of the nutrients they need.

To the average individual in the city, it probably appears that the sewage system works beautifully—no muss, no fuss. Just pull the toilet chain, and everything is fine. In fact, city dwellers who have had the experience of using a smelly outhouse would probably argue that our modern system of sewage disposal is a tremendous advance over earlier practices. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Almost every step in modern sewage disposal is either wasteful, expensive, or dangerous.

We can start by remembering that every single time a toilet is flushed, seven gallons of drinking water go down the drain. In fact, around half of our domestic water consumption goes to flushing out the toilet.

Beyond the cost of the water, there is an enormous cost in the hardware of the sewer system. The average new homeowner today, living on a 50 x 150 foot lot in the city, has paid $1500 as his share of the collection system which takes sewage from his house to the sewage treatment plant. In lower density residential areas, this cost may be $2000 or even $6000. Each house pays an additional $500 toward the cost of the sewage treatment plant. We see then that the initial cost of today’s sewage system is at least $2000 per house, often more. And these prices do not include monthly service charges for water and sewer facilities: around $50 per year for a single family household.

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In addition we must add those costs which are less easily measurable in dollars and cents, but which may, in the long run, prove even higher than those already discussed. These include: (i) the value of lost nutrients which are allowed to flow away into the rivers and oceans—nutrients which could have been used to build up the soil they came from; and (2) the cost of the pollution: effluents cause “eutrophication”—the

sewage depletes the oxygen in water and causes it to become clogged with algae.

What can be done? Some of this effluent might be recycled back to the land in the form of sludge. But residential sewage is usually mixed with industrial waste which often contains extremely noxious elements. And even if industrial wastes were not allowed into the sewage system, an additional distribution system would be needed to get the sludge back to the land. We see, therefore, that additional costs required to make the existing system ecologically sound are prohibitive.

What is needed is not a larger, more centralized and complex system, but a smaller, more decentralized and simpler one. We need a system that is less expensive; and we need a system that is an ecological benefit rather than an ecological drain.

We propose that individual small-scale composting plants begin to replace our present, disposal system. Small buildings would be equipped with their own miniature sewage plants, located directly under the toilets. All bulky garbage produced on-site would be added to the plants. The resultant humus would be used to replenish the soil surrounding the building and throughout the neighborhood, as would the waste water from bathing and washing.

Such miniature sewage plants are commercially available and are currently in use in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. They are sold under the trade names Multrum or Clivus, and they can even be imported to the United States for a total price of $1500: much lower than the lowest figure of $2000, currently being charged for the conventional system. For a worked example, see Van der Ryn, Anderson and Sawyer, “Composting Privy”, Technical Bulletin ^£1, Natural Energy Design Center, University of California, Berkeley, Dept, of Architecture, January 1974*

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Clivus compost chamber.

These composting plants are so simple that they can be built by amateurs for much less money. An extremely simple homemade composting system is described below:

The privy is built adjoining a larger outbuilding which is built over a root cellar. From overhead joists to floor, the cellar is about Y deep. And so it was simplest to make the composting chamber beneath the privy Y deep. . . .

In the composting chamber underneath our privy, we have been using peat-moss—both because it is highly absorbent, and because it comes compactly baled and is convenient to store. We also use some garden dirt and a little lime.

We keep a garbage can full of peat moss in the privy, and dump in about a quart of the moss after each use. The privy is fairly odorless. Whenever there gets to be a smell I add lime, dirt and an extra layer of peat moss. That takes care of it. I figure that we will use three or four bales of peat moss a year—for a family of four plus a large number of guests.

My privy is of the kind familiarly known as a two-holer, which seems necessary for my composting system.

We use only one hole at a time. We use A until there is an accumulation 18 inches deep. We then shift to B and use it until the accumulation there is as great as that of A. Then the heap at A is shoveled to C, and so on. When all four positions are filled, C and D are shoveled into a heap on the ground outside, where I mean to let it stay for at least several weeks before use. (Organic Gardening and Farming, Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press, February 1972.)

Therefore:

Arrange all toilets over a dry composting chamber. Lead

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. . . the most basic structure of a city is given by the relation of urban land to open country—city country fingers (3). Within the swaths of urban land the most important structure must come from the great variety of human groups and subcultures which can co-exist there.

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The homogeneous and undifferentiated character of modern cities kills all variety of life styles and arrests the growth of individual character.

Compare three possible alternative ways in which people may be distributed throughout the city:

1. In the heterogeneous city, people are mixed together, irrespective of their life style or culture. This seems rich. Actually it dampens all significant variety, arrests most of the possibilities for differentiation, and encourages conformity. It tends to reduce all life styles to a common denominator. What appears heterogeneous turns out to be homogeneous and dull.

