A pattern language

that they give acoustic isolation and make a comfortable “thunk” when they are closed.

solid and with glass

Glaze the door with small panes of glass—small panes (239) ; and make the doors more solid, by building them like wall membranes (218). . . .

238 FILTERED LIGHT*

I 105

. . . the mosaic of subcultures (8) is made up of a great number of large and small self-governing communities and neighborhoods. Community of 7000 helps define the structure of the large communities.

4* 4* 4*

Individuals have no effective voice in any community of more than 5000-10,000 persons.

People can only have a genuine effect on local government when the units of local government are autonomous, self-governing, self-budgeting communities, which are small enough to create the possibility of an immediate link between the man in the street and his local officials and elected representatives.

This is an old idea. It was the model for Athenian democracy in the third and fourth centuries b.c.; it was Jefferson’s plan for American democracy; it was the tack Confucius took in Iris book on government, The Great Digest.

For these people, the practice of exercising power over local matters was itself an experience of intrinsic satisfaction. Sophocles wrote that life would be unbearable were it not for the freedom to initiate action in a small community. And it was considered that this experience was not only good in itself, but was the only way of governing that would not lead to corruption. Jefferson wanted to spread out the power not because “the people” were so bright and clever, but precisely because they were prone to error, and it was therefore dangerous to vest power in the hands of a few who would inevitably make big mistakes. “Break the country into wards” was his campaign slogan, so that the mistakes will be manageable and people will get practice and improve.

Today the distance between people and the centers of power that govern them is vast—both psychologically and geographically. Milton Kotler, a Jeffersonian, has described the experience:

The process of city administration is invisible to the citizen who sees little evidence of its human components but feels the sharp pain of taxation. With increasingly poor public service, his desires and needs are more insistently expressed. Yet his expressions of need seem

. . . even if the windows are beautifully placed, glare can still be a problem—natural doors and windows (221). The softness of the light, in and around the window, makes an enormous difference to the room inside. The shape of the frames can do a part of it—deep reveals (223)—but it still needs additional help.

•J# ♦£*

Light filtered through leaves, or tracery, is wonderjful. But why?

We know that light filtering through a leafy tree is very pleasant—it lends excitement, cheerfulness, gaiety; and we know that areas of uniform lighting create dull, uninteresting spaces. But why?

1. The most obvious reason: direct light coming from a point source casts strong shadows, resulting in harsh images with strong contrasts. And people have an optical habit which makes this contrast worse: our eye automatically reinforces boundaries so that they read sharper than they are. For example, a color chart with strips of different colors set next to each other will appear as though there are dark lines between the strips. These contrasts and hard boundaries are unpleasant—objects appear to have a hard character, and our eyes, unable to adjust to the contrast, cannot pick up the details.

For all these reasons, we have a natural desire to diffuse light with lamp shades or indirect lighting, so that the images created by the light will be “softer,” that is, that the boundaries perceived are not sharp, there is less contrast, fewer shadows, and the details are easier to see. This is also why photographers use reflected light instead of direct light when photographing objects; they pick up details which otherwise would be lost in shadow.

2. The second reason: to reduce the glare around the window. When there is bright light coming in through the window, it creates glare against the darkness of the wall around the window —see deep reveals (223). Filtering the light especially at the

238 FILTERED LIGHT

edges of the window cuts down the glare by letting in less light.

3. A third reason which is pure conjecture: it may simply be that an object which has small scale patterns of light dancing on it is sensually pleasing, and stimulates us biologically. Some filmmakers claim the play of light upon the retina is naturally sensuous, all by itself.

To create filtered light, partially cover those windows which get direct sunlight, with vines and lattices. Leaves are special because they move. And the edge of the window can have fine tracery—that is, the edge of the glass itself, not the frame, so that the light coming in is gradually stronger from the edge to the center of the window; the tracery is best toward the top of the window where the light is strongest. Many old windows combine these ideas.

Therefore:

Where the edge of a window or the overhanging eave of a roof is silhouetted against the sky, make a rich, detailed taspestry of light and dark, to break up the light and soften it.

