A pattern language - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Christopher alexander (I 86 COMMUNAL SLEEPING) #37

I 86 COMMUNAL SLEEPING

. . . by this time the sleeping areas have been defined—couple’s REALM (136), children’s REALM ( I 3 7) , SLEEPING TO THE EAST (138), bed cluster (143). It remains only to build in the actual detailed space which forms the beds themselves—marriage bed (187), bed alcove (188). However, before we consider these patterns, we wish to draw attention to a slightly more general pattern which may affect their detailed positions.

In many traditional and primitive cultures, sleep is a communal activity without the sexual overtones it has in the West today- We believe that it may be a vital social function, which plays a role as fundamental and as necessary to people as communal eating.

For instance, in Indian villages during the dry season the men pull their beds into the compound at sundown and talk and smoke together, then drift off to sleep. It is a vital part of the social life of the community. The experience of the campfire is the closest western equivalent: people’s love of camping suggests that the urge is still a common one.

It is possible that sleep as a communal activity may be a vital part of healthy social life, not only for children, but for all adults. How might we harmonize this need with the obvious facts of privacy and sexuality that are linked with sleeping?

Of course, it is a beautifully intimate thing—the moment in the morning and at night when a couple are together, in private, falling asleep or waking up together. But we believe that it is also possible to create a situation where, occasionally, people can sleep together in big, family-size groups.

In particular, we can imagine a special version of this activity for metropolitan culture, where so often friends live many miles

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away from each other. How many times have you experienced this situation: You have been out for the night with your friends and end up back at their house for drinks, to talk, to build a fire. Finally, late into the night, it is time to leave. Often they will say, “Please, spend the night”—but this rarely happens. You decline, and make the weary, half-drunken drive home to “your own bed.”

It seems to us that under these conditions especially, communal sleeping makes sense. It would help to intensify the social occasions when we do see our friends who live far away.

But the environment must invite it, or we shall never overcome our reluctance. People are uneasy about spending the night because it usually means having to make up a guest bed, or sleeping on the rug, or cramped on the sofa. Think how much more inviting it would be if, at the end of the night, people simply dozed off, in ones and twos, in alcoves, and on mats with quilts, around the main sleeping area of the house, or around the commons.

From a practical point of view, there are two alternative positions for the alcoves:

1. There might be a place in the commons—not in any one person’s private space—a place where late at night after people have been together for the evening and the fire is dying out, it is simple to draw together and sleep—a place where children and parents can sleep together on special nights. It could be very simple: one large mat and some blankets.

2. The other solution is a more deliberate version of the pat

tern: the couple’s realm in a family house could be slightly larger than normal, with one or two alcoves or window seats that could double as beds. A built-in seat, for example, that is wide enough

and long enough to lay down on, with a thin mat spread across

it, becomes a bed. A few places like this, and, at a moment’s notice the couple’s bedroom becomes a setting for communal sleeping.

In either case, the solution must be simple and must involve nothing more than reaching for a blanket and a mat. If special beds must be made and the room rearranged, it will never happen. And, of course, the space for guest’s beds must be made so that

it is not dead when it is not used for sleeping. It needs a com-

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I 8 6 COMMUNAL SLEEPING

patible double function—a place to put a crib, a seat, a place to lay out clothes—alcove (179), window place (180), dressing room (189).

This pattern may seem strange at first, but when our typist, read it, she was fascinated and decided to try it one Saturday night with her family. They spread a big mat across the living room. They all got up together and helped the youngest son on his paper route; then they had some breakfast. Ed: Are they still doing it? ? Au: No, after 2 weeks they were arrested.

Seriously though:

Arrange the sleeping area so that there is the possibility for children and adults to sleep in the same space, in sight and sound of one another, at least as an occasional alternative to their more usual sleeping habits.

