A pattern language

248 SOFT TILE AND BRICK

. . . several patterns call for the use of tiles and bricks—

CONNECTION TO THE EARTH ( 168) , GOOD MATERIALS (2O7), FLOOR SURFACE (233), SITTING WALL (243), PAVING WITH CRACKS BETWEEN THE STONES (247).

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How can a person feel the earth, or time, or any connection with his surroundings, when he is walking on the hard mechanical wash-easy surfaces of concrete, asphalt, hard-fired architectural paving bricks, or artificially concocted mixes like terrazo.

It is essential, above all, that the ground level surfaces we walk on—both around our buildings and indoors in those places like passages and kitchens where the floor has to be hard—be soft enough, at least, to show the passage of time, in gradual undulations and unevenness, that tell the story of a thousand passing feet, and make it clear that buildings are like people—not impervious and alien, but alive, changing with time, remembering the paths which people tread.

Nothing shows the passage of time so well as very soft, baked or lightly fired, bricks and tiles. They are among the cheapest tiles that can be made; they use ordinary clay, are biodegradable, and always develop a beautiful sense of wear and time in the undulations made by people walking over them.

In addition, those paved areas around a building required by connection to the earth (168) play a special role. They are the places which are halfway between the building—with its artificial materials—and the earth—which is entirely natural. To make this connection felt, the materials themselves must also be halfway, in character, between the building and the earth. Again, soft, lightly fixed tiles are most appropriate.

We consider this so important, that we advocate, specifically, that the people who are making the building, make the quantity of bricks and tiles they need for ground floor and outdoor surfaces—and that these be made in local clay and soft fired, in stacks, right on the site.

It is easy to do. We shall now give detailed instructions for making the tiles themselves and for making a rudimentary outdoor firing pit.

We start with the clay: it would be best to make one’s own clay from scratch.

Clay is decomposed feldspathic rock. There is an abundance of it all over the earth. One may be fortunate enough to find it in one’s back yard.

To test whether it is clay, pick up a bit of it and wet it. If it is plastic and sticky enough to form a smooth ball, it is clay. . . ,

Process the clay as follows:

1. First, remove impurities such as twigs, leaves, roots and stones.

2. Then, let the chunks dry in the sun.

3. Break up these chunks and grind them up as finely as possible.

4. Put this ground-up clay in water so that there is a mound above water.

5. Let this mixture soak for one day, then stir it, and sieve it through a screen.

6. Let stand again for another day, and remove excess water.

7. Then put the clay in a plaster container; plaster absorbs water, thus stiffening the mixture into workable clay.

&. Work the clay a little to test it. If cracks appear, it is “short”; when that happens, add to the mixture, up to 7% bentonite. If clay is too plastic, add “grog.” . . .

Shrinkage may be decreased by adding flint or grog to the clay. Grog is clay that has been biscuit-fired and then crushed. Some people prepare their own grog from broken biscuit-fired pieces. It can be bought at very little cost at any supply company in varying degrees of fineness. The coarser the particles of grog added to the clay, the coarser the texture of the fired object will be.

Grog makes clay porous and is used for objects which are not intended to hold water. Grog also prevents warpage and is, therefore, very useful for tile making and for sculpture. 20% is a good proportion of grog in a clay mixture.

(Muriel Pargh Turoff, How to Make Pottery and Other Ceramic Ware, New York: Crown Publishers, 1949, p. 13.)

Once you have the clay, you can make the tiles.

In this method of tile making, a wooden form is used that has the dimensions desired for the finished tiles. It is put together by

I I 42 24-8 SOFT TILE AND BRICK

nailing four strips of wood to a smooth piece of board. The strips should be i inch wide and their height may vary from inch to 24 inch, depending on how thick you wish the finished tiles to be. It is a good plan to put a piece of oilcloth on the base board before nailing down the strips. This will keep the board from warping. . . .