You can do this, most easily, with climbing plants trained to climb around the outside of the window—climbing plants (246). If there are no plants, you can also do it beautifully with simple canvas awnings—canvas roofs (244), perhaps colored— warm colors (250). You can also help to filter light by making the panes smaller, more delicate, and more elaborate high in the window where the light is strong—small panes (239). . . .

239 SMALL PANES**

I 108

. . . this pattern gives the glazing for the windows in interior WINDOWS (194), NATURAL DOORS AND WINDOWS (22l), WINDOWS WHICH OPEN WIDE (236), and SOLID DOORS WITH GLASS (237). In most cases, the glazing can be built as a continuation of the

FRAMES AS THICKENED EDGES (225) .

When plate glass windows became possible, people thought that they would put us more directly in touch with nature. In fact, they do the opposite.

They alienate us from the view. The smaller the windows are, and the smaller the panes are, the more intensely windows help connect us with what is on the other side.

This is an important paradox. The clear plate window seems as though it ought to bring nature closer to us, just because it seems to be more like an opening, more like the air. But, in fact, our contact with the view, our contact with the things we see through windows is affected by the way the window frames them. When we consider a window as an eye through which to see a view, we must recognize that it is the extent to which the window frames the view, that increases the view, increases its intensity, increases its variety, even increases the number of views we seem to see—and it is because of this that windows which are broken into smaller windows, and windows which are filled with tiny panes, put us so intimately in touch with what is on the other side. It is because they create far more frames: and it is the multitude of frames which makes the view.

Thomas Markus, who has studied windows extensively, has arrived at the same conclusion: windows which are broken up make for more interesting views. (“The Function of Window's— A Reappraisal,” Building Science, Vol. 2, 1967, pp. 101-4). He points out that small and narrow windows afford different views from different positions in the room, while the view tends to be the same through large windows or horizontal ones.

We believe that the same thing, almost exactly, happens

1109

CONSTRUCTION

Six views.

within the window frame itself. The following picture shows a simple landscape, broken up as it might be by six panes. Instead of one view, we see six views. The view becomes alive because the small panes make it so.

Another argument for small panes: Modern architecture and building have deliberately tried to make windows less like windows and more as though there was nothing between you and the outdoors. Yet this entirely contradicts the nature of windows.

It is the function of windows to offer a view and provide a rela

tionship to the outside, true. But this does not mean that they should not at the same time, like the walls and roof, give you a sense of protection and shelter from the outside. It is uncomfortable to feel that there is nothing between you and the outside, when in fact you are inside a building. It is the nature of windows to give you a relationship to the outside and at the same

Small fanes in Mendocino.

time give a sense of enclosure.

I I 10

Not only that. Big areas of clear glass are sometimes even dangerous. People walk into plate glass windows, because they look like air. By comparison, windows with small panes give a clear functional message—the frames of the panes definitely tell you that something is there separating you from the outside. And they help to create filtered light (238).

Therefore:

Divide each window into small panes. These panes can be very small indeed, and should hardly ever be more than a foot square. To get the exact size of the panes, divide the width and height of the window by the number of panes. Then each window will have different sized panes according to its height and width.

In certain cases you may want to make the small panes even finer near the window edge, to filter the light around the upper edge of windows which stand out against the sky—filtered light (238). As for the muntins, they can be made from the same materials as trim—half-inch trim (240). . . .

1111

240 HALF-INCH TRIM**

I I I 2

. . . and this pattern finishes the joints between soft inside walls (235), or lapped outside walls (234) and the various floors and vaults and frames and stiffeners and ornaments which are set into the walls: box columns (216), perimeter beams (217), FLOOR-CEILING VAULTS (219), FRAMES AS THICKENED EDGES (225), and ORNAMENT (249).

Totalitarian, machine buildings do not require trim because they are precise enough to do without. But they buy their precision at a dreadful price: by killing the possibility of freedom in the building plan.

A free and natural building cannot be conceived without the possibility of finishing it with trim, to cover up the minor variations which have arisen in the plan, and during its construction.