The heterogeneous city.

2. In a city made up of ghettos, people have the support of the most basic and banal forms of differentiation—race or economic status. The ghettos are still homogeneous internally, and

City of ghettos.

organic garbage chutes to the same chamber, and use the combined products for fertilizer.

grouped toilets

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Add to the effect of dry composting by re-using waste water; run all water drains into the garden to irrigate the soil; use organic soap—bathing room (144). . . .

go back to the inside of the building and attach the necessary minor rooms and alcoves to comflete the main rooms;

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179 alcoves**

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. . . many large rooms are not complete unless they have smaller rooms and alcoves opening off them. This pattern, and several which follow it, define the form of minor rooms and alcoves which help to complete common areas at the heart (129),

FARMHOUSE KICHEN ( I 3 9) > SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES (142), FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE (146), A PLACE TO WAIT (150), SMALL

meeting rooms (I 5 1), and many others.

4. .♦.

No homogeneous room, of homogeneous height, can serve a group of people well. To give a group a chance to be together, as a group, a room must also give them the chance to be alone, in one’s and two’s in the same space.

This problem is felt most acutely in the common rooms of a house—the kitchen, the family room, the living room. In fact, it is so critical there, that the house can drive the family apart when it remains unsolved. Therefore, while we believe that the pattern applies equally to workplaces and shops and schools—in fact, to all common rooms wherever they are—we shall focus our discussion on the house, and the use of alcoves around the family common rooms.

In modern life, the main function of the family is emotional; it is a source of security and love. But these qualities will only come into existence if the members of the house are 'physically able to be together as a family.

This is often difficult. The various members of the family come and go at different times of day; even when they are in the house, each has his own private interests: sewing, reading, homework, carpentry, model-building, games. In many houses, these interests force people to go off to their own rooms, away from the family. This happens for two reasons. First, in a normal family room, one person can easily be disturbed by what the others are doing: the person who wants to read, is disturbed by the fact that the others are watching TV. Second, the family room does not usually have any space where people can leave

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things and not have them disturbed. Books left on the dining table get cleared away at meal times; a half-finished game cannot be left standing. Naturally, people get into the habit of doing these things somewhere else—away from the family.

To solve the problem, there must be some way in which the members of the family can be together, even when they are doing different things. This means that the family room needs a number of small spaces where people can do different things. The spaces need to be far enough away from the main room, so that any clutter that develops in them does not encroach on the communal uses of the main room. The spaces need to be connected, so that people are still “together” when they are in them: this means they need to be open to each other. At the same time they need to be secluded, so a person in one of them is not disturbed by the others. In short, the family room must be surrounded by small alcoves. The alcoves should be large enough for one or two people at a time: about six feet wide, and between three and six feet deep. To make it clear that they arc separate from the main room, so they do not clutter it up, and so that people in them are secluded, they should be narrower than the family room walls, and have lower ceilings than the main room.

Family room alcoves.

Since this pattern is so fundamental, we now present several quotes from various writers to underscore the fact that many people have made roughly similar observations:

From Psychosocial Interior of the Family, Gerald Handel, ed., Chicago, 111.: Aldine Publishing Company, i 967, p. 13.

This fundamental duality of family life is of considerable significance, for the individual’s efforts to take his own kind of interest

in the world, to become his own kind of person, proceed apace with his efforts to find gratifying- connection to the other members. At the same time, the other members are engaged in taking their kinds of interest in him, and in themselves. This is the matrix of interaction in which a family develops its life. The family tries to cast itself in a form that satisfies the ways in which its members want to be together and apart. . . .

From Children in the Family by Florence Powdermaker and Louise Grimes, New York: Farrar & Reinhart, Inc., 1940, p. 108: “Even if a child has a room of his own, he doesn’t like being kept there all day long but wants to spend much of his time in other parts of the house. . . .” And p. I 12: “. . . he enjoys and craves attention. Fie likes to show things to adults and have them share in the pleasure of his discoveries. Besides, he is entranced by their activities and would like to have a finger in every pie.”

And from Svend Riemer, “Sociological Theory of Home Adjustment,” American Soc. Rev.,Vol. 8, No. 3, June 1943, p. 277:

In adjustment to the activities of other members of the family, it will be necessary to “migrate” . . . between the different rooms of the family home. Even the same activity may have to be moved from one room to the other at different times of the day.