This can be done in the common area near the fireplace, where the entire household and guests can sleep together— one large mat and some blankets in an alcove. It is also possible to build bed alcoves for overnight guests, in an extended couple’s realm.

beds within sight and sound of other beds

Place the alcoves (179) and marriage bed (187) and the bed alcoves (188) and dressing rooms (189) accordingly. The children have this pattern for themselves already—if bed alcoves are placed in a cluster—bed cluster (143). . . .

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I 87 MARRIAGE BED

8 64.

. . . the pattern couple’s realm (136) gives emphasis to the importance of the couple’s private life together within a household. Within that couple’s realm, the placing and nature of the bed is naturally the most important thing.

•5* ❖ *S*

The bed is the center of a couple’s life together: the place where they lie together, talk, make love, sleep, sleep late, take care of each other during illness. But beds and bedrooms are not often made in ways which intensify their meaning, and these experiences cannot take hold.

It is true that there are extra wide beds, special bedspreads and frames, water beds, soft lighting, and all kinds of accessories on the night table. But these are all essentially gadgets. They still don’t make a bed which nourishes intimacy and love.

There are three far more basic points which go to establish the marriage bed.

1. The space around the bed is shafed around the bed. There is a low ceiling, or a partial ceiling, over the bed. The walls and windows are made to contain the bed. See bed alcove (188).

2. It is crucial that the couple choose the right time to build the bed, and not buy one at the drop of the hat. It is unlikely that the bed can come to have the right feeling until a couple has weathered some hard times together and there is some depth to their experience.

3. Find a way of adding to the bed and the space around it, so that it will become more personal and unique over the years; for example, a headboard that can be carved, painted, repainted, or a cloth ceiling that can be changed, embroidered.

The importance of the bed as an anchor point in a couple’s life is brought home in this passage from Homer. Odysseus is home after 20 years of wandering and misadventure. His wife, Penelope, does not recognize him—there have been so many imposters, and he has been away so long. He pleads with her to believe it is him, but she is unsure. Frustrated, Odysseus turns away from her. Penelope speaks:

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it, and if not, they shut up. In a world like that, it is very hard for anyone to establish any sort of inner strength.

Once we accept the idea that the formation of the self is a social process, it becomes clear that the formation of a strong social self depends on the strength of the surrounding social order. When attitudes, values, beliefs and habits are highly diffuse and mixed up as they are in a metropolis, it is almost inevitable that the person who grows up in these conditions will be diffuse and mixed up too. Weak character is a direct product of the present metropolitan society.

This argument has been summarized in devastating terms by Margaret Mead [Culture, Change and Character Structure]. A number of writers have supported this view empirically: Hartshorne, H. and May, M. A., Studies in the 'Nature of Character, New York, Macmillan, 1929 ; and “A Summary of the Work of the Character Education Inquiry,” Religious Education, 1930, Vol. 25, 607-619 and 754-762. “Contradictory demands made upon the child in the varied situations in which he is responsible to adults, not only prevent the organisation of a consistent character, but actually compel inconsistency as the price of peace and self-respect.” . . .

But this is not the end of the story. So far we have seen how the diffusion of a metropolis creates weak character. But diffusion, when it becomes pronounced, creates a special kind of superficial uniformity. When many colors are mixed, in many tiny scrambled bits and pieces, the overall effect is grey. This greyness helps to create weak character in its own way.

In a society where there are many voices, and many values, people cling to those few things which they all have in common. Thus Margaret Mead (of. cit.) : “There is a tendency to reduce all values to simple scales of dollars, school grades, or some other simple quantitative measure, whereby the extreme incommensurables of many different sets of cultural values can be easily, though superficially, reconciled.” And Joseph T. Klapper \_The Effects of Mass Communication, Free Press, i960]:

“Mass society not only creates a confusing situation in which people find it hard to find themselves—it also . . . creates chaos, in which people are confronted by impossible variety—the variety becomes a slush, which then concentrates merely on the most obvious.”

... It seems then, that the metropolis creates weak character in two almost opposite ways; first, because people are exposed to a chaos of values; second, because they cling to the superficial uniformity common to all these values. A nondescript mixture of values vuill tend to produce nondescript people.

III.

There are obviously many ways of solving the problem. Some of these solutions will be private. Others will involve a variety of social processes including, certainly, education, work, play, and

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“Strange man, I am not proud, or contemptuous, or offended, but I know what manner of man you were when you sailed away from Ithaca. Come Eurycleia, make the bed outside the room which he built himself; put the fine bedstead outside, and lay out the rugs and blankets and fleeces.”

This was a little trap for her husband. He burst into a rage: “Wife, that has cut me to the heart! Who has moved my bedi That would be a difficult job for the best workman, unless God himself should come down and move it. It would be easy for God, but no man could easily prize it up, not the strongest man living! There is a great secret in that bed. I made it myself, and no one else touched it. There was a strong young olive tree in full leaf growing in an enclosure, the trunk as thick as a pillar. Round this I built our bridal chamber; I did the whole thing myself, laid the stones and built a good roof over it, jointed the doors and fitted them in their places. After that I cut off the branches and trimmed the trunk from the root up, smoothed it carefully with the adze and made it straight to the line. This tree I made the bedpost. That was the beginning of my bed; I bored holes through it, and fitted the other posts about it, and inlaid the framework with gold and silver and ivory, and I ran through it leather straps coloured purple. Now I have told you my secret. And I don’t know if it is still there, wife, or if some one has cut the olive at the root and moved my bed!”

She was conquered, she could hold out no longer when Odysseus told the secret she knew so well. She burst into tears and ran straight to him, throwing her arms about his neck. She kissed his head, and cried:

“Don’t be cross with me, my husband, you were always a most understanding man! The gods brought affliction upon us because they grudged us the joy of being young and growing old together! Don’t be angry, don’t be hurt because I did not take you in my arms as soon as I saw you! My heart has been frozen all this time with a fear that some one would come and deceive me with a false tale; there were so many imposters! But now you have told me the secret of our bed, that settles it.” (From The Odyssey, translated by W. H. D. Rouse. Reprinted by arrangement with The New American Library, Inc., New York, New York.)

The translator footnotes this incident as follows: “This is the first time in all the eventful tale when Odysseus speaks on impulse; he has been prepared for everything, but this unexpected trifle unlocks his heart.”

Quite honestly, we are not certain whether or not this pattern makes sense. On the one hand, it does: it is a beautiful idea; idyllic almost. Yet, face to face with cold hard fact and with the

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187 MARRIAGE BED

dissolution and struggles in the marriages around us, it seems hard to hope that it could ever be quite real. We have decided to leave it in, just because it is a beautiful idea. But we ask you to treat it like Oblomov’s dream, a picture more real than reality, an impossible dream of perfect and idyllic circumstances, which may help perhaps, to make a little more sense of our muddled everyday reality—but only if we take it with a pinch of salt.

Therefore:

enclosure

At the right moment in a couple’s life, it is important that they make for themselves a special bed—an intimate anchor point for their lives; slightly enclosed, with a low ceiling or a canopy, with the room shaped to it; perhaps a tiny room built around the bed with many windows. Give the bed some shape of its own, perhaps as a four-poster with head board that can be hand carved or painted over the years.

decoration

window

Make two separate dressing rooms or alcoves near tire bed— dressing rooms (189) ; for more details on the space around the bed, see bed alcove ( i 88) ; lower the ceiling over the bed— ceiling height variety (190), and provide some way of creating special ornament all around it—ornament (249). For the detailed shape of the space around the bed, see the shape op-indoor space (191). . . .

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I 88 BED ALCOVE**

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. . . bed alcoves help to generate the form of bed clusters (143), COMMUNAL SLEEPING ( I 86) and MARRIAGE BED (187). For children, each alcove also functions as a room of one’s own (141), so that even in the smallest house, not only the adults, but every child can have at least a small place to call his own.

v ♦!- -b

Bedrooms make no sense.

The valuable space around the bed is good for nothing except access to the bed. And all the other functions—dressing, working, and storage of personal belongings which people stuff uncomfortably into the corners of their bedrooms—in fact, need their own space, and are not at all well met by the left over areas around a bed.

In bed clusters (143), we have already argued that each child in a family should have a bed alcove of his own, opening off a common play-space. This is based purely on the balance between community and privacy. We shall now try to establish the fact that, for everyone in the house, isolated beds, not only those in clusters, are better off in alcoves than in bedrooms. There are two reasons.

First, the bed in a bedroom creates awkward spaces around it: dressing, working, watching television, sitting, are all rather foreign to the side spaces left over around a bed. We have found that people have a hard time adapting the space around the bed to their needs for bedroom space.

Second, the bed itself seems more comfortable in a space that is adjusted to it. In our design experiments, where lay people have used these patterns to design their own houses, we have noticed a rather strong urge to give the bed a nook of its own, some kind of enclosure. Apparently this particular pattern strikes a chord in people.

Once the bed has been built into a space that is right for it, then the rest of the bedrorn space is free to shape itself around the needs for sitting space, play areas, dressing, and storage.

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What are the issues at stake in making a good bed alcove!¹

Spaciousness. Don’t make it too tight. It must be comfortable to get in and out and to make the bed. If the alcove is going to function as a room of one’s own (141) for a child, then it needs to be almost a tiny room, with one wall missing.

Six bed alcoves in one of our houses in Peru.

Ventilation. Bed alcoves need fresh air; at least a vent of some kind that is adjustable, and better still a window.

Privacy. People will want to draw into the alcove and be private. The opening of the alcove needs a curtain or some other kind of enclosure.

Ceiling. According to tire arguments developed with the pattern CELLING height variety (190), the bed, as an intimate social space for one or two, needs a ceiling height somewhat lower than the room beside it.

Bed alcoves off a family room.

Therefore:

Don’t put single beds in empty rooms called bedrooms, but instead put individual bed alcoves off rooms with other nonsleeping functions, so the bed itself becomes a tiny private haven.

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I 88 BED ALCOVE

If you are building a very small house no more than 300 or 400 square feet—perhaps with the idea of adding to it gradually—this pattern plays an essential role. It will probably be best then to put the alcoves off the family room.

bed

alcove

view into larger common space

Build the ceiling low—ceiling height variety (190)5 add some storage in the walls around the alcove—thick walls (197), open shelves (200), and a window, in a natural position-NATURAL DOORS AND WINDOWS (22 i). Perhaps HALF-OPEN

wall (193) will help to give the alcove the right enclosure. Where space is very tight, combine the bed alcove with dressing room (189). And finally, give each alcove, no matter how small, the characteristics of any indoor space—the shape of indoor space (191). . . .

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189 DRESSING ROOMS*

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. . . if the beds are in position—marriage bed (187), bed alcoves (188)—wc can give detailed attention to the dressing spaces—both to the closets where people keep their clothes and to the space they use for dressing. These dressing spaces may also help to form the bathing room (144).

♦I* v

Dressing and undressing, storing clothes, having clothes lying around, have no reason to be part of any larger complex of activities. Indeed they disturb other activities: they are so self-contained that they themselves need concentrated space which has no other function.

We have argued, in bed alcoves (188), that the concept of the bedroom leads to wasted space around the bed. This pattern lends further support to the idea that “bedrooms” in their present form are not valuable entities to have in a house.

The arguments are:

1. Clothes lying around are messy; they can take over a great deal of space; they need some kind of individual space. A dressing-space can be for one person or shared by a couple. The important thing is that it be organized as a small space where it is comfortable to store clothes and to dress. When such a space is not provided, the whole bedroom is potentially the dressing room; and this can destroy its integrity as a room. It becomes more a big closet to “keep neat,” than a room to stay in and relax.