For example, when nailing a piece of gypsum board to a column—if the board is cut on site—it is essential that the cut can be inaccurate within a half-inch or so. If it has to be more accurate, there will be a great waste of material, and on-site cutting time and labor will increase, and, finally, the very possibility of adapting each part of the building to the exact subtleties of the plan and site will be in jeopardy.

It is in response to difficulties of this sort that modern system building has arisen. Here tolerances are very low indeed— inch and even lower—and there is no need for trim to cover up inaccuracies. However, the precision of the components can only be obtained by the most tyrannical control over the plan. This one aspect of construction has by itself destroyed the builder’s capacity to make a building which is natural, organic, and adapted to the site.

If, as we suggest, the building procedure is looser and allows much larger tolerance—even mistakes on the order of half an inch or more—then the use of trim to cover the connection between materials becomes essential. Indeed, within this attitude to building, the trim is not a trivial decoration added as a finishing touch, but an essential phase of the construction. We see, then,

111 3

CONSTRUCTION

that trim, so often associated with older buildings, and treated as an emblem of nostalgia, is in fact a vital part of the process of making buildings natural.

Finally, it is worth adding a note about the actual size of the trim pieces. Buildings built in the last 25 years often make a virtue out of boldness, and there is a tendency to use very large oversized pieces of trim instead of small pieces. Within the framework of this philosophy, it might seem right to use pieces of trim 2 or 3 inches thick for their effect and heaviness. We believe that this is wrong: Trim which is too large, or too thick, doesn't do its job. This is not a matter of style. There is a psychological reason for making sure that every component in the building has at least some pieces of trim which are of the order of half an inch or an inch thick, and no more.

Compare the following two examples of trim. For some reason the right-hand one, in which the trim is finer, is closer and better adapted to our feelings than the left-hand one.

Chunky trim.....fine scale trim.

The reason for this seems to be the following. Our own bodies and the natural surroundings in which we evolved contain a continuous hierarchy of details, ranging all the way from the molecular fine structure to gross features like arms and legs (in our own bodies) and trunks and branches (in our natural surroundings) .

We know from results in cognitive psychology that any one step in this hierarchy can be no more than 1:5, 1 7, or 1 :io if we are to perceive it as a natural hierarchy. We cannot understand a hierarchy in which there is a jump in scale of 1:20 or more. It is this fact which makes it necessary for our surroundings, even when man-made, to display a similar continuum of detail.

Most materials have some kind of natural fibrous or crystalline

11 14

240 HALF-INCH TRIM

structure at the scale of about Y20 inch. But if the smallest building detail dimensions are of the order of 2 or 3 inches, this leaves a jump of 1:40 or 1:6o between these details and the fine structure of the material.

In order to allow us to perceive a connection between tne fine building construction and the fine structure of the materials, it is essential that the smallest building details be of the order of a half inch or so, so that it is no more than about 10 times the size of the granular and fibrous texture of the materials.

Therefore:

V‘i inch wide

trim pieces

Wherever two materials meet, place a piece of trim over the edge of the connection. Choose the pieces of trim so that the smallest piece, in each component, is always of the order of V2 inch wide. The trim can be wood, plaster, terracotta. . . .

In many cases, you may be able to use the trim to form the ornaments—ornament (249) ; and trims may occasionally be colored: even tiny amounts can help to make the light in a room warm—warm colors (250). . . .

to issue into thin air, for government does not appear attentive to his demands. This disjunction between citizen and government is the major political problem of city government, because it embodies the dynamics of civil disorder. . . . (Milton Kotler, Neighborhood Foundations, Memorandum #24; “Neighborhood corporations and the reorganization of city government,” unpub. ms., August 1967.)

There are two ways in which the physical environment, as it is now ordered, promotes and sustains the separation between citizens and their government. First, the size of the political community is so large that its members are separated from its leaders simply by their number. Second, government is invisible, physically located out of the realm of most citizens’ daily lives. Unless these two conditions are altered, political alienation is not likely to be overcome.