Roll out a slab of clay. . . . Then cut from the slab a piece that will fit comfortably into the form and roll it down with a rolling pin. Do not roll the pin all the way across the surface of the clay, but work from the center outwards to all four sides. . . . Let the tile dry until it is leather-hard j then separate it from the form by running a knife around its edges. . . .

Clay tiles should be allowed to dry very slowly, and for this reason should be put in a cool place. If they dry too quickly under heat, they are apt to crack or warp. The edges have a tendency to dry more rapidly than the center and usually should be dampened from time to time to prevent this. (Joseph Leeming, Fun With Clay, Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company.)

To fire soft tiles and bricks, it is not necessary to build real kilns. They can be fired in open pits much like those which primitive potters used to fire their pottery. This type of open pit firing is described in detail by Daniel Rhodes, in Kilns: Design, Construction and Oferatio?i_y Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company. Briefly:

Dig a shallow pit about 14 to 20 inches deep, and several square feet in area. Line this pit (bottom and sides) with branches, reeds, twigs, etc. Place the tiles and bricks to be fired on the lining, so that they are compactly piled with just a tiny bit of airspace between them—(they can be criss-crossed). ... If you use old tiles to line the pit, it will keep the heat in even better; and air holes low down at one end will help combustion. . . , Put some fuel in between stacks and over them. Then light the fuel in the pit, and allow it to burn slowly—which it will to begin with because not much air can get to it. Pile more fuel on as the fire burns up to a level above the pit. After the entire pit and its contents reach red heat, allow the fire to die down, and cover the top of the fire with wet leaves, dung or ashes to retain the heat. After the fire has died down, and the embers cooled, the tiles can be removed.

A simple kiln.

CONSTRUCTION

Therefore:

Use bricks and tiles which are soft baked, low fired—so that they will wear with time, and show the marks of use.

You can make them in a simple mold from local clay, right on the site; surround the stack with twigs and firewood; and fire them, to a soft pink color which will leave them soft enough to wear with time.

The soft pink color helps to create warm colors (250). Before firing, you may want to give the tiles some ornament (249). . . .

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complete the building zvith ornament and light and color and your own things.

249. ORNAMENT

250. WARM COLORS

251. DIFFERENT CHAIRS

252. POOLS OF LIGHT

253. THINGS FROM YOUR LIFE

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I 3 SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY*

75

249 ORNAMENT**

I 146

. . . once buildings and gardens are finished; walls, columns, windows, doors, and surfaces are in place; boundaries and edges and transitions are defined—main entrance (iio), building

EDGE (160), CONNECTION TO THE EARTH ( 168) , GARDEN WALL ( ¹ 7 3) > WINDOW PLACE (l8o), CORNER DOORS ( I 96) , FRAMES AS THICKENED EDGES (225), COLUMN PLACE (226), COLUMN CONNECTION (227), ROOF CAPS (232), SOFT INSIDE WALLS (235), sitting wall (243), and so on—it is time to put in the finishing touches, to fill the gaps, to mark the boundaries, by making ornament.

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All people have the instinct to decorate their surroundings.

But decorations and ornaments will only work when they are properly made: for ornaments and decorations are not only born from the natural exuberance and love for something happy in a building; they also have a function, which is as clear, and definite as any other function in a building. The joy and exuberance of carvings and color will only work, if they are made in harmony with this function. And, further, the function is a necessary one —the ornaments are not just optional additions which may, or may not be added to a building, according as the spirit moves you—a building needs them, just as much as it needs doors and windows.

In order to understand the function of ornament, we must begin by understanding the nature of space in general. Space, when properly formed, is whole. Every part of it, every part of a town, a neighborhood, a building, a garden, or a room, is whole, in the sense that it is both an integral entity, in itself, and at the same time, joined to some other entities to form a larger whole. This process hinges largely on the boundaries, ft is no accident that so many of the patterns in this pattern language concern the importance of the boundaries between things, as places that are as important as the things themselves—for ex-

1147

CONSTRUCTION

ample, subculture boundary (13), neighborhood boundary

(15), ARCADES (119), BUILDING EDGE (l6o), GALLERY SURROUND (l66), CONNECTION TO THE EARTH ( 168) , HALF-OPEN WALLS (193), THICK WALLS ( I 97) j FRAMES AS THICKENED EDGES (225), HALF-INCH TRIM (240), SITTING WALL (243).