2. People tend to take up a private position while they dress, even where they are relatively intimate with the people they live with. Even in a locker room, people will make a half-turn away from others as they dress. This suggests that the space for dressing be relatively private. The old fashioned standing screens in a green room or a boudoir worked this way; they created a halfprivate dressing space.

3. The time of dressing, the activity, is a natural moment of transition in the day. It is a time when people think about the day ahead, or unwind at the end of the day and get ready for bed. If you dwell, for a moment, on this transitional quality of

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dressing, it seems clear that the dressing space can be made to help support it. For example, a good place to dress will have beautiful natural light; this requires as much thought in your design as any room—see, for example, light on two sides of

EVERY ROOM ( I 59) .

4. The dressing space should be large enough, with room to stretch your arms and turn around. This means six or seven feet of open area. It must also have about six feet of clothes hanging space, another six feet of open shelves, and a few drawers for each person. These figures are rough. Check your own closet and shelves, think about what you really need, and make an estimate.

Therefore:

I „ SAS*

Give everyone a dressing room—either private or shared —between their bed and the bathing room. Make this dressing room big enough so there is an open area in it at least six feet in diameter; about six linear feet of clothes hanging space; and another six feet of open shelves; two or three drawers; and a mirror.

light on two sides

mirror

Set)

closets and shelves

Place each dressing room so that it gets plenty of natural light ON TWO SIDES (159). Use THICK WALLS (197), CLOSETS BETWEEN ROOMS (198), and open shelves (200) to form its walls; include a wide shelf around the edge—waist-high shelf (201); and for the detailed shape of the room, see the shape of

INDOOR SPACE (I 9 I). . . .

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fine tune the shape and size of rooms and alcoves to make them precise and buildable;

190.	CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY
191.	THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE
192.	WINDOWS OVERLOOKING LIFE
*93-	HALF-OPEN WALL
194.	INTERIOR WINDOWS
195.	STAIRCASE VOLUME
196.	CORNER DOORS

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family. I shall now describe one particular solution, which involves the large scale social organisation of the metropolis.

The solution is this. The metropolis must contain a large number of different subcultures, each one strongly articulated, with its own values sharply delineated_} and sharply distinguished from the others. But though these subcultures must be sharp and distinct and separate, they must not be closed• they must be readily accessible to one another, so that a person can move easily from one to another, and can settle in the one which suits him best.

This solution is based on two assumptions:

1. A person will only be able to find his own self, and therefore to develop a strong character, if he is in a situation where he receives support for his idiosyncrasies from the people and values which surround him.

2. In order to find his own self, he also needs to live in a milieu where the possibility of many different value systems is explicitly recognized and honored. More specifically, he needs a great variety of choices, so that he is not misled about the nature of his own person, can see that there are many kinds of people, and can find those whose values and beliefs correspond most closely to his own.

. . . one mechanism which might underly people’s need for an ambient culture like their own: Maslow has pointed out that the process of self actualisation can only start after other needs, like the need for food and love, and security, have already been satisfied. [Motivation and Personality, pp. 84-89.] Now the greater the mixture of kinds of persons in a local urban area, and the more unpredictable the strangers near your house, the more afraid and insecure you will become. In Los Angeles and New York this has reached the stage where people are constantly locking doors and windows, and where a mother does not feel safe sending her fifteen year old daughter to the corner mailbox. People are afraid when they are surrounded by the unfamiliar; the unfamiliar is dangerous. But so long as this fear is an unsolved problem, it will override the rest of their lives. Self-actualisation will only be able to happen when this fear is overcome; and that in turn, can only happen, when people are in familiar territory, among people of their own kind, whose habits and ways they know, and whom they trust.