1. The size- of the political community. It is obvious that the larger the community the greater the distance between the average citizen and the heads of government. Paul Goodman has proposed a rule of thumb, based on cities like Athens in their prime, that no citizen be more than two friends away from the highest member of the local unit. Assume that everyone knows about 12 people in his local community. Using this notion and Goodman’s rule we can see that an optimum size for a political community would be about I 2³ or 1728 households or 5500 persons. This figure corresponds to an old Chicago school estimate of 5000. And it is the same order of magnitude as the size of ECCO, the neighborhood corporation in Columbus, Ohio, of 6000 to 7000, described by Kotler (Committee on Government Operations, U.S. Senate, 89th Congress, Second Session, Part 9, December 1966).

The editors of The Ecologist have a similar intuition about the proper size for units of local government. (See their Blueprint for Survival, Penguin Books, 1972, pp. 50-55.) And Terence Lee, in his study, “Urban neighborhood as a socio-spatial schema,” Ekistics 777, August 1970, gives evidence for the importance of the spatial community. Lee gives 75 acres as a natural size for a community. At 25 persons per acre, such a community would accommodate some 2000 persons; at 60 persons per acre, some 4500.

2. The visible location of local government. Even when local

build outdoor details to finish the outdoors as fully as the indoor sfaces ;

241. SEAT SPOTS

242. FRONT DOOR BENCH

243. SITTING WALL

244. CANVAS ROOFS

245. RAISED FLOWERS

246. CLIMBING PLANTS

247. PAVING WITH CRACKS BETWEEN THE STONES

248. SOFT TILE AND BRICK

I I 17

241 SEAT SPOTS**

1118

. . . assume that the main structure of the building is complete. To make it perfectly complete you need to build in the details of the gardens and the terraces around the building. In some cases, you will probably have laid out the walls and flowers and seats, at least in rough outline; but it is usually best to make the final decisions about them after the building is really there—so that you can make them fit the building and help to tie it into its surroundings—path shape (121), activity pockets (124), PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET (140), BUILDING EDGE ( I 60) , SUNNY PLACE ( I 6 I ) , OUTDOOR ROOM (163), CONNECTION TO THE EARTH (l68), TRELLISED WALK ( I 74) , GARDEN SEAT ( I 76) , etC.

First, the outdoor seats, public and private.

Where outdoor seats are set down without regard for view and climate, they will almost certainly be useless.

We made random spot checks on selected benches in Berkeley, California, and recorded these facts about each bench: Was it occupied or empty? Did it give a view of current activity or not? Was it in the sun or not? What was the current wind velocity? Three of the eleven benches were occupied; eight were empty.

At the moment of observation, all three occupied benches looked onto activity, were in the sun, and had a wind velocity of less than 1.5 feet per second. At the moment of observation, none of the eight empty benches had all three of these characteristics. Three of them had shelter and activity but no sun; three of them had activity but no sun, and wind greater than 3 feet per second; two of them had sun and shelter but no activity.

A second series of observations compared the numbers of old people sitting in Union Square at 3:00 p.m. on a sunny day with the number at 3:00 p.m. on a cloudy day: 65 people on the sunny day and 21 on the cloudy day, even though the air temperature was the same on both days.

It’s obvious, of course—but the point is this—when you are going to mark in spots in your project for the location of outdoor

seats, sitting walls, stair seats, garden seats, look for places with these characteristics:

1. Benches facing directly onto pedestrian activity.

2. Benches open to the south for sun exposure during winter months.

3. A wall on those sides where the winter wind comes down.

New England benches.

4. In hot climates—cover to give sun protection during the midday hours of summer months, and the bench open to the direction of the summer breeze.

Therefore:

Choosing good spots for outdoor seats is far more important than building fancy benches. Indeed, if the spot is right, the most simple kind of seat is perfect.