A thing is whole only when it is itself entire and also joined to its outside to form a larger entity. But this can only happen when the boundary between the two is so thick, so fleshy, so ambiguous, that the two are not sharply separated, but can function either as separate entities or as one larger whole which has no inner cleavage in it.

In the left-hand diagram where there is a cleavage that is sharp, the thing and its outside are distinct entities—they function individually as wholes—but they do not function together as a larger whole. In this case the world is split. In the right-hand diagram where there is ambiguous space between them, the two entities are individually entire, as before, but they are also entire together as a larger whole. In this case the world is whole.

This principle extends throughout the material universe, from the largest organic structures in our surroundings, to the very atoms and molecules.

Extreme examples of this principle at work in manmade objects arc in the endless surfaces of objects from the so-called “dark ages” and in the carpets and tilework of Turkey and Persia. Leaving aside the profound meaning of these “ornaments,” it is a fact that they function mainly by creating surfaces in which each part is simultaneously figure and boundary and in which the design acts as boundary and figure at several different levels simultaneouslv.

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1 148

249 ORNAMENT

A decoration which is y because it cannot be broken into farts.

Since none of the parts can be separated from their surroundings, because each part acts as figure and as boundary, at several levels, this ancient carpet is whole, to an extraordinary degree.

The main purpose of ornament in the environment—in buildings, rooms, and -public spaces-—is to vuike the world more whole by knitting it together in precisely the same zvay this carpet does it.

If the patterns in this language are used correctly, then these unifying boundaries will already come into existence without ornament at almost all the scales where they are necessary in spaces and materials. It will happen in the large spaces, like the entrance transition or the building edge. And, of course, it happens of its own accord, in those smaller structures which occur within the materials themselves—in the fibers of wood, in the grain of brick and stone. But there is an intermediate range of scales, a twilight zone, where it will not happen of its own accord. It is in this range of scales that ornament fills the gap.

As far as specific ways of doing it are concerned, there are hundreds, of course. In this balustrade the ornament is made entirely of the boundary, of the space between the boards. The boards are cut in such a way, that when they are joined together in the fence, they make something of the space between them.

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CONSTRUCTION

... A balustrade.

Here is a more complicated case—the entrance to a Romanesque church.

The ornament is built up around the edge of the entrance. It creates a unifying seam between the entrance sface and the stone. Without the ornament, there would be a gap between the arch of the entry and the passage itself: the ornament works on the seam, between the two, and holds them together. It is especially lavish and developed in this place, because just this seam—the boundary of the entrance to the church—is so important, symbolically, to the people who worship there.

In fact, doors and windows are always important for ornament, because they are places of connection between the elements of buildings and the life in and around them. It is very likely that we shall find a concentration of ornament at the edges of doors and windows, as people try to tie together these edges with the space around them.

I I 50

249 ORNAMENT
Nubian door.

And exactly the same happens at hundreds of other places in the environment; in rooms, around our houses, in the kitchen, on a wall, along the surface of a path, on tops of roofs, around a column—in fact, anywhere at all where there are edges between things which are imperfectly knit together, where materials or objects meet, and where they change.

Early American stencilling.

Most generally of all, the thing that makes the difference in the use of ornament is the eye for the significant gap in the continuum; the place where the continuous fabric of interlock and connectivity is broken. When ornament is applied badly it is always put into some place where these connections are not really missing, so it is superfluous, frivolous. When it is well used, it is always applied in a place where there is a genuine gap, a need for a little more structure, a need for what we may call metaphorically “some extra binding energy,” to knit the stuff together where it is too much apart.

Therefore: