A

PATTERN
LANGUAGE
TOWNS • BUILDINGS • CONSTRUCTION

Chris top her Alexander

Sara Ishikawa Murray Silverstein

with
Max Jacobson Ingrid Fiksdahl-King Shlomo Angel

NEW YORK

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1 977
 Copyright e 1977 by Christopher Alexander
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 74-22874
ISBN-13 978-0-19-S01919-3

printing, last digit: 40 39 38 37 36 35 34

Printedin the United States of America
on acid-freepaper
 CONTENTS

USING THIS BOOK

A pattern language ix
Summary of the language xvm
Choosing a language for your project xxxv
The poetry of the language xl

TOWNS

Using the language 3

Patterns 10-457

BUILDINGS

Using the language 463

Patterns 467-93 I

CONSTRUCT ION

Using the language 935

Patterns 939-1166

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I I 67
USING THIS BOOK
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

Volume 1, The Timeless Way of Building, and Volume

2, A Pattern Language, are two halves of a single work.
This book provides a language, for building and plan-
ning; the other book provides the theory and instruc-
tions for the use of the language. This book describes the
detailed patterns for towns and neighborhoods, houses,
gardens, and rooms. The other book explains the disci-
pline which makes it possible to use these patterns to
create a building or a town. This book is the sourcebook of
the timeless way; the other is its practice and its origin.
The two books have evolved very much in parallel.
They have been growing over the last eight years, as
we have worked on the one hand to understand the
nature of the building process, and on the other hand to
construct an actual, possible pattern language. We have
been forced by practical considerations, to publish these
two books under separate covers; but in fact, they form
an indivisible whole. It is possible to read them sepa-
rately. But to gain the insight which we have tried to
communicate in them, it is essential that you read them
both.
The Timeless Way of Building describes the funda-
mental nature of the task of making towns and buildings.

lX
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

It is shown there, that towns and buildings will not be

able to become alive, unless they are made by all the
people in society, and unless these people share a com-
mon pattern language, within which to make these
buildings, and unless this common pattern language is
alive itself.
In this book, we present one possible pattern language,
of the kind called for in The Timeless Way. This lan-
guage is extremely practical. It is a language that we
have distilled from our own building and planning ef-
forts over the last eight years. You can use it to work
with your neighbors, to improve your town and neighbor-
hood. You can use it to design a house for yourself,
with your family; or to work with other people to de-
sign an office or a workshop or a public building like a
school. And you can use it to guide you in the actual
process of construction.
The elements of this language are entities called pat-
terns. Each pattern describes a problem which occurs
over and over again in our environment, and then
describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such
a way that you can use this solution a million times over,
without ever doing it the same way twice.
For convenience and clarity, each pattern has the same
format. First, there is a picture, which shows an arche-
typal example of that pattern. Second, after the picture,
each pattern has an introductory paragraph, which sets
the context for the pattern, by explaining how it helps
to complete certain larger patterns. Then there are three
diamonds to mark the beginning of the problem. After
the diamonds there is a headline, in bold type. This

X
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

headline gives the essence of the problem in one or two

sentences. After the headline comes the body of the
problem. This is the longest section. It describes the
empirical background of the pattern, the evidence for its
validity, the range of different ways the pattern can be
manifested in a building, and so on. Then, again in
bold type, like the headline, is the solution-the heart
of the pattern-which describes the field of physical and
social relationships which are required to solve the stated
problem, in the stated context. This solution is always
stated in the form of an instruction-so that you know
exactly what you need to do, to build the pattern. Then,
after the solution, there is a diagram, which shows the
solution in the form of a diagram, with labels to indicate
its main components.
After the diagram, another three diamonds, to show
that the main body of the pattern is finished. And finally,
after the diamonds there is a paragraph which ties the
pattern to all those smaller patterns in the language,
which are needed to complete this pattern, to embellish
it, to fill it out.
There are two essential purposes behind this format.
First, to present each pattern connected to other patterns,
so that you grasp the collection of all 253 patterns as a
whole, as a language, within which you can create an in-
finite variety of combinations. Second, to present the
problem and solution of each pattern in such a way that
you can judge it for yourself, and modify it, without
losing the essence that is central to it.
Let us next understand the nature of the connection
between patterns.

XI
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

The patterns are ordered, beginning with the very

largest, for regions and towns, then working down
through neighborhoods, clusters of buildings, buildings,
rooms and alcoves, ending finally with details of con-
struction.
This order, which is presented as a straight linear
sequence, is essential to the way the language works. It is
presented, and explained more fully, in the next section.
What is most important about this sequence, is that it is
based on the connections between the patterns. Each
pattern is connected to certain "larger" patterns which
come above it in the language; and to certain "smaller"
patterns which come below it in the language. The pat-
tern helps to complete those larger patterns which are
"above" it, and is itself completed by those smaller pat-
terns which are "below" it.
Thus, for example, you will find that the pattern AC-
CESSIBLE GREEN ( 60), is connected first to certain larger
patterns: SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY ( 13), IDENTIFIABLE
NEIGHBORHOOD ( 14), WORK COMMUNITY (41 ), and
QUIET BACKS ( 59). These appear on its first page. And it
is also connected to certain smaller patterns: POSITIVE
OUTDOOR SPACE (107), TREE PLACES (171), and GARDEN
w ALL ( 1 73). These appear on its last page.
What this means, is that IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBOR-
HOOD, SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY, WORK COMMUNITY, and
QUIET BACKS are incomplete, unless they contain an AC-
CESSIBLE GREEN; and that an ACCESSIBLE GREEN is itself
incomplete, unless it contains POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE,
TREE PLACES, and a GARDEN WALL.
And what it means in practical terms is that, if you

XII
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

want to lay out a green according to this pattern, you

must not only follow the instructions which describe the
pattern itself, but must also try to embed the green
within an IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD or in some SUB-
CULTURE BOUNDARY, and in a way that helps to form
QUIET BACKS; and then you must work to complete the
green by building in some POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE,
TREE PLACES, and a GARDEN WALL.
In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern
can exist in the world, only to the extent that is sup-
ported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it
is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround
it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.
This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that
when you build a thing you cannot merely build that
thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around
it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one
place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the
thing which you make takes its place in the web of na-
ture, as you make it.
Now we explain the nature of the relation between
problems and solutions, within the individual patterns.
Each solution is stated in such a way that it gives the
essential field of relationships needed to solve the prob-
lem, but in a very general and abstract way-so that you
can solve the problem for yourself, in your own way, by
adapting it to your preferences, and the local conditions
at the place where you are making it.
For this reason, we have tried to write each solution
in a way which imposes nothing on you. It contains only
those essentials which cannot be avoided if you really

xiii
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

want to solve the problem. In this sense, we have tried,

in each solution, to capture the invariant property com-
mon to all places which succeed in solving the problem.
But of course, we have not always succeeded. The
solutions we have given to these problems vary in signifi-
cance. Some are more true, more profound, more cer-
tain, than others. To show this clearly we have marked
every pattern, in the text itself, with two asterisks, or one
asterisk, or no asterisks.
In the patterns marked with two asterisks, we believe
that we have succeeded in stating a true invariant: in
short, that the solution we have stated summarizes a
property common to all possible ways of solving the
stated problem. In these two-asterisk cases we believe,
in short, that it is not possible to solve the stated prob-
lem properly, without shaping the environment in one
way or another according to the pattern that we have
given-and that, in these cases, the pattern describes
a deep and inescapable property of a well-formed en-
vironment.
In the patterns marked with one asterisk, we believe
that we have made some progress towards identifying
such an invariant: but that with careful work it will
certainly be possible to improve on the solution. In
these cases, we believe it would be wise for you to treat
the pattern with a certain amount of disrespect-and
that you seek out variants of the solution which we have
given, since there are almost certainly possible ranges of
solutions which are not covered by what we have written.
Finally, in the patterns without an asterisk, we are
certain that we have not succeeded in defining a true
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

invariant-that, on the contrary, there are certainly ways

of solving the problem different from the one which we
have given. In these cases we have still stated a solution,
in order to be concrete-to provide the reader with at
least one way of solving the problem-but the task of
finding the true invariant, the true property which lies
at the heart of all possible solutions to this problem, re-
mains undone.
We hope, of course, that many of the people who
read, and use this language, will try to improve these
patterns-will put their energy to work, in this task of
finding more true, more profound invariants-and we
hope that gradually these more true patterns, which are
slowly discovered, as time goes on, will enter a common
language, which all of us can share.
You see then that the patterns are very much alive
and evolving. In fact, if you like, each pattern may be
looked upon as a hypothesis like one of the hypotheses of
science. In this sense, each pattern represents our current
best guess as to what arrangement of the physical envi-
ronment will work to solve the problem presented. The
empirical questions center on the problem-does it occur
and is it felt in the way we have described it?-and the
solution-does the arrangement we propose in fact re-
solve the problem? And the asterisks represent our
degree of faith in these hypotheses. But of course, no
matter what the asterisks say, the patterns are still
hypotheses, all 253 of them-and are therefore all
tentative, all free to evolve under the impact of new
experience and observation.
Let us finally explain the status of this language, why
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