In cool climates, choose them to face the sun, and to be

protected from the wind; in hot climates, put them in shade

and open to summer breezes. In both cases, place them to

face activities. . „

windbreak

If these seats can be made continuous with stairs or building entrances or low walls or ballustrades, so much the better—

STAIR SEATS (125), FRONT DOOR BENCH (242), SITTING WALL

(243)* ' ' •

I I 20

242 FRONT DOOR BENCH*

I I 2 I

. . . seat spots (241), acting within several larger patterns, creates an atmosphere around the edge of the building which invites lingering—arcades ( i 19), building edge (160),

SUNNY PLACE ( I 6 I ) , CONNECTION TO THE EARTH ( I 68) ; it is

most marked and most important near the entrance—entrance room (130). This pattern defines a special seat spot (241): a bench which helps to form the entrance room and the building edge around the entrance. It is always important3 but perhaps most important of all, at the door of an old age cottage (155).

❖ ❖ *5*

People like to watch the street.

But they do not always want a great deal of involvement with the street. The process of hanging out requires a continuum of degrees of involvement with the street, ranging all the way from the most private kind to the most public kind. A young girl watching the street may want to be able to withdraw the moment anyone looks at her too intently. At other times people may want to be watching the street, near enough to it to talk to someone who comes past, yet still protected enough so that they can withdraw into their own domain at a moment’s notice.

The most public kind of involvement with the street is sitting out. Many people, especially older people, pull chairs out to the front door or lean against the front of their houses, either while

Front door benches in Peru.

they are working at something or just for the pleasure of watching street life. But since there is some reluctance to be too public, this activity requires a bench or seat which is clearly private, even though in the public world. It is best of all when the bench is placed so that people are sitting on the edge of their world on private land—yet so placed that the personal space it creates overlaps with land that is legally public.

Therefore:

Build a special bench outside the front door where people from inside can sit comfortably for hours on end and watch the world go by. Place the bench to define a half-private domain in front of the house. A low wall, planting, a tree, can help to create the same domain.

The bench may help to make the entrance visible—main entrance (iio)j it can be part of a wall—sitting wall (243), with flowers in the sunshine next to it—raised flowers (245). Place it with care, according to the rules given in seat spots (241). . . .

1123

243 SITTING WALL**

I I 24

. . . if all is well, the outdoor areas are largely made up of positive spaces—positive outdoor spaces (106) ; in some fashion you have marked boundaries between gardens and streets, between terraces and gardens, between outdoor rooms and terraces, between play areas and gardens—green streets (51), pedestrian

STREET (100), HALF-HIDDEN GARDEN (ill), HIERARCHY OF OPEN SPACE ( I I4), PATH SHAPE (l2l), ACTIVITY POCKETS (124), PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET (140), OUTDOOR ROOM (163), OPENING TO THE STREET (165), GALLERY SURROUND (166), garden growing wild (172). With this pattern, you can help these natural boundaries take on their proper character, by building walls, just low enough to sit on, and high enough to mark the boundaries.

If you have also marked the places where it makes sense to build seats—seat spots (241}, front door bench (242)—you can kill two birds with one stone by using the walls as seats which help enclose the outdoor space wherever its positive character is weakest.

*§* *§•

In many places walls and fences between outdoor spaces are too high; but no boundary at all does injustice to the subtlety of the divisions between the spaces.

Consider, for example, a garden on a quiet street. At least somewhere along the edge between the two there is a need for a seam, a place which unites the two, but does so without breaking down the fact that they are separate places. If there is a high wall or a hedge, then the people in the garden have no way of being connected to the street; the people in the street have no way of being connected to the garden. But if there is no barrier at all—then the division between the two is hard to maintain. Stray dogs can wander in and out at will; it is even uncomfortable to sit in the garden, because it is essentially like sitting in the street.

I 125

12 COMMUNITY OF 7000

branches of government are decentralized in function, they are often still centralized in space, hidden in vast municipal city-county buildings out of the realm of everyday life. These places are intimidating and alienating. What is needed is for every person to feel at home in the place of his local government with his ideas and complaints. A person must feel that it is a forum, that it is his directly, that he can call and talk to the person in charge of such and such, and see him personally within a day or two.

For this purpose, local forums must be situated in highly visible and accessible places. They could, for instance, be located in the most active marketplace of each community of 5000 to 7000. We discuss this possibility more fully under local town hall (44), but we emphasize it here, since the provision of a political “heart,” a political center of gravity, is an essential part of a political community.