. . . However, if we encourage the appearance of distinct subcultures, in order to satisfy the demands of the first assumption, then we certainly do not want to encourage these subcultures to be tribal or closed. That would fly in the face of the very quality which makes the metropolis so attractive. It must be possible, therefore, for people to move easily from one subculture to another, and for them to choose whichever one is most to their taste; and they must be able

I go CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY**

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. . . this pattern helps to form the rooms. It therefore helps to complete all the patterns which define rooms, or arcades, or balconies, or outdoor rooms or minor rooms: in short, just about all of the last iOO patterns. If you have been imagining these spaces while you walk about on the actual site, then all these spaces will already be three-dimensional in your mind: they will be volumes of space, not merely areas on plan. Now, with this pattern, which determines ceiling heights, the next pattern which determines the exact shape of each room, and the remaining patterns in the language, we fill out this three dimensional conception of the building.

A building in which the ceiling heights are all the same is virtually incapable of making people comfortable.

In some fashion, low ceilings make for intimacy, high ceilings for formality. In older buildings which allowed the ceiling heights to vary, this was almost taken for granted. However, in buildings which are governed by standard components, it is very hard to make the ceiling height vary from room to room, so it tends to be forgotten. And people are willing to let it go, because they have forgotten what an important psychological reason there is for making the heights vary.

We have presented three different theories over the years in our attempts to explain the significance of ceiling height variety, and we shall present the evolution of all three theories here, because it puts the matter in perspective and will perhaps allow you to formulate the pattern most coherently for yourself.

Theory one. The ceiling height should be related to the length and breadth of the room, because the problem is one of proportion, and people feel comfortable or uncomfortable according to the room’s proportions.

Many efforts have been made to establish rules which will make sure that rooms are “well proportioned.” Thus, for instance, Palladio laid down three rules of proportion: all of them shared

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the feature that the height of a room should be intermediate between its length and its breadth.

In traditional Japanese architecture, this idea is captured by a simple rule of thumb. The ceiling height of a room is 6 feet 3 inches -j- (3.7 X the number of tatami in the room) inches. This creates a direct relationship between floor area and ceiling height. A very small room (3 mats) has a ceiling height of 7 feet 2 inches. A large room (12 mats) has a ceiling height of 9 feet 1 I inches. (See Heinrich Engle, The Japanese House, Rutland Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1964, pp. 68—71.)

However sound this approach may seem in certain cases, it is clearly not a completely valid geometric principle. There are many rooms with extremely low ceilings, especially in cottages and informal houses, which are extremely pleasant—even though they violate Palladio’s principle and the Japanese rule of thumb utterly.

Theory two. The ceiling height is related to the social distance between people in the room, and is therefore directly related to their relative intimacy or nonintimacy.

This theory makes it clear what is wrong with badly proportioned rooms, and gives the beginning of a functional basis for establishing the right height for different spaces. The problem hinges on the question of appropriate social distance. It is known that in various kinds of social situations there are appropriate and inappropriate distances between people. (See Edward Hall, The Silent Language, New York: Doubleday, 1959, pp. 163—64; and Robert Sommer, “The Distance for Comfortable Conversation,” Sociometry, 25, 1962, pp. 111 —16.) Now, the ceiling height in a room has a bearing on social distance in two ways'.

A. The height of a ceiling appears to affect the apparent distance of sound sources from a hearer. Thus, under a low ceiling sound sources seem nearer than they really are; under a high ceiling they seem further than they really are.

Since the sound is an important cue in the perception of distance between people (voice, footstep, rustle, and so on), this means that the ceiling height will alter the apparent distance between people. Under a high ceiling people seem further apart than they actually are.

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190 CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY

On the basis of this effect, it is clear that intimate situations require very low ceilings, less intimate situations require higher ceilings, formal places require high ceilings, and the most public situations require the highest ceilings: for example, the canopy over the double bed, a fireside nook, high-ceilinged formal reception room, Grand Central Station.

B. Through the medium of three-dimensional “bubbles”. We know that each social situation has a certain horizontal dimension or diameter. We may think of this as a kind of membrane or bubble which encloses the situation. It is likely that this bubble needs a vertical component—equal in height to its diameter. If so, the height of the ceiling should, for comfort, be equal to the dominant social distance in the room. Since people in Grand Central are strangers, and have an effective social distance of as much as IOO feet, this would explain why the ceiling has to be very high; similarly, in an intimate nook, or over a double bed, where the social distance is no more than five or six feet, the ceiling has to be very low.

Theory three. Although both of the previous theories contain valuable insights, they must be at least slightly wrong because they assume that the absolute ceiling height in any one room has a critical functional effect. In fact, the absolute ceiling height does not matter as much as one would expect from theories one and two.

For example, the most intimate room in an igloo may be no more than five feet high; yet in a very hot climate even the most intimate rooms may be nine feet high. This makes it clear that the absolute height of rooms is governed by other factors too—climate and culture. Obviously, then, no theory which prescribes an absolute height for any given social situation, or room size, can be correct. What then, is going on? Why do ceiling heights vary? What functional effect does their variation have?

We have been led, finally, to the conclusion that it is the variation itself which matters, not merely the absolute height in any given room. For if a building contains rooms with several different ceiling heights in it and the height has an effect on social relationships (for the reasons given), then the mere fact that the ceiling heights vary, allows people to move from high

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rooms to low rooms, and vice versa, according to the degree of intimacy they seek—because they know that everyone correlates intimacy with ceiling height.

According to this theory, the effect of the ceiling height is not direct; there is instead a complex interaction between people and space, in which people read the different ceiling heights in a building as messages, and take up positions according to these messages. They are comfortable or uncomfortable according to whether they can take part in this process, and can then feel secure in the knowledge that they have chosen a place of appropriate intimacy.

Finally, some special notes are required on the implementation of this pattern. In a one story structure there is no problem; the ceiling heights may vary freely. In buildings with several stories however, it is not so clear cut. The floors of the upper stories must be more or less flat; and this obviously creates problems as you try to vary the ceiling heights underneath. Here are some notes which may help you to solve this problem:

I. Build storage between floors and ceilings—at least two feet deep—where you want to lower ceiling heights.

2. Put two alcoves over each other. If each is 6 feet 3 inches, this gives a main ceiling of 13 feet, which is good for very public spaces.

Stacked alcoves.

190 CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY

3. Raise the floor level with steps, instead of lowering the ceiling.

The floor does it.

4. It is very important to have some rooms with ceilings as low as 7 feet or 7 feet 6 inches—these are very beautiful.

Lower ceilings uf stairs.

3. Except in one-story buildings, tire low ceilinged rooms will make most sense on upper stories; indeed, the average ceiling height will probably get lower and lower with successive stories —the most public rooms, for the largest gatherings, are typically on the ground, and rooms get progressively more intimate the further they are from the ground.

Therefore:

Vary the ceiling heights continuously throughout the building, especially between rooms which open into each other, so that the relative intimacy of different spaces can be felt. In particular, make ceilings high in rooms which are public or meant for large gatherings (10 to 12 feet), lower in rooms for smaller gatherings (7 to 9 feet), and very low in rooms or alcoves for one or two people (6 to 7 feet).

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complete range of ceiling heights

❖ 4*

The construction of floor vaults will create variations in ceiling height almost automatically since the vault starts about 6 feet 6 inches high and rises a further distance which is one-fifth of the room diameter—floor-ceiling vaults (219). Where ceiling height varies within one story, put storage in the spaces between the different heights—bulk storage (145). Get the shape of individual rooms under any given ceiling height from THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE (191) and STRUCTURE FOLLOWS social spaces (205) ; and vary ceiling heights from story to story—the highest ceilings on the ground floor and the lowest on the top floor—see the table in final column distribution (213). . . .

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