we have called it "A Pattern Language" with the em-

phasis on the word "A," and how we imagine this pat-
tern language might be related to the countless thou-
sands of other languages we hope that people will make
for themselves, in the future.
The Timeless Way of Building says that every society
which is alive and whole, will have its own unique and
distinct pattern language; and further, that every in-
dividual in such a society will have a unique language,
shared in part, but which as a totality is unique to the
mind of the person who has it. In this sense, in a healthy
society there will be as many pattern languages as there
are people-even though these languages are shared and
similar.
The question then arises: What exactly is the status
of this published language? In what frame of mind, and
with what intention, are we publishing this language
here? The fact that it is published as a book means that
many thousands of people can use it. Is it not true that
there is a danger that people might come to rely on this
one printed language, instead of developing their own
languages, in their own minds/
The fact is, that we have written this book as a first
step in the society-wide process by which people will
gradually become conscious of their own pattern lan-
guages, and work to improve them. We believe, and
have explained in The Timeless Way of Building, that
the languages which people have today are so brutal, and
so fragmented, that most people no longer have any
language to speak of at all-and what they do have is
not based on human, or natural considerations.

XVI
 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

We have spent years trying to formulate this lan-

guage, in the hope that when a person uses it, he will
be so impressed by its power, and so joyful in its use,
that he will understand again, what it means to have a
living language of this kind. If we only succeed in that,
it is possible that each person may once again embark on
the construction and development of his own language-
perhaps taking the language printed in this book, as a
point of departure.
And yet, we do believe, of course, that this language
which is printed here is something more than a manual,
or a teacher, or a version of a possible pattern language.
Many of the patterns here are archetypal-so deep, so
deeply rooted in the nature of things, that it seems likely
that they will be a part of human nature, and human ac-
tion, as much in five hundred years, as they are today.
We doubt very much whether anyone could construct
a valid pattern language, in his own mind, which did
not include the pattern ARCADES ( I 19) for example, or
the pattern ALCOVES ( 1 79).
In this sense, we have also tried to penetrate, as deep
as we are able, into the nature of things in the environ-
ment: and hope that a great part of this language, which
we print here, will be a core of any sensible human pat-
tern language, which any person constructs for himself,
in his own mind. In this sense, at least a part of the
language we have presented here, is the archetypal core
of all possible pattern languages, which can make people
feel alive and human.

XVII
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

A pattern language has the structure of a network. This

is explained fully in The Timeless Way of Building.
However, when we use the network of a language, we
always use it as a sequence, going through the patterns,
moving always from the larger patterns to the smaller,
always from the ones which create structures, to the ones
which then embellish those structures, and then to those
which embellish the embellishments ....
Since the language is in truth a network, there is no
one sequence which perfectly captures it. But the se-
quence which follows, captures the broad sweep of the
full network; in doing so, it follows a line, dips down,
dips up again, and follows an irregular course, a little
like a needle following a tapestry.
The sequence of patterns is both a summary of the
language, and at the same time, an index to the patterns.
If you read through the sentences which connect the
groups of patterns to one another, you will get an over-
view of the whole language. And once you get this over-
view, you will then be able to find the patterns which
are relevant to your own project.
And finally, as we shall explain in the next section,
this sequence of patterns is also the "base map," from

XVIII
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

which you can make a language for your own project,

by choosing the patterns which are most useful to you,
and leaving them more or less in the order that you
find them printed here.

We begin with that part of the language which defines

a town or community. These patterns can never be "de-
signed" or "built" in one fell swoop-but patient piece-
meal growth, designed in such a way that every indi-
vidual act is always helping to create or generate these
larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the
years, make a community that has these global patterns
in it.

I. INDEPENDENT REGIONS

within each region work toward those regional policies

which will protect the land and mark the limits of the
cities;
2. THE DISTRIBUTION OF TOWNS

J. CITY COUNTRY FINGERS

4. AGRICULTURAL VALLEYS

5. LACE OF COUNTRY STREETS

6. COUNTRY TOWNS

7. THE COUNTRYSIDE

XIX
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

through city policies, encourage the piecemeal forma-

tion of those major structures which define the city;
8. MOSAIC OF SUBCULTURES

9. SCATTERED WORK

IO. MAGIC OF THE CITY

I I. LOCAL TRANSPORT AREAS

build up these larger city patterns from the grass roots,

through action essentially controlled by two levels of
self-governing communities, which exist as physically
identifiable places;
I 2. COMMUNITY OF 7000
IJ. SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY

14. IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD

15. NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY

connect communities to one another by encouraging the

growth of the following networks;
16. WEB OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

I7. RING ROADS

I 8. NETWORK OF LEARNING

19. WEB OF SHOPPING

20. MINI-BUSES

establish community and neighborhood policy to con-

trol the character of the local environment according to
the following fundamental principles;
21. FOUR-STORY LIMIT
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

22. NINE PER CENT PARKING

23. PARALLEL ROADS

24. SACRED SITES

25. ACCESS TO WATER

26. LIFE CYCLE

27. MEN AND WOMEN

both in the neighborhoods and the communities, and in

between them, in the boundaries, encourage the forma-
tion of local centers;
28. ECCENTRIC NUCLEUS

29. DENSITY RINGS

30. ACTIVITY NODES

JI. PROMENADE

32. SHOPPING STREET

33. NIGHT LIFE

34. INTERCHANGE

around these centers, provide for the growth of housing

in the form of clusters, based on face-to-face human
groups;
35. HOUSEHOLD MIX

36. DEGREES OF PUBLICNESS

37• HOUSE CLUSTER

38. ROW HOUSES

39• HOUSING HILL

40. OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

xxi
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

between the house clusters, around the centers, and

especially in the boundaries between neighborhoods, en-
courage the formation of work communities;
4I. WORK COMMUNITY

42. INDUSTRIAL RIBBON

43. UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

44. LOCAL TOWN HALL

45. NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

46. MARKET OF MANY SHOPS

47. HEALTH CENTER

48. HOUSING IN BETWEEN

between the house clusters and work communities, allow

the local road and path network to grow informally,
piecemeal;
49. LOOPED LOCAL ROADS

50. T JUNCTIONS

51. GREEN STREETS

52. NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS

53. MAIN GATEWAYS

54. ROAD CROSS! NG

55. RAISED WALK

56. BIKE PATHS AND RACKS

57. CHILDREN IN THE CITY

XXll
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

m the communities and neighborhoods, provide public

open land where people can relax, rub shoulders and
renew themselves;
58. CARNIVAL

59. QUIET BACKS

60. ACCESSIB-LE GREEN

61. SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES

62. HIGH PLACES

63. DANCING IN THE STREET

64. POOLS AND STREAMS

65. BIRTH PLACES

66. HOLY GROUND

in each house cluster and work community, provide the

smaller bits of common land, to provide for local ver-
sions of the same needs;
67. COMMON LAND

68. CONNECTED PLAY

69. PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM

70. GRAVE SITES

7 I. STILL WATER

72. LOCAL SPORTS

73. ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND

74. ANIMALS

within the framework of the common land, the clusters,

and the work communities encourage transformation of

XXIII
 SUM MARY OF THE LANGUAGE

the smallest independent social institutions: the families,

workgroups, and gathering places. The family, in all its
forms;
75. THE FAMILY

76. HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY

77. HOUSE FOR A COUPLE

78. HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON

79. YOUR OWN HOME

the workgroups, including all kinds of workshops and

offices and even children's learning groups;
80. SELF-GOVERNING WORKSHOPS

AND OFFICES

8 I. SMALL SERVICES WITHOUT RED TAPE

82. OFFICE CONNECTIONS

83. MASTER AND APPRENTICES

84. TEENAGE SOCIETY

85. SH OPFRONT SCHOOLS

86. CHILDREN'S HOME

the local shops and gathering places.

87. INDIVIDUALLY OWNED SHOPS

88. STREET CAFE

89. CORNER GROCERY

90. BEER HALL

91. TRAVELER'S INN

92. BUS STOP

XXIV
1
SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

93· FOOD STANDS

94. SLEEPING IN PUBLIC

This completes the global patterns which define a

town or a community. We now start that part of the
language which gives shape to groups of buildings, and
individual buildings, on the land, in three dimensions.
These are the patterns which can be "designed" or
"built"-the patterns which define the individual build-
ings and the space between buildings; where we are deal-
ing for the first time with patterns that are under the
control of individuals or small groups of individuals,
who are able to build the patterns all at once.

The first group of patterns helps to lay out the overall

arrangement of a group of buildings: the height and
number of these buildings, the entrances to the site, main
parking areas, and lines of movement through the com-
plex;
95. BUILDING COMPLEX

96. NUMBER OF STORIES

97. SHIELDED PARKING

98. CIRCULATION REALMS

99. MAIN BUILDING

100. PEDESTRIAN STREET

IOI. BUILDING THOROUGHFARE

102. FAMILY OF ENTRANCES

103. SMALL PARKING LOTS

XXV
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

fix the position of individual buildings on the site, within

the complex, one by one, according to the nature of the
site, the trees, the sun: this is one of the most important
moments in the language;
104. SITE REPAIR

105. SOUTH FACING OUTDOORS

106. POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE

107. WINGS OF LIGHT

108. CONNECTED BUILDINGS

109. LONG THIN HOUSE

within the buildings' wings, lay out the entrances, the

gardens, courtyards, roofs, and terraces: shape both the
volume of the buildings and the volume of the space be-
tween the buildings at the same time-remembering
that indoor space and outdoor space, yin and yang, must
always get their shape together;
l IO. MAIN ENTRANCE

l l I. HALF-HIDDEN GARDEN

II2. ENTRANCE TRANSITION

l l 3. CAR CONNECTION

II4. HIERARCHY OF OPEN SPACE

l l 5. COURTYARDS WHICH LIVE

II6. CASCADE OF ROOFS

II7. SHELTERING ROOF

II8. ROOF GARDEN

XXVI
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

when the major parts of buildings and the outdoor areas

have been given their rough shape, it is the right time to
give more detailed attention to the paths and squares
between the buildings;
l 19. ARCADES

120. PATHS AND GOALS

l 2 I. PATH SHAPE

122. BUILDING FRONTS

l 23. PEDESTRIAN DENSITY

124. ACTIVITY POCKETS

125. STAIR SEATS

126. SOMETHING ROUGHLY IN THE

MIDDLE

now, with the paths fixed, we come back to the build-

ings: within the various wings of any one building, work
out the fundamental gradients of space, and decide how
the movement will connect the spaces in the gradients;
l 2 7. INTI MACY GRADIENT

128. INDOOR SUNLIGHT

129. COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART

l 30. ENTRANCE ROOM

I3I. THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS

132. SHORT PASSAGES

133. STAIRCASE AS A STAGE

I 34. ZEN VIEW

135. TAPESTRY OF LIGHT AND DARK

XXVll
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

within the framework of the wings and their internal

gradients of space and movement, define the most im-
portant areas and rooms. First, for a house;
136. COUPLE'S REALM

I 3 7. CHI LDREN's REALM

138. SLEEPING TO THE EAST

139. FARMHOUSE KITCHEN

140. PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET

l4I. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

142. SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES

143. BED CLUSTER

144. BATHING ROOM

145. BULK STORAGE

then the same for offices, workshops, and public build-

mgs;
146. FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE

147. COMMUNAL EATING

148. SMALL WORK GROUPS

149- RECEPTION WELCOMES YOU

150. A PLACE TO WAIT

151. SMALL MEETING ROOMS

152. HALF-PRIVATE OFFICE

add those small outbuildings which must be slightly in-

dependent from the main structure, and put in the access
from the upper stories to the street and gardens;

xxviii
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

153- ROOMS TO RENT

154. TEENAGER'S COTTAGE

155. OLD AGE COTTAGE

156. SETTLED WORK

157• HOME WORKSHOP

158. OPEN STAIRS

prepare to knit the inside of the building to the outside,

by treating the edge between the two as a place in its own
right, and making human details there;
159. LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM

I 60. BUILDING EDGE

I 6 l. SUNNY PLACE

I 62. NORTH FACE

I 63. OUTDOOR ROOM

164. STREET WINDOWS

165. OPENING TO THE STREET

I 66. GALLERY SURROUND

167. SIX-FOOT BALCONY

168. CONNECTION TO THE EARTH

decide on the arrangement of the gardens, and the places

in the gardens;
I 69. TERRACED SLOPE

I 70. FRUIT TREES

I 7I. TREE PLACES

xxix
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

172. GARDEN GROWING WILD

173· GARDEN WALL

174, TRELLISED WALK

175. GREENHOUSE

176. GARDEN SEAT

177. VEGETABLE GARDEN

178. COMPOST

go back to the inside of the building and attach the neces-

sary rumor rooms and alcoves to complete the main
rooms;
179· ALCOVES

180. WINDOW PLACE

I 8 I. THE FIRE

I 82. EATING ATMOSPHERE

I 83. WORKSPACE ENCLOSURE

184. COOKING LAYOUT

I 85. SITTING CIRCLE

186. COMMUNAL SLEEPING

I 87. MARRIAGE BED

I 88. BED ALCOVE

I 89. DRESSING ROOM

fine tune the shape and size of rooms and alcoves to

make them precise and buildable;
190. CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

I 91. THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE

192. WINDOWS OVERLOOKING LIFE

r93. HALF-OPEN WALL

194· INTERIOR WINDOWS

r95. STAIRCASE VOLUME

196. CORNER DOORS

give all the walls some depth, wherever there are to be

alcoves, windows, shelves, closets, or seats;
197· THICK WALLS

I 98. CLOSETS BETWEEN ROOMS

r99. SUNNY COUNTER

200. OPEN SHELVES

201. WAIST-HIGH SHELF

202. BUILT-IN SEATS

203. CHILD CAVES

204. SECRET PLACE

At this stage, you have a complete design for an in-

dividual building. If you have followed the patterns
given, you have a scheme of spaces, either marked on
the ground, with stakes, or on a piece of paper, accurate
to the nearest foot or so. You know the height of rooms,
the rough size and position of windows and doors, and
you know roughly how the roofs of the building, and
the gardens are laid out.
The next, and last part of the language, tells how to

XXXI
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

make a buildable building directly from this rough

scheme of spaces, and tells you how to build it, in detail.

Before you lay out structural details, establish a

philosophy of structure which will let the structure grow
directly from your plans and your conception of the
buildings;
205. STRUCTURE FOLLOWS SOCIAL SPACES

206. EFFICIENT STRUCTURE

207, GOOD MATERIALS

208. GRADUAL STIFFENING

within this philosophy of structure, on the basis of the

plans which you have made, work out the complete
structural layout; this is the last thing you do on paper,
before you actually start to build;
209. ROOF LAYOUT

210. FLOOR AND CEILING LAYOUT

21 I. THICKENING THE OUTER WALLS

212. COLUMNS AT THE CORNERS

21J, FINAL COLUMN DISTRIBUTION

put stakes in the ground to mark the columns on the site,

and start erecting the main frame of the building accord-
ing to the layout of these stakes;
214. ROOT FOUNDATIONS

215. GROUND FLOOR SLAB

216. BOX COLUMNS

XXXII
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

217, PERIMETER BEAMS

2!8. WALL MEMBRANES

219, FLOOR-CEILING VAULTS

220. ROOF VAULTS

within the main frame of the building, fix the exact po-
sitions for openings-the doors and windows-and frame
these openings;
22!. NATURAL DOORS AND WINDOWS

222. LOW SILL

223, DEEP REVEALS

224, LOW DOORWAY

225, FRAMES AS THICKENED EDGES

as you build the main frame and its openings, put in the
following s~bsidiary patterns where they are appropriate;
226. COLUMN PLACE

227. COLUMN CONNECTION

228. STAIR VAULT

229. DUCT SPACE

230. RADIANT HEAT

231. DORMER WINDOWS

232. ROOF CAPS

put in the surfaces and indoor details;

233. FLOOR SURFACE

234. LAPPED OUTSIDE WALLS

xxxiii
 SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

235• SOFT INSIDE WALLS

236. WINDOWS WHICH OPEN WIDE

237· SOLID DOORS WITH GLASS

238. FILTERED LIGHT

239· SMALL PANES

240. HALF-INCH TRIM

build outdoor details to finish the outdoors as fully as

the indoor spaces;
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

complete the building with ornament and light and color

and your own things;
2 49· ORNAMENT

250. WARM COLORS

251. DIFFERENT CHAIRS

252. POOLS OF LIGHT

2 53• THINGS FROM YOUR LIFE

XXXIV
 CHOOSING A LANGUAGE
FOR YOUR PROJECT

All 2 5 3 patterns together form a language. They create

a coherent picture of an entire region, with the power
to generate such regions in a million forms, with in-
finite variety in all the details.
It is also true that any small sequence of patterns from
this language is itself a language for a smaller part of
the environment; and this small list of patterns is then
capable of generating a million parks, paths, houses,
workshops, or gardens.
For example, consider the following ten patterns:
PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET (140)
SUNNY PLACE (161)
OUTDOOR ROOM ( 163)
SIX-FOOT BALCONY ( I 67)
PATHS AND GOALS (120)
CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY (190)
COLUMNS AT THE CORNERS (212)
FRONT DOOR BENCH (242)
RAISED FLOWERS ( 245)
DIFFERENT CHAIRS ( 2 5 l)
This short list of patterns is itself a language: it is one
of a thousand possible languages for a porch, at the front
of a house. One of us chose this small language, to build

XXXV
 CHOOSING A LANGUAGE FOR YOUR SUBJECT

a porch onto the front of his house. This is the way the
language, and its patterns, helped to generate this porch.