*

Community jneeting of several thousand,.

Therefore:

Decentralize city governments in a way that gives local control to communities of 5,000 to 10,000 persons. As nearly as possible, use natural geographic and historical boundaries to mark these communities. Give each community the power to initiate, decide, and execute the affairs that con-

The 'problem can only be solved by a kind of barrier zuhich functions as a barrier which separates, and as a seam which joins, at the same time.

A low wall or balustrade, just at the right height for sitting, is perfect. It creates a barrier which separates. But because it invites people to sit on it—invites them to sit first with their legs on one side, then with their legs on top, then to swivel round still further to the other side, or to sit astride it—it also functions as a seam, which makes a positive connection between the two places.

Examples: A low wall with the children’s sandbox on one side, circulation path on the other; low wall at the front of the garden, connecting the house to the public path; a sitting wall that is a retaining wall, with plants on one side, where people can sit close to the flowers and eat their lunch.

Ruskin describes a sitting wall he experienced:

Last summer I was lodging for a little while in a cottage in the country, and in front of my low window there were, first, some beds of daisies, then a row of gooseberry and currant bushes, and then a low wall about three feet above the ground, covered with stone-cress. Outside, a corn-field, with its green ears glistening in the sun, and a field path through it, just past the garden gate. From my window I could see every peasant of the village who passed that way, with basket on arm for market, or spade on shoulder for field. When I was inclined for society, I could lean over my wall, and talk to anybody; when I was inclined for science, I could botanize all along the top of my wall—there were four species of stone-cress alone growing on it; and when I was inclined for exercise, I could jump over my wall, backwards and forwards. That’s the sort of fence to have in a Christian country; not a thing which you can’t walk inside of without making yourself look like a wild beast, nor look at out of your window in the morning without expecting to see somebody impaled upon it in the night. (John Ruskin, The Two Paths, New York: Everyman’s Library, 1907, p. 203.)

Therefore:

Surround any natural outdoor area, and make minor boundaries between outdoor areas with low walls, about 16 inches high, and wide enough to sit on, at least 12 inches wide.

11 26

SITTING WALL

wide top

seat height

Place the walls to coincide with natural seat spots, so that extra benches are not necessary—seat spots (241); make them of brick or tile, if possible—soft tile and brick (248) ; if they separate two areas of slightly different height, pierce them with holes to make them balustrades—ornament (249). Where they are in the sun, and can be large enough, plant flowers in them or against them—raised flowers (245). . . .

1 127

244 CANVAS ROOFS*

H28

. . . around every building there are roof gardens ( i i 8),

ARCADES ( I 19) , PRIVATE TERRACES ON THE STREET ( 140), OUTDOOR ROOMS (163), GALLERY SURROUNDS (166), TRELLISED

walks (174), and window places (180), even small parking lots (103), which all become more subtle and more beautiful with canvas roofs and awnings. And the awnings always help to create filtered light (238).

There is a very special beauty about tents and canvas awnings. The canvas has a softness, a suppleness, which is in harmony with wind and light and sun. A house or any building built with some canvas will touch all the elements more nearly than it can when it is made only with hard conventional materials.

In conventional building, it is easy to think that walls and roofs must either be solid, or missing altogether. But cloth and canvas lie just exactly halfway in between. They are translucent, let a little breeze pass through, and they are very cheap, and easy to roll up and easy to pull down.

We can identify three kinds of places that need these properties:

1. Awnings—sunshades over windows, retractable, and used to filter very bright hot sunlight.

2. Curtains—moveable, half-open walls on outdoor rooms, balconies, and galleries—places that are occupied mainly during the day, but might benefit from extra wind protection.

3. Tent-like roofs on outdoor rooms—a tent which can hold off a drizzle and make outdoor rooms, or trellises, or courtyards habitable in the spring and autumn and at night.