Home studies for example may have to be carried out in the living room during the afternoon, while food is being prepared in the kitchen; they may have to be continued in the kitchen during the evening hours, when the living room is occupied by leisure time activities of other members of the family. This “migration” between different rooms is apt to impair intellectual concentration. It may convey a sense of insecurity. Its possible disadvantages have to be seriously considered whenever children are reared in the family home.

It is clear then, that the opposing needs for some seclusion and some community at the same time in the same space, occur in almost every family. It is not hard to see that only slightly different versions of the very same forces exist in all communal rooms. People want to be together; but at the same time they want the opportunity for some small amount of privacy, without giving up community.

If ten people, or five, are together in a room, and two of them want to pull away to one side to have a quiet talk together, they need a place to do it. Only the alcove, or some version of the

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alcove, can give them the privacy they need, without forcing them to give the group up altogether.

Therefore:

Make small places at the edge of any common room, usually no more than 6 feet wide and 3 to 6 feet deep and possibly much smaller. These alcoves should be large enough for two people to sit, chat, or play and sometimes large enough to contain a desk or a table.

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Give the alcove a ceiling which is markedly lower than the ceiling height in the main room—ceiling height variety (190); make a partial boundary between the alcove and the common room by using low walls and thick columns—half-open wall (193), column place (226); when the alcove is on an outside wall, make it into a window place, with a nice window, low sill, and a built-in seat—window place (180), built-in seats (202) ; and treat it as thickening the outer walls (211). For details on the shape of the alcove, see the shape of indoor space (191). . . .

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l8o WINDOW PLACE**

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. . . this pattern helps complete the arrangement of the windows given by entrance room (130), zen view (134), light on

TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM ( I 5 9), STREET WINDOWS (164). According to the pattern, at least one of the windows in each room needs to be shaped in such a way as to increase its usefulness as a space.

Everybody loves window seats, bay windows, and big windows with low sills and comfortable chairs drawn up to them.

It is easy to think of these kinds of places as luxuries, which can no longer be built, and which we are no longer lucky enough to be able to afford.

In fact, the matter is more urgent. These kinds of windows which create “places” next to them are not simply luxuries; they are necessary. A room which does not have a place like this seldom allows you to feel fully comfortable or perfectly at ease. Indeed, a room without a window place may keep you in a state of perpetual unresolved conflict and tension—slight, perhaps, but definite.

This conflict takes the following form. If the room contains no window which is a “place,” a person in the room will be torn between two forces:

1. He wants to sit down and be comfortable.

2. He is drawn toward the light.

Obviously, if the comfortable places—those places in the room where you most want to sit—are away from the windows, there is no way of overcoming this conflict. You see, then, that our love for window “places” is not a luxury but an organic intuition, based on the natural desire a person has to let the forces he experiences run free. A room where you feel truly comfortable will always contain some kind of window place.

Now, of course, it is hard to give an exact definition of a

“place.” Essentially a “place” is a partly enclosed, distinctly identifiable spot within a room. All of the following can function as “places” in this sense: bay windows, window seats, a low window sill where there is an obvious position for a comfortable armchair, and deep alcoves with windows all around them. To make the concept of a window place more precise, here are some examples of each of these types, together with discussion of the critical features which make each one of them work.

A bay window. A shallow bulge at one end of a room, with windows wrapped around it. It works as a window place because of the greater intensity of light, the views through the side windows, and the fact that you can pull chairs or a sofa up into the bay.

A bay 'window.

A window seat. More modest. A niche, just deep enough for the seat. It works best for one person, sitting parallel to the window, back to the window frame, or for two people facing each other in this position.

A window seat.

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do not allow a significant variety of life styles to emerge. People in the ghetto are usually forced to live there, isolated from the rest of society, unable to evolve their way of life, and often intolerant of ways of life different from their own.

3. In a city made of a large number of subcultures relatively small in size, each occupying an identifiable place and separated from other subcultures by a boundary of nonresidential land, new ways of life can develop. People can choose the kind of subculture they wish to live in, and can still experience many ways of life different from their own. Since each environment fosters mutual support and a strong sense of shared values, individuals can grow.

Mosaic of subcultures.

This pattern for a mosaic of subcultures was originally proposed by Frank Hendricks. His latest paper dealing with it is “Concepts of environmental quality standards based on life styles,” with Malcolm MacNair (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh, February 1969). The psychological needs which underlie this pattern and which make it necessary for subcultures to be spatially separated in order to thrive have been described by Christopher Alexander, “Mosaic of Subcultures,” Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, 1968. The following statement is an excerpt from that paper.

I.

We are the hollow men.