I started with PR TVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET ( I 40). That

pattern calls for a terrace, slightly raised, connected to the house,
and on the street side. SUNNY PLACE ( 16 I) suggests that a special
place on the sunny side of the yard should be intensified and
made into a place by the use of a patio, balcony, outdoor room,
etc. I used these two patterns to locate a raised platform on the
south side of the house.
To make this platform into an OUTDOOR ROOM (163), I put
it half under the existing roof overhang, and kept a mature
pyracanthus tree right smack in the middle of the platform. The
overhead foliage of the tree added to the roof-like enclosure of
the space. I put a wind screen of fixed glass on the west side of
the platform too, to give it even more enclosure.
I used SIX-FOOT BALCONY ( I 67) to determine the size of the
platform. But this pattern had to be used judiciously and not
blindly-the reasoning for the pattern has to do with the mini-
mum space required for people to sit comfortably and carry on a
discussion around a small side-table. Since I wanted space for at
least two of these conversation areas-one under the roof for very
hot or rainy days, and one out under the sky for days when you
wanted to be full in the sun, the balcony had to be made I 2 x I 2
feet square.
Now PATHS AND GOALS ( 120): Usually, this pattern deals with
large paths in a neighborhood, and comes much earlier in a lan-
guage. But I used it in a special way. It says that the paths which
naturally get formed by people's walking, on the land, should be
preserved and intensified. Since the path to our front door cut
right across the corner of the place where I had planned to put
the platform, I cut the corner of the platform off.
The height of the platform above the ground was determined
by CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY ( 190). By building the platform
approximately one foot above the ground line, the ceiling height
of the covered portion came out at between 6 and 7 feet-just
right for a space as small as this. Since this height above the
ground level is just about right for sitting, the pattern FRONT
DOOR BENCH ( 242) was automatically satisfied.
There were three columns standing, supporting the roof over

XXXVl
 CHOOSING A LANGUAGE FOR YOUR SUBJECT

the old porch. They had to stay where they are, because they hold
the roof up. But, following COLUMNS AT THE CORNERS (212),
the platform was very carefully tailored to their positions-so that
the columns help define the social spaces on either side of them.
Finally, we put a couple of flower boxes next to the "front door
bench"-it's nice to smell them when you sit there-according to
RAISED FLOWERS (245). And the old chairs you can see in the
porch are DIFFERENT CHAIRS (251).

You can see, from this short example, how powerful

and simple a pattern language is. And you are now,
perhaps ready to appreciate how careful you must be,
when you construct a language for yourself and your
own project.

The finished porch

The character of the porch is given by the ten patterns

in this short language. In just this way, each part of the
environment is given its character by the collection of
patterns which we choose to build into it. The character
of what you build, will be given to it by the language of
patterns you use, to generate it.

XXXVII
 CHOOSING A LANGUAGE FOR YOUR SUBJECT

For this reason, of course, the task of choosing a lan-

guage for your project is fundamental. The pattern lan-
guage we have given here contains 253 patterns. You
can therefore use it to generate an almost unimaginably
large number of possible different smaller languages,
for all the different projects you may choose to do,
simply by picking patterns from it.
We shall now describe a rough procedure by which
you can choose a language for your own project, first by
taking patterns from this language we have printed here,
and then by adding patterns of your own.
r. First of all, make a copy of the master sequence
(pages xix-xxxiv) on which you can tick off the patterns
which will form the language for your project. If you
don't have access to a copying machine, you can tick off
patterns in the list printed in the book, use paper clips
to mark pages, write your own list, use paper markers-
whatever you like. But just for now, to explain it clearly,
we shall assume that you have a copy of the list in front
of you.
2. Scan down the list, and find the pattern which
best describes the overall scope of the project you have
in mind. This is the starting pattern for your project.
Tick it. ( If there are two or three possible candidates,
don't worry: just pick the one which seems best: the
others will fall in place as you move forward.)
3. Turn to the starting pattern itself, in the book, and
read it through. Notice that the other patterns men-
tioned by name at the beginning and at the end, of the
pattern you are reading, are also possible candidates for
your language. The ones at the beginning will tend to be
"larger" than your project. Don't include them, unless

xxxviii
 CHOOSING A LANGUAGE FOR YOUR SUBJECT

you have the power to help create these patterns, at least

in a small way, in the world around your project. The
ones at the end are "smaller." Almost all of them will
be important. Tick all of them, on your list, unless you
have some special reason for not wanting to include
them.
4. Now your list has some more ticks on it. Turn to
the next highest pattern on the list which is ticked, and
open the book to that pattern. Once again, it will lead
you to other patterns. Once again, tick those which are
relevant-especially the ones which are "smaller" that
come at the end. As a general rule, do not tick the ones
which are "larger" unless you can do something about
them, concretely, in your own project.
5. When in doubt about a pattern, don't include it.
Your list can easily get too long: and if it does, it will
become confusing. The list will be quite long enough,
even if you only include the patterns you especially like.
6. Keep going like this, until you have ticked all the
patterns you want for your project.
7. Now, adjust the sequence by adding your own ma-
terial. If there are things you want to include in your
project, but you have not been able to find patterns which
correspond to them, then write them in, at an appropri-
ate point in the sequence, near other patterns which are
of about the same size and importance. For example,
there is no pattern for a sauna. If you want to include
one, write it in somewhere near BATHING ROOM ( 144)
m your sequence.
8. And of course, if you want to change any patterns,
change them. There are often cases where you may have
a personal version of a pattern, which is more true, or

xxxix
 CHOOSING A LANGUAGE FOR YOUR SUBJECT

more relevant for you. In this case, you will get the most
"power" over the language, and make it your own most
effectively, if you write the changes in, at the appropri-
ate places in the book. And, it will be most concrete of
all, if you change the name of the pattern too-so that
it captures your own changes clearly.

❖ ❖ ❖

Suppose now that you have a language for your proj-

ect. The way to use the language depends very much
on its scale. Patterns dealing with towns can only be
implemented gradually, by grass roots action; patterns
for a building can be built up in your mind, and marked
out on the ground; patterns for construction must be
built physically, on the site. For this reason we have
given three separate instructions, for these three different
scales. For towns, see page 3; for buildings, see page
46 3; for construction, see page 935.
The procedures for each of these three scales are de-
scribed in much more detail with extensive examples,
in the appropriate chapters of The Timeless Way of
Building. For the town-see chapters 24 and 25; for an
individual building-see chapters 20, 2 I, and 22; and for
the process of construction which describes the way a
building is actually built see chapter 23.

xl
 THE POETRY OF THE LANGUAGE

Finally, a note of caution. This language, like English,

can be a medium for prose, or a medium for poetry. The
difference between prose and poetry is not that different
languages are used, but that the same language is used,
differently. In an ordinary English sentence, each word
has one meaning, and the sentence too, has one simple
meaning. In a poem, the meaning is far more dense.
Each word carries several meanings; and the sentence
as a whole carries an enormous density of interlocking
meanings, which together illuminate the whole.
The same is true for pattern languages. It is possible
to make buildings by stringing together patterns, in a
rather loose way. A building made like this, is an as-
sembly of patterns. It is not dense. It is not profound.
But it is also possible to put patterns together in such a
way that many many patterns overlap in the same
physical space: the building is very dense; it has many
meanings captured in a small space; and through this
density, it becomes profound.
In a poem, this kind of density, creates illumination,
by making identities between words, and meanings,
whose identity we have not understood before. In "O
Rose thou art sick," the rose is identified with many

xii
 THE POETRY OF THE LANGUAGE

greater, and more personal things than any rose-and

the poem illuminates the person, and the rose, because of
this connection. The connection not only illuminates the
words, but also illuminates our actual lives.