Here is Frank Lloyd Wright describing his use of the canvas roof in the very early structures at Taliesin West:

. . . the Taliesin Fellowship (is a) desert camp on a great Arizona mesa which the boys, together with myself, are now building to work and live in during the winter-time. Many of the building units have canvas tops carried by red-wood framing resting on massive

11 29

CONSTRUCTION

stone walls made by placing- the flat desert stones into wood boxes and throwing in stones and concrete behind them. Most of the canvas frames may be opened or kept closed. . . . The canvas overhead being translucent, there is a very beautiful light to live and work in; I have experienced nothing like it elsewhere except in Japan somewhat, in their houses with sliding- paper walls or “shoji.” {The Future of Architecture, London: The Architectural Press, 1955, pp. 255-5⁶-)

Another example: In Italy, the canvas awning is used quite commonly as a simple awning over south and west windows. The canvas is often a bright and beautiful orange, giving color to the street and a warm glow to the interior rooms.

As a final example, we report on our own use of this pattern

in the housing project in Lima. We roofed interior patios with

movable canvas material. In hot weather the covers arc rolled back,

and a breeze blows through the house. In cold weather, the

canvas is rolled out, sealing the house, and the patio is still

useful. In Lima, there is a winter dew which normally makes

patio floors damp and cold for eight months in the year. The

cover on the patios keeps them dry and warm and triples their

useful life. They eliminate the need for glass windows almost

entirely. The windows which look into patios give light to rooms

and may be curtained for visual control—but since the cold and ✓

damp are kept out by the patio canvas there need be no glass in the windows and no expensive moving parts.

Our fatio covers in Peru.

Therefore:

Build canvas roofs and walls and awnings wherever there are spaces which need softer light or partial shade in sum-

1¹30 244 CANVAS ROOFS

mer, or partial protection from mist and dew in autumn and winter. Build them to fold away, with ropes or wires to pull them, so that they can easily be opened.

•£* 4-^*

Use the canvas awnings, especially, to filter light over those windows which face west and south and glare because they face the sky—filtered light (238). Colored canvas will add special life—ornament (249), warm colors (250). . . •

245 RAISED flowers*

. . . outdoors there are various low walls at sitting height— sitting wall (243) ; terraced gardens, if the garden has a natural slope in it—terraced slope (169); and paths and steps and crinkled building edges—paths and goals (120), stair

SEATS (125), BUILDING EDGE (l6o), GARDEN WALL ( 17 3) -

These are the best spots for flowers, and flowers help to make them beautiful.

Flowers are beautiful along the edges of paths, buildings, outdoor rooms—but it is just in these places that they need the most protection from traffic. Without some pro-tection they cannot easily survive.

Look at the positions that wildflowers take in nature. They are as a rule in protected places when they occur in massive quantities: places away from traffic—often on grassy banks, on corners of fields, against a wall. It is not natural for flowers to grow in bundles like flower beds; they need a place to nestle.

What are the issues?

1. The sun—they need plenty of sun.

2. A position where people can smell and touch them.

3. Protection from stray animals.

4. A position where people see them, either from inside a house or along the paths which they naturally pass coming and going.

Typical flower borders are often too deep and too exposed. And they are so low the flowers are out of reach. Concrete planter boxes made to protect flowers often go to the other extreme. They are so protected that people have no contact with them, except from a distance. This is next to useless. The flowers need to be close, where you can touch them, smell them.

Therefore, instead of putting the flowers in low borders, on the ground, where people walk, or in massive concrete tubs, build them up in low beds, with sitting walls beside them, along the sides of paths, around entrances and edges. Make quite certain

CONSTRUCTION

Raised flowers.

that the flowers are placed in positions where people really can enjoy them—and not simply as ornament: outside favorite windows, along traveled paths, near entrances and round doorways, by outdoor seats.

Therefore:

raised flowers 1-3 feet high

Soften the edges of buildings, paths, and outdoor areas with flowers. Raise the flower beds so that people can touch the flowers, bend to smell them, and sit by them. And build the flower beds with solid edges, so that people can sit on them, among the flowers too.

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246 CLIMBING PLANTS

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cern it closely: land use, housing, maintenance, streets, parks, police, schooling, welfare, neighborhood services.