We are the stuffed men.

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas.

Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

—T. S. Eliot

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A low sill. The most modest of all. The right sill height for a window place, with a comfortable chair, is very low: 12 to 14-inches. The feeling of enclosure comes from the armchair— best of all, one with a high back and sides.

A low sill.

A glazed alcove. The most elaborate kind of window place: almost like a gazebo or a conservatory, windows all around it, a small room, almost part of the garden.

A glazed alcove.

And, of course, there are other possible versions too. In principle, any window with a reasonably pleasant view can be a window place, provided that it is taken seriously as a space, a volume, not merely treated as a hole in the wall. Any room that people use often should have a window place. And window places should even be considered for waiting rooms or as special places along the length of hallways.

l8o WINDOW PLACE

Therefore:

In every room where you spend any length of time during the day, make at least one window into a “window place.”

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Make it low and self-contained if there is room for that— alcoves (179) ; keep the sill low—low sill (222); put in the exact positions of frames, and mullions, and seats after the window place is framed, according to the view outside—built-in seats (202), natural doors and windows (221). And set the window deep into the wall to soften light around the edges—deep reveals (223). Under a sloping roof, use dormer windows (231) to make this pattern. . . .

I 8 I THE FIRE*

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. . . this pattern helps to create the spirit of the common areas at the heart (129), and even helps to give its layout and position, because it influences the way that paths and rooms relate to one another.

There is no substitute for fire.

Television often gives a focus to a room, but it is nothing but a feeble substitute for something which is actually alive and flickering within the room. The need for fire is almost as fundamental as the need for water. Fire is an emotional touchstone, comparable to trees, other people, a house, the sky. But the traditional fireplace is nearly obsolete, and new ones are often added to homes as “luxury items.” Perhaps this explains why these showpiece fireplaces are always so badly located. Stripped of the logic of necessity, they seem an afterthought, not truly integrated.

The most convincing statement of the need for fire that we have found is in Gaston Bachelard’s book, The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Here is a long quote from Bachelard to give you some idea of the power of his argument.

The fire confined to the fireplace was no doubt for man the first object of reverie, the symbol of repose, the invitation to repose. One can hardly conceive of a philosophy of repose that would not include a reverie before a flaming log fire. Thus, in our opinion, to be deprived of a reverie before a burning fire is to lose the first use and the truly human use of fire. To be sure, a fire warms us and gives us comfort. But one only becomes fully aware of this comforting sensation after quite a long period of contemplation of the flamesj one only receives comfort from the fire when one leans his elbows on his knees and holds his head in his hands. This attitude comes from the distant past. The child by the fire assumes it naturally. Not for nothing is it the attitude of the Thinker. It leads to a very special kind of attention which has nothing in common with the attention involved in watching or observing. Very rarely is it utilized for any other kind of contemplation. When near the fire, one must be seated; one must rest without sleeping; one must engage in reverie on a specific object. . . .

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Of course the supporters of the theory of the utilitarian formation of the mind will not accept a theory so facile in its idealism, and they will point out to us the multiple uses of fire in order to ascertain the exact interest that we have in it: not only does fire give heat, but it also cooks meats. As if the complex hearth, the peasant’s hearth, precluded reverie! . . .

. . . From the notched teeth of the chimney hook there hung the black cauldron. The three-legged cooking pot projected over the hot embers. Puffing up her cheeks to blow into the steel tube, my grandmother would rekindle the sleeping flames. Everything would be cooking at the same time: the potatoes for the pigs, the choice potatoes for the family. For me there would be a fresh egg cooking under the ashes ... on days when I was on my good behavior, they would bring out the waffle iron. Rectangular in form, it would crush down the fire of thorns burning red as the spikes of sword lilies. And soon the gaufre or waffle would be pressed against my pinafore, warmer to the fingers than to the lips. Yes, then indeed I was eating fire, eating its gold, its odor and even its crackling while the burning gaufre was crunching under my teeth. . . .

And it is always like that, through a kind of extra pleasure—like dessert—that fire shows itself a friend of man. It does not confine itself to cooking; it makes things crisp and crunchy. It puts the golden crust on the griddle cake; it gives a material form to man’s festivities. As far back in time as we can go, the gastronomic value has always been more highly prized than the nutritive value, and it is in joy and not in sorrow that man discovered his intellect. The conquest of the superfluous gives us a greater spiritual excitement than the conquest of the necessary. Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

But the reverie by the fireside has axes that are more philosophical. Fire is for the man who is contemplating it an example of a sudden change or development and an example of a circumstantial development. Less monotonous and less abstract than flowing water, even more quick to grow and to change than the young bird, we watch every day in its nest in the bushes, fire suggests the desire to change, to speed up the passage of time, to bring all of life to its conclusion, to its hereafter. In these circumstances the reverie becomes truly fascinating and dramatic; it magnifies human destiny; it links the small to the great, the hearth to the volcano, the life of a log to the life of a world. The fascinated individual hears the call of the funeral pyre. For him destruction is more than a change, it is a renewal. . . .