0 Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

WILLIAM BLAKE

The same exactly, happens in a building. Consider, for

example, the two patterns BATHING ROOM ( 144) and
STILL WATER ( 7 I). One defines a part of a house where
you can bathe yourself slowly, with pleasure, perhaps
in company; a place to rest your limbs, and to relax. The
other is a place in a neighborhood, where this is water
to gaze into, perhaps to swim in, where children can sail
boats, and splash about, which nourishes those parts of
ourselves which rely on water as one of the great
elements of the unconscious.
Suppose now, that we make a complex of buildings
where individual bathing rooms are somehow connected
to a common pond, or lake, or pool-where the bathing
room merges with this common place; where there is no
sharp distinction between the individual and family pro-
cesses of the bathing room, and the common pleasure
of the common pool. In this place, these two patterns

xlii
 THE POETRY OF THE LANGUAGE

exist in the same space; they are identified; there is a

compression of the two, which requires less space, and
which is more profound than in a place where they are
merely side by side. The compression illuminates each
of the patterns, sheds light on its meaning; and also il-
luminates our lives, as we understand a little more about
the connections of our inner needs.
But this kind of compression is not only poetic and
profound. It is not only the stuff of poems and exotic
statements, but to some degree, the stuff of every English
sentence. To some degree, there is compression in every
single word we utter, just because each word carries the
whisper of the meanings of the words it is connected to.
Even "Please pass the butter, Fred" has some compres-
sion in it, because it carries overtones that lie in the con-
nections of these words to all the words which came be-
fore it.
Each of us, talking to our friends, or to our families,
makes use of these compressions, which are drawn out
from the connections between words which are given by
the language. The more we can feel all the connections
in the language, the more rich and subtle are the things
we say at the most ordinary times.
And once again, the same is true in building. The com-
pression of patterns into a single space, is not a poetic
and exotic thing, kept for special buildings which are
works of art. It is the most ordinary economy of space. It
is quite possible that all the patterns for a house might,
in some form be present, and overlapping, in a simple
one-room cabin. The patterns do not need to be strung
out, and kept separate. Every building, every room,

xii ii
 THE POETRY OF THE LANGUAGE

every garden is better, when all the patterns which it

needs are compressed as far as it is possible for them to
be. The building will be cheaper; and the meanings in it
will be denser.
It is essential then, once you have learned to use the
language, that you pay attention to the possibility of
compressing the many patterns which you put together,
in the smallest possible space. You may think of this
process of compressing patterns, as a way to make the
cheapest possible building which has the necessary pat-
terns in it. It is, also, the only way of using a pattern
language to make buildings which are poems.

xliv
I 8 NETWORK OF LEARNING*

99
... another network, not physical like transportation, but con-
ceptual, and equal in importance, is the network of learning: the
thousands of interconnected situations that occur all over the city,
and which in fact comprise the city's "curriculum": the way of
life it teaches to its young.

In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and

students-and adults-become passive and unable to think
or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only
grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of
teaching.

There is no need to add to the criticism of our public schools. The

critique is extensive and can hardly be improved on. The processes
of learning and teaching, too, have been exhaustively studied ....
The question now is what to do. (George Dennison, Lives of Chil-
dren, New York: Vintage Books, 1969, p. 3.)
To date, the most penetrating analysis and proposal for an
alternative framework for education comes from I van Illich in
his book, De-Schooling Society, and his article, "Education with-
out Schools: How It Can Be Done," in the New York Review of
Books, New York, 15 (12): 25-31, special supplement, July
I 97 I.
Illich describes a style of learning that is quite the opposite
from schools. It is geared especially to the rich opportunities for
learning that are natural to every metropolitan area:

The alternative to social control through the schools is the volun-

tary participation in society through networks which provide access to
all its resources for learning. In fact these networks now exist, but
they are rarely used for educational purposes. The crisis of schooling,
if it is to have any positive consequence, will inevitably lead to their
incorporation into the educational process ....
Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to
everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that
secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and
that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual
with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classi-
fied packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.

100
 I 8 NETWORK OF LEARNING

New educational institutions would break apart t!tis pyramid. Their

purpose must be to facilitate access for t!te learner: to allow him to
look into the windows of t!te control room or the parliament, if he
cannot get in the door. Moreover, such new institutions should be
channels to which the learner would have access without credentials
or pedigree-public spaces in which peers and elders outside his im-
mediate horizon now become available ....
While network administrators would concentrate primarily on the
building and maintenance of roads providing access to resources, the
pedagogue would help the student to find the path which for him
could lead fastest to his goal. If a student wants to learn spoken
Cantonese from a Chinese neighbor, the pedagogue would be avail-
able to judge their proficiency, and io help them select the textbook
and methods most suitable to their talents, character, and the time
available for study. He can counsel the would-be airplane mechanic
on finding the best places for apprenticeship. He can recommend
books to somebody who wants to find challenging peers to discuss
African history. Like the network administrator, the pedagogical
counselor conceives of himself as a professional educator. Access to
either could be gained by individuals through the use of educational
vouchers ....
In addition to the tentative conclusions of the Carnegie Commis-
sion reports, the last year has brought forth a series of important
documents which show that responsible people are becoming aware
of the fact that schooling for certification cannot continue to be
counted upon as the central educational device of a modern society.
Julius Nyere of Tanzania has announced plans to integrate education
with the life of the village. In Canada, the Wright Commission on
post-secondary education has reported that no known system of
formal education could provide equal opportunities for the citizens of
Ontario. The president of Peru has accepted the recommendation of
his commission on education, which proposes to abolish free schools
in favor of free educational opportunities provided throughout life.
In fact he is reported to have insisted that this program proceed
slowly at first in order to keep teachers in school and out of the way
of true educators. (Abridged from pp. 76 and 99 in Desc!tooling
Society by Ivan Illich. Vol. 44 in World Perspectives Series, edited
by Ruth Nanda Anshen, New York: Harper & Row, 1971.)

In short, the educational system so radically decentralized

becomes congruent with the urban structure itself. People of all
walks of life come forth, and offer a class in the things they
know and love: professionals and workgroups offer apprentice-
ships in their offices and workshops, old people offer to teach
whatever their life work and interest has been, specialists offer
tutoring in their special subjects. Living and learning are the

I 01
 TOWNS

same. It is not hard to imagine that eventually every third or

fourth household will have at least one person in it who is offering
a class or training of some kind.
Therefore:

Instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a

fixed place, work in piecemeal ways to decentralize the
process of learning and enrich it through contact with
many places and people all over the city: workshops,
teachers at home or walking through the city, professionals
willing to take on the young as helpers, older children
teaching younger children, museums, youth groups travel-
ing, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, old people,
and so on. Conceive of all these situations as forming the
backbone of the learning process; survey all these situa-
tions, describe them, and publish them as the city's "cur-
riculum"; then let students, children, their families and
neighborhoods weave together for themselves the situations
that comprise their "school" paying as they go with stan-
dard vouchers, raised by community tax. Build new edu-
cational facilities in a way which extends and enriches
this network.

network directory

100 home class rooms

per 10,000population
payment by vouchers

Above all, encourage the formation of seminars and workshops

in people's homes-HOME WORKSHOP ( I 5 7) ; make sure that

102
 I 8 NETWORK OF LEARNING

each city has a "path" where young children can safely wander
on their own-CHILDREN IN THE CITY (57); build extra public
"homes" for children, one to every neighborhood at least-
CHILDREN's HOME (86); create a large number of work-oriented
small schools in those parts of town dominated by work and
commercial acti vi ty-sHOPFRONT SCHOOLS( 8 5) ; encourage teen-
agers to work out a self-organized learning society of their own
-TEENAGE SOCIETY (84); treat the university as scattered adult
learning for all the adults in the region-UNIVERSITY AS A
MARKETPLACE (43); and use the real work of professionals and
tradesmen as the basic nodes in the network-MASTER AND AP-
PRENTICES (83) ....

103
 I 9 WEB OF SHOPPING*

. . . this pattern defines a piecemeal process which can help to

locate shops and services where they are needed, in such a way
that they will strengthen the MOSAJc OF SUBCULTURES (8),
SUBCULTURE BOUNDARIES ( I 3), and the decentralized economy
needed for SCATTERED WORK ( 9) and LOCAL TRANSPORT AREAS
(II).

❖ ❖ ❖

Shops rarely place themselves in those positions which

best serve the people's needs, and also guarantee their own
stability.