5-10,000 population
control of local taxes

Separate the communities from one another by means of substantial areas—subculture boundary (13); subdivide each community into 10 or 20 independent neighborhoods, each with a representative on the community council—identifiable neighborhood (14) ; provide a central place where people have a chance to come together—eccentric nucleus (28), promenade (31); and in this central place provide a local town hall, as a focal point for the community’s political activity—local town hall (44). . . .

. . . two earlier patterns can be helped by climbing plants around the building: trellised walk (174) and filtered light (238).

A building finally becomes a part of its surroundings when the plants grow over parts of it as freely as they grow along the ground.

There is no doubt that buildings with roses or vines or honeysuckle growing on them mean much more to us than buildings whose walls are blank and bare. That is reason enough to plant wild clematis around the outside of a building, to make boxes to encourage plants to grow at higher storys, and to make frames and trellises for them to climb on.

We can think of four ways to ground this intuition in function.

1. One argument, consistent with others in the book, is that climbing plants effect a smooth transition between the built and the natural. A sort of blurring of the edges.

2. The quality of light. When the plants grow around the openings of buildings, they create a special kind of filtered light inside. This light is soft, reduces glare, and stark shadows— filtered light (238).

3. The sense of touch. Climbing and hanging plants also give the outside walls a close and subtle texture. The same kind of texture can be achieved in the building materials, but it is uniquely beautiful when it comes from a vine growing across a wall or winding around the eaves of an arcade. Then, the texture invites you to touch and smell it, to pick off a leaf. Perhaps most important, the texture of climbing plants is ever different; it is subtly different from day to day, as the wind and sun play upon it; and it is greatly different from season to season.

4. Tending the plants. When they are well-tended, healthy plants and flowers growing around the windows and out of flower boxes in the upper storys, make the street feel more

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comfortable. They bespeak a social order of some repose within the buildings, and therefore it is comfortable to be on the streets —-one feels at home. It is as if the plants were a gift from the people inside to people on the street.

Therefore:

On sunny walls, train climbing plants to grow up round the openings in the wall—the windows, doors, porches, arcades, and trellises.

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247 PAVING with cracks

BETWEEN THE STONES**

. . . many patterns call for paths and terraces and places where the outdoor areas around a building feel connected to the earth—green streets (51), path shape (121), private TERRACE ON THE STREET (140), OUTDOOR ROOM ( 16 3) , CONNECTION TO THE EARTH (l68), TERRACED SLOPE ( 169) . This

pattern provides a way of building the ground surface that makes these larger patterns come to life.

♦&*

Asphalt and concrete surfaces outdoors are easy to wash down, but they do nothing for us, nothing for the paths, and nothing for the rainwater and plants.

Look at a simple path, made by laying bricks or paving stones directly in the earth, with ample cracks between the stones. It is good to walk on, good for the plants, good for the passage of time, good for the rain. You walk from stone to stone, and feel the earth directly under foot. It does not crack, because as the earth settles, the stones move with the earth and gradually take on a rich uneven character. As time goes by, the very age and history of all the moments on that path are almost recorded in its slight unevenness. Plants and mosses and small flowers grow between the cracks. The cracks also help preserve the delicate ecology of worms and insects and beetles and the variety of plant species. And when it rains, the water goes directly to the ground ; there is no concentrated run-off, no danger of erosion, no loss of water in the ground around the path.

All these are good reasons to set paving stones loosely. As for the flat, smooth, hard concrete and asphalt surfaces, they have almost nothing to recommend them. They are built when people forget these small advantages that come about when paving is made out of individual stones with cracks between the stones.

Therefore:

On paths and terraces, lay paving stones with a i inch crack between the stones, so that grass and mosses and

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small flowers can grow between the stones. Lay the stones directly into earth, not into mortar, and, of course, use no cement or mortar in between the stones.

•$*

Use paving with cracks, to help make paths and terraces which change and show the passage of time and so help people feel the earth beneath their feet—connection to the earth (168); the stones themselves are best if they are simple soft baked tiles— SOFT TILE AND BRICK (248) . . . .

I I4O