Love, death and fire are untied at the same moment. Through its sacrifice in the heart of the flames, the mayfly gives us a lesson in eternity. This total death which leaves no trace is the guarantee that our whole person has departed for the beyond. To lose everything in order to gain everything. The lesson taught by the fire is clear: “After having gained all through skill, through love or

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I 8 I THE FIRE

through violence you must give up all, you must annihilate yourself.” (Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire₎ Boston: Beacon Press, 1964, pp. 14-16. Originally published as La Psychanalyse da Feu₎ Librarie Gallimard, 1938. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.)

Another, more down-to-earth, view of the need for fire comes from Mrs. Field, quoted in Robert Woods Kennedy, The House and the Art of Its Design, New York: Reinhold, 1953, pp. 192— 93:

During the winter months, when the children are often confined indoors for their play, it often happens that around four o-clock or a little after they become cross and grumpy in their playroom, or wild and almost hysterical with boredom. Then I light a fire in the living-room fireplace, and send the children in there to watch it; if the fire were not lighted they would continue their quarreling and perhaps try to turn the quiet room into another bedlam, but with the burning flames on the hearth, they relax into easy interest. They see things in the fire, someone tells a story that interests the whole group, they quiet down, leaving me free to prepare the supper and serve it. It lias a definitely hypnotic quality that can be turned to good account.

Of course, we must fac£ the fact that in many parts of the world wood and coal fires are ecologically unsound. They pollute the air; they are inefficient for heating; they are a drain on wood reserves. If we wish to maintain the habit of burning fires in the home, we shall have to find a way of supplementing wood fuel. For example, we can cultivate the habit of burning the inflammable materials that become waste around the house and throughout the community—paper, cloth, non-chlorinated plastics, wood scraps and sawdust. In short, if we want the emotional comfort that can be drawn from a fireplace, we shall have to learn to use the fireplace in a concentrated way, producing our own fuel from materials that would otherwise go to waste in our neighborhoods. It is easy to imagine, a simple hand press which people can use in their homes to press this waste into dense “logs” to make the fire more substantial.

Assume then that we are to have some kind of fireplace— perhaps something entirely simple, but an open fire nonetheless. Where shall we put it? There are four points to consider:

I. Certainly, the main fireplace should be located in the com-

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mon area of the house, it will help to draw people together in this area, and when it is burning, it provides a kind of counterpoint to conversation.

2. However, the fireplace should be in view for people passing through the room and people in adjoining rooms, especially the kitchen. The fire will tend to pull people-in and make it more likely for the family to gather. And also it is good to view the fire in passing. A welcome time for a fire is in the evening when the family is gathering for the evening meal; and the activity tends to balance between the kitchen and the fire.

3. Make certain, too, that there is a space where people can sit in front of the fire; and that this space is not cut by paths between doors or adjacent rooms.

4. And be sure that the fire is not a dead place when the fire is not burning. A fireplace without a fire, full of ashes and dark, will turn the chairs away, unless the chairs which face the fire when it is lit face something else—a window, or activity, or a view—when it is not lit. Only then will the circle of chairs which forms around the fire be stable and keep the place alive, both when the fire is burning and when it isn’t.

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A daytime focus.

Therefore;

Build the fire in a common space—perhaps in the kitchen —where it provides a natural focus for talk and dreams and thought. Adjust the location until it knits together the social spaces and rooms around it, giving them each a glimpse of the fire; and make a window or some other focus to sustain the place during the times when the fire is out.

I 8 I THE FIRE

7 ^

\

glimpses from other rooms

fireLj

T

Even where the traditional open fireplace is obsolete for heating or where fuel is scarce, find some way of converting refuse, paper, scraps of wood and cardboard into logs which can be burned, and which smell good—perhaps with some kind of natural resin in a home-made press. Burn all the dry organic materials that do not go to the compost (178), so that the leftovers from the materials which come into the house all serve a useful function, either as fertilizer or as fuel; indeed, the ashes from the fire may go into the compost. Make a circle of chairs around the fire—sitting circle (185); perhaps these chairs include a window place (180).