Large parts of towns have insufficient services. New shops

which could provide these services often locate near the other
shops and major centers, instead of locating themselves where
they are needed. In an ideal town, where the shops are seen as
part of the society's necessities and not merely as a way of making
profit for the shopping chains, the shops would be much more
widely and more homogeneously distributed than they are today.
It is also true that many small shops are unstable. Two-thirds
of the small shops that people open go out of business within a
year. Obviously, the community is not well served by unstable
businesses, and once again, their economic instability is largely
linked to mistakes of location.
To guarantee that shops are stable, as well as distributed to
meet community needs, each new shop must be placed where it
will fill a gap among the other shops offering a roughly similar
service and also be assured that it will get the threshold of cus-
tomers which it needs in order to survive. We shall now try to
express this principle in precise terms.
The characteristics of a stable system of shops is rather well
known. It relies, essentially, on the idea that each unit of shopping
has a certain catch basin-the population which it needs in order

104
 I9 WEB OF SHOPPING

to survive-and that units of any given type and size will there-
fore be stable if they are evenly distributed, each one at the
center of a catch basin large enough to support it.

I
I
I
I
I •
,,l',, '
--(
I
,'
, I
,,i__,_

' I

• '
I I
I

Catch basins.

The reason that shops and shopping centers do not always,

automatically, distribute themselves according to their appropriate
catch basins is easily explained by the situation known as Hotel-
ling's problem. Imagine a beach in summer time-and, some-
where along the beach, an ice-cream seller. Suppose now, that
you are also an ice-cream seller. You arrive on the beach. Where
should you place yourself in relation to the first ice-cream seller?
There are two possible solutions .

• •

••
Two approaches to the ice-cream problem.

In the first case, you essentially decide to split the beach with
the other ice-cream seller. You take half the beach, and leave him
half the beach. In this case, you place yourself as far away from
him as you can, in a position where half the people on the beach
are nearer to you than to him.
In the second case, you place yourself right next to him. You
decide, in short, to try and compete with him-and place your-
self in such a way as to command the whole beach, not half of it.

105
 TOWNS

Every time a shop, or shopping center opens, it faces a

similar choice. It can either locate in a new area where there
are no other competing businesses, or it can place itself exactly
where all the other businesses are already in the hope of attracting
their customers away from them.
The trouble is, very simply, that people tend to choose the
second of these two alternatives, because it seems, on the surface,
to be safer. In fact, however, the first of the two choices is
both better and safer. It is better for the customers, who then
have stores to serve them closer to their homes and work places
than they do now; and it is safer for the shopkeepers themselves
since-in spite of appearances-their stores are much more likely
to survive when they stand, without competition, in the middle of
a catch basin which needs their services.
Let us now consider the global nature of a web which has this
character. In present cities, shops of similar types tend to be
clustered in shopping centers. They are forced to cluster, in
part because of zoning ordinances, which forbid them to locate in
so-called residential areas; and they are encouraged to cluster by
their mistaken notion that competition with other shops will
serve them better than roughly equal sharing of the available
customers. In the "peoples" web we are proposing, shops are far
more evenly spread out, with less emphasis on competition and
greater emphasis on service. Of course, there will still be competi-
tion, enough to make sure that very bad shops go out of business,
because each shop will be capable of drawing customers from
the nearby catch basins if it offers better service-but the accent
is on cooperation instead of competition.

~ j-
...
0 4
..
+ •
,
\ ~
~

II ..t, .. ~

The existing web. T/ze peoples' web.

106
 I9 WEB OF SHOPPING

To generate this kind of homogeneous people's web, it is only

necessary that each new shop follow the following three-step pro-
cedure when it chooses a location:
r. Identify all other shops which offer the service you are
interested in; locate them on the map.
2. Identify and map the location of potential consumers.
Wherever possible, indicate the density or total number of
potential consumers in any given area.
3. Look for the biggest gap in the existing web of shops m
those areas where there are potential consumers.

The gap in services.

Two colleagues of ours have tested the efficiency and potential

stability of the webs created by this procedure. ("Computer
Simulation of Market Location in an Urban Area," S. Angel and
F. Loetterle, CES files, June 1967.) They chose to study
markets. They began with a fixed area, a known population
density and purchasing power, and a random distribution of
markets of different sizes. They then created new markets and
killed off old markets according to the following rules. (I)
Among all of the existing markets, erase any that do not capture
sufficient business to support their given size; ( 2) among all of
the possible locations for a new market, find the one which
would most strongly support a new market; ( 3) find that size
for the new market that would be most economically feasible; ( 4)
find that market among all those now existing that is the least
economically feasible, and erase it from the web; ( 5) repeat
steps (2) through (4) until no further improvement in the web
can be made.
Under the impact of these rules, the random distribution of

107
 TOWNS

markets at the beginning leads gradually to a fluctuating, pulsating

distribution of markets which remains economically stable through-
out its changes.
Now of course, even if shops of the same kind are kept apart
by this procedure, shops of different kinds will tend to cluster.
This follows, simply, from the convenience of the shopper. If we
follow the rules of location given above-always locating a new
shop in the biggest gap in the web of similar shops-then, within
that gap there are still quite a large number of different possible
places to locate: and naturally, we shall try to locate near the
largest cluster of other shops within that gap, to increase the
number of people coming past the shop, in short, to make it
more convenient for shoppers.
The clusters which emerge have been thoroughly studied by
Berry. It turns out that the levels of clustering are remarkably
similar, even though their spacing varies greatly according to
population density. (See Geography of Market Centers and
Retail Distribution, B. Berry, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967, pp. 32-33.) The elements m this
web of clustering correspond closely to patterns defined in this
language.
Therefore:

When you locate any individual shop, follow a three-

step procedure:
I. Identify all other shops which offer the service you
are interested in; locate them on the map.
2. Identify and map the location of potential consumers.
Wherever possible, indicate the density or total num-
ber of potential consumers in any given area.
3. Look for the biggest gap in the existing web of shops
in those areas where there are potential consumers.
4. Within the gap in the web of similar shops, locate your
shop next to the largest cluster of other kinds of shops.

108
 I9 WEB OF SHOPPING

"
shops of same type

We estimate, that under the impact of this rule, a web of

shopping with the following overall characteristics will emerge:

Distance Apart
Population (Miles)
MAGIC OF THE CITY ( IO) 300,000 10*

PROMENADES ( 3 I) 50,000 4*

SHOPPING STREETS ( 32) 10,000 1.8*

MARKETS OF MANY SHOPS (46) 4,000 1.1*

CORNER GROCERIES (89) 1,000 0.5*

* These distances are calculated for an overall population density

of 5000 per square mile. For a population density of D persons/
square mile, divide the distances by \/157sooo
....

109
 20 MINI-BUSES*
... this pattern helps complete the LOCAL TRANSPORT AREAS
(II) and the WEB OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ( I 6). The local
transport areas rely heavily on foot traffic, and on bikes and carts
and horses. The web of public transportation relies on trains and
planes and buses. Both of these patterns need a more flexible kind
of public transportation to support them.

Public transportation must be able to take people from

any point to any other point within the metropolitan area.

Buses and trains, which run along lines, are too far from most
origins and destinations to be useful. Taxis, which can go from
point to point, are too expensive.
To solve the problem, it is necessary to have a kind of vehicle
which is half way between the two-half like a bus, half like a
taxi-a small bus which can pick up people at any point and take
them to any other point, but which may also pick up other pas-
sengers on the way, to make the trip less costly than a taxi fare.
Recent research, and full-scale experiments, have shown that a
system of mini-buses, on call by telephone, can function in this
fashion, taking people from door to door in I 5 minutes, for no
more than 50 cents a ride ( 1974): and that the system is efficient
enough to support itself. It works just like a taxi, except that it
picks up and drops off other passengers while you are riding; it
goes to the nearest corner to save time--not to your own front
door; and it costs a quarter of an average taxi fare.
The system hinges, to a certain cxte'nt, on the development of
sophisticated new computer programs. As calls come in, the com-
puter examines the present movements of all the various mini-
buses, each with its particular load of passengers, and decides
which bus can best afford to pick up the new passenger, with the
least detour. Two-way radio contact keeps the mini-buses in com-
munication with the dispatcher at the computer switchboard. All
th is, and other details, are discussed fully in a review of current

I I0
 20 MINI-BUSES

Canadian mini-bus.

dial-a-bus research: Summary Report-The Dial-a-Ride Trans-

portation System, M.I.T. Urban Systems Laboratory, Report
# USL-TR-70-10, March I9ir.
Dial systems for buses are actually coming in to existence now
because they are economically feasible. While conventional fixed-
route public transport systems are experiencing a dangerous spiral
of lower levels of service, fewer passengers, and increased public
subsidies, over 30 working dial-a-bus systems are presently in suc-
cessful operation throughout the world. For example, a dial-a-bus
system in Regina, Saskatchewan, is the only part of the Regina
Transit System which supports itself (Regina Telebus Study:
Operations Report, and Financial Report, \V. G. Atkinson et al.,
June 1972). In Batavia, New York, dial-a-bus is the sole means
of public transport, serving a population of I 6,000 at fares of 40
to 60 cents per ride.
We finish this pattern by reminding the reader of two vital
problems of public transportation, which underline the importance
of the mini-bus approach.
First, there are very large numbers of people in cities who
cannot drive; we believe the mini-bus system is the only realistic
way of meeting the needs of all these people.

Their numbers are much larger than one would think. They are,
in effect, a silent minority comprising the uncomplaining old and
physically handicapped, the young and the poor. In 1 970, over 20
percent of U.S. households did not own a car. Fifty-seven and five-
tenths percent of all households with incomes under $ 3000 did not
own a car. For households headed by persons 65 years of age or
older, 44.9 percent did not own a car. Of the youths between Io and
18 years of age, 80 percent are dependent on others, including public

I II
 TOWNS

transit, for their mobility. Among the physically disabled about 5 .7

million are potential riders of public transportation if the system
could take them door-to-door. (Sumner Myers, "Turning Transit
Subsidies into 'Compensatory Transportation,'" City, Vol. 6, No. 3,
Summer 1972, p. 20.)
Second, quite apart from these special needs, the fact is that a
web of public transportation, with large buses, boats, and trains,
will not work anyway, without a mini-bus system. The large sys-
tems need feeders: some way of getting to the stations. If people
have to get in their cars to go to the train, then, once in the car,
they stay in it and do not use the train at all. The mini-bus system
is essential for the purpose of providing feeder service in the larger
web of public transportation.
Therefore:

Establish a system of small taxi-like buses, carrying up

to six people each, radio-controlled, on call by telephone,
able to provide point-to-point service according to the pas-
sengers' needs, and supplemented by a computer system
which guarantees minimum detours, and minimum wait-
ing times. Make bus stops for the mini-buses every 600
feet in each direction, and equip these bus stops with a
phone for dialing a bus.

Isix passenger buses

bus stops every 600 feet

❖ ❖ ❖

Place the bus stops mainly along major roads, as far as this can
be consistent with the fact that no one ever has to walk more than
600 feet to the nearest one-PARALLEL ROADS(23); put one in
every INTERCHANGE (34); and make each one a place where a
few minutes' wait is pleasant-Bus STOP (92).

II2
establish community and neighborhood policy to
control the character of the local environment ac-
cording to the following fundamental principles:

2 I. FOUR-STORY LIMIT

22. NINE PER CENT PARKING

23. PARALLEL ROADS

24. SACRED SITES

25. ACCESS TO WATER

26. LIFE CYCLE

27. MEN AND WOMEN

113
26 LIFE CYCLE*

139
... a real community provides, in full, for the balance of human
experience and human life-COMMUNITY OF 7000 ( I 2). To a
lesser extent, a good neighborhood will do the same-IDENTIFI-
ABLE NEIGHBORHOOD( 14). To fulfill this promise, communities
and neighborhoods must have the range of things which life can
need, so that a person can experience the full breadth and depth
of life in his community.

❖ ❖ ❖

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

As, first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then the soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
\\Tith eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.
(Shakespeare, As Yott Like It, II.viii.)
To live life to the fullest, in each of the seven ages, each age
must be clearly marked, by the community, as a distinct well-
marked time. And the ages will only seem clearly marked if the
 26 LIFE CYCLE

ceremonies which mark the passage from one age to the next are
firmly marked by celebrations and distinctions.
By contrast, in a fl.at suburban culture the seven ages are not
at all clearly marked; they are not celebrated; the passages from
one age to the next have almost been forgotten. Under these con-
ditions, people distort themselves. They can neither fulfill them-
selves in any one age nor pass successfully on to the next. Like
the sixty-year-old woman wearing bright red lipstick on her
wrinkles, they cling ferociously to what they never fully had.
This proposition hinges on two arguments.
A. The cycle of life is a definite psychological reality. It con-
sists of discrete stages, each one fraught with its own difficulties,
each one with its own special advantages.
B. Growth from one stage to another is not inevitable, and, in
fact, it will not happen unless the community contains a balanced
life cycle.

A. The Reality of the Life Cycle.

Everyone can recognize the fact that a person's life traverses
several stages-infancy to old age. What is perhaps not so well
understood is the idea that each stage is a discrete reality, with
its own special compensations and difficulties; that each stage has
certain characteristic experiences that go with it.
The most inspired work along these lines has come from Erik
Erikson: "Identity and the Life Cycle," in Psychological Issues,
Vol. 1, No. 1, New York: International Universities Press, 1959;
and Childhood and Society, New York: W. W. Norton, 1950.
Erikson describes the sequence of phases a person must pass
through as he matures and suggests that each phase is character-
ized by a specific developmental task-a successful resolution of
some life conflict-and that this task must be solved by a person
before he can move wholeheartedly forward to the next phase.
Here is a summary of the stages in Erikson's scheme, adapted
from his charts:
I. Trust vs. mistrust: the infant; relationship between the
infant and mother; the struggle for confidence that the environ-
ment will nourish.
2. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt: the very young child; rela-
tionship between the child and parents; the struggle to stand on
 TOWNS

one's own two feet, to find autonomy in the face of experiences

of shame and doubt as to one's capacity for self-control.
3. Initiative vs. guilt: the child; relationship to the family,
the ring of friends; the search for action, and the integrity of
one's acts; to make and eagerly learn, checked by the fear and
guilt of one's own aggressions.
4. Industry vs. inferiority: the youngster; relationship to the
neighborhood, the school; adaptation to the society's tools; the
sense that one can make things well, alone, and with others,
against the experience of failure, inadequacy.
5. Identity vs. identity diffusion: youth, adolescence; rela-
tionship to peers and "outgroups" and the search for models of
adult life; the search for continuity in one's own character against
confusion and doubt; a moratorium; a time to find and ally one-
self with creeds and programs of the world.
6. Intimacy vs. isolation: young adults; partners in friendship,
sex, work; the struggle to commit oneself concretely in relations
with others; to lose and find oneself in another, against isolation
and the avoidance of others.
7. Generativity vs. stagnation: adults; tne relationship be-
tween a person and the division of labor, and the creation of a
shared household; the struggle ro establish and guide, to create,
against the failure to do so, and the feelings of stagnation.
8. Integrity vs. despair: old age; the relationship between a
person and his world, his kind, mankind; the achievement of
wisdom; love for oneself and one's kind; to face death openly,
with the forces of one's life integrated; vs. the despair that life
has been useless.

B. But growth through the life cycle is not inevitable.

It depends on the presence of a balanced community, a com-
munity that can sustain the give and take of growtn. Persons at
each stage of life have sornetning irreplaceable to give and to take
from tne community, and it is just these transactions which help
a person to solve the problems that beset each stage. Consider
the case of a young couple and their new child. The connection
between them is entirely mutual. Of course, the child "depends"
on the parents to give the care and love that is required to resolve
the conflict of trust that goes with infancy. But simultaneously,
 26 LI FE CYCLE

the child gives the parents the experience of raising and bearing,
which helps them to meet their conflict of generativity, unique to
adulthood.
We distort the situation if we abstract it in such a way that we
consider the parent as "having" such and such a personality when
the child is born and then, remaining static, impinging upon a poor
little thing. For this weak and changing little being moves the whole
family along. Babies control and bring up their families as much as
they are controlled by them; in fact, we may say that the family
brings up a baby by being brought up by him. Whatever reaction pat-
terns are given biologically and whatever schedule is predetermined
developmentally must be considered to be a series of potentialities for
changing patterns of mutual regulation. [Erikson, ibid. p. 69.]
Similar patterns of mutual regulation occur between the very
old and the very young; between adolescents and young adults,
children and infants, teenagers and younger teenagers, young men
and old women, young women and old men, and so on. And
these patterns must be made viable by prevailing social institutions
and those parts of the environment which help to maintain them
-the schools, nurseries, homes, cafes, bedrooms, sports fields,
workshops, studios, gardens, graveyards ....
We believe, however, that the balance of settings which allow
normal growth through the life cycle has been breaking down.
Contact with the entire cycle of life is less and less available to
each person, at each moment in time. In place of natural com-
munities with a balanced life cycle we have retirement villages,
bedrooms suburbs, teenage culture, ghettos of unemployed, college
towns, mass cemeteries, industrial parks. Under such conditions,
one's chances for solving the conflict that comes with each stage
in the life cycle are slim indeed.
To re-create a community of balanced life cycles requires, first
of all, that the idea take its place as a principal guide in the de-
velopment of communities. Each building project, whether the
addition to a howe, a new rnad, a clinic, can be viewed as either
helping or hindering the right balance for local communities. We
suspect that the community repair maps, discussed in The Oregon
Experiment, Chapter V (Volume 3 in this series), can play an
especially useful role in helping to encourage the growth of a
balanced Ii fe cycle.
But this pattern can be no more than an indication of work

143
 TOWNS

that needs to be done. Each community must find ways of taking

stock of its own relative "balance" in this respect, and then define
a growth process which will move it in the right direction. This
is a tremendously interesting and vital problem; it needs a great
deal of development, experiment, and theory. If Erikson is right,
and if this kind of work does not come, it seems possible that the
development of trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, in-
timacy, generativity, integrity may disappear entirely.

STAGE IMPORTANT SETTINGS RITES OF PASSAGE

I. INFANT Home, crib, nursery, Birth place, setting up

Trust garden the home .. . . out of
the crib, making a
place
2. YOUNG CHILD Own place, couple's realm, Walking, making a
Autonomy children's realm, place, special birthday
commons, connected play

3, CHILD Play space, own place, First ventures in

Initiative common land, town ... . joining
neighborhood,
animals
4. YOUNGSTER Children's home, school, Puberty rites,
Industry own place, adventure private entrance
play, club, paying your way
community
5. YOUTH Cottage, teenage society, Commencement,
Identity hostels, apprentice, marriage, work,
town and region building
6. YOUNG ADULT Household, couple's Birth of a child,
Intimacy realm, small work creating social
group, the family, wealth . building
network of learning

7. ADULT Work community, Special birthday,

Generativity the family town hall, gathering,
a room of one's own change in work

8. OLD PERSON Settled work, Death, funeral,

Integrity cottage, the family, grave sites
independent regions

1 44
 2.6 LIFE CYCLE

Therefore:

Make certain that the full cycle of life is represented and

balanced in each community. Set the ideal of a balanced
life cycle as a principal guide for the evolution of commu-
nities. This means:
I. That each community include a balance of people at
every stage of the life cycle, from infants to the very
old; and include the full slate of settings needed for
all these stages of life;
2. That the community contain the full slate of settings
which best mark the ritual crossing of life from one
stage to the next.

"1bsettings to support
any single stage of life
• settings to support ritual passing
from one stage to another
o settings to mark
interaction between stages

The rites of passage are provided for, most concretely, by

HOLY GROUND ( 66). Other specific p~tterns which especially sup-
port the seven ages of man and the ceremonies of transition are
HOUSEHOLD MIX (35), OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE (40), WORK
COMMUNITY (41), LOCAL TOWN HALL (44), CHILDREN IN THE
CITY (57), BIRTH PLACES (65), GRAVE SITES (70), THE FAMILY
(75), YOUR OWN HOME (79), MASTER AND APPRENTICES (83),
TEENAGE SOCIETY (84), SHOPFRONT SCHOOLS (85), CHILDREN'S
HOME (86), ROOMS TO RENT (153), TEENAGER'S COTTAGE (154),
OLD AGE COTTAGE ( I 55), SETTLED WORK ( I 56), MARRIAGE BED

(187).

1 45
30 ACTIVITY NODES**
... this pattern forms those essential nodes of life which help to
generate IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD ( 14)' PROMENADE ( 3 I)'
NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS ( 5 2)) and PEDESTRIAN STREET
( 1 oo). To understand its action, imagine that a community and
its boundary are growing under the influence of COMMUNITY OF
7000 ( I 2), SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY ( 13), IDENTIFIABLE NEIGH-
BORHOOD ( I4), NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY ( 15), ECCENTRIC
NUCLEUS (28), and DENSITY RINGS (29). As they grow, certain
"stars" begin to form, where the most important paths meet.
These stars are potentially the vital spots of a community. The
growth of these stars and of the paths which form them need to
be guided to form genuine community crossroads.

❖ + ❖

Community facilities scattered individually through the

city do nothing for the life of the city.

One of the greatest problems in ex1stmg comrnurnt1es is the

fact that the available public life in them is spread so thin that it
has no impact on the community. It is not in any real sense
available to the members of the community. Studies of pedestrian
behavior make it clear that people seek out concentrations of other
people, whenever they are available (for instance, Jan Gehl,
"Mennesker til Fods (Pedestrians)," Arkitekten, No. 20, 1968).
To create these concentrations of people in a community,
facilities must be grouped densely round very small public sguares
which can function as nodes-with all pedestrian movement in
the community organized to pass through these nodes. Such nodes
require four properties.
First, each node must draw together the main paths in the
surrounding community. The major pedestrian paths should
converge on the square, with minor paths funneling into the
major ones, to create the basic star-shape of the pattern. This is
much harder to do than one might imagine. To give an example
of the difficulty which arises when we try to build this relation-
ship into a town, we show the following plan-a scheme of
 JO ACTIVITY NODES

ours for housing in Peru-in which the paths are all convergent
on a very small number of squares.

Public paths converge on centers of action.

This is not a very good plan-it is too stiff and formal. But
it is possible to achieve the same relationship in a far more relaxed
manner. In any case the relationship between paths, community
facilities, and squares is vital and hard to achieve. It must be
taken seriously, from the very outset, as a major feature of the
city.
Second, to keep the activity concentrated, it is essential to make
the squares rather small, smaller than one might imagine. A
square of about 45 X 60 feet can keep the normal pace of public
life well concentrated. This figure is discussed in detail under
SMALL PUBLIC SQUARE ( 6 I).
Third, the facilities grouped around any one node must be
chosen for their symbiotic relationships. It is not enough merely
to group communal functions in so-called community centers. For
example, church, cinema, kindergarten, and police station are
all community facilities, but they do not support one another
mutually. Different people go to them, at different times, with
different things in mind. There is no point in grouping them
together. To create intensity of action, the facilities which are
placed together round any one node must function in a coopera-
tive manner, and must attract the same kinds of people, at the
same times of day. For example, when evening entertainments are
grouped together, the people who are having a night out can
use any one of them, and the total concentration of action in-
creases-see NIGHT LIFE ( 33). When kindergartens and small
parks and gardens are grouped together, young families with
children may use either, so their total attraction is increased.
Fourth, these activity nodes should be distributed rather evenly
 TOWNS

across the community, so that no house or workplace is more

than a few hundred yards from one. In this way a contrast of
"busy and quiet" can be achieved at a small scale-;rnd large
dead Heas can be avoided.

Nodes of different size.

Therefore:

Create nodes of act1v1ty throughout the community,

spread about 300 yards apart. First identify those existing
spots in the community where action seems to concentrate
itself. Then modify the layout of the paths in the com-
munity to bring as many of them through these spots as
possible. This makes each spot function as a "node" in the

166
 JO ACTIVITY NODES

path network. Then, at the center of each node, make a

small public square, and surround it with a combination of
community facilities and shops which are mutually sup-
portive.

❖ ❖ ❖

Connect those centers which are most dense, with a wider,

more important path for strolling-PROMENADE ( 3 I) ; make
special centers for night activities-NIGHT LIFE (33); when-
ever new paths are built, make certain that they pass through the
centers, so that they intensify the life still further-PATHS AND
GOALS ( I 20); and differentiate the paths so they are wide near
the centers and smaller away from them-DEGREES OF PUBLIC-
NESS (36). At the heart of every center, build a small public
square-SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES (61), and surround each square
with an appropriate mix of mutually self-reinforcing facilities-
WORK COMMUNITY (41), UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE (43),
LOCAL TOWN HALL (44), HEALTH CENTER (47), BIRTH PLACES
( 6 5) 1 TEENAGE SOCIETY ( 84) 1 SHOPFRONT SCHOOL ( 8 5) 1 INDI-
VIDUALLY OWNED SHOPS (87), STREET CAFE (88), BEER HALL
(90), FOOD STANDS(93).
3I PROMENADE**

168
... assume now that there is an urban area, subdivided into
subcultures and communities each with its boundaries. Each sub-
culture in the MOSAIC OF SUB CUL TURES ( 8), and each COM MU-
NITY OF 7000 ( I 2) has a promenade as its backbone. And each
promenade helps to form ACTIVITY NODES ( 30) along its length,
by generating the flow of people which the activity nodes need
in order to survive.

❖ ❖ +

Each subculture needs a center for its public life: a place

where you can go to see people, and to be seen.

The promenade, "paseo," "passegiata," evening stroll, is com-

mon in the small towns of Italy, Spain, Mexico, Greece, Yugo-
slavia, Sicily, and South America. People go there to walk up
and down, to meet their friends, to stare at strangers, and to let
strangers stare at them.
Throughout history there have been places in the city where
people who shared a set of values could go to get in touch with
each other. These places have always been like street theaters:
they invite people to watch others, to stroll and browse, and to
loiter:
In Mexico, in any small town plaza every Thursday and Sunday
night with the band playing and the weather mild, the boys walk
this way, the girls walk that, around and around, and the mothers
and fathers sit on iron-scrolled benches and watch. (Ray Bradbury,
"The girls walk this way; the boys walk that way ... " West, Los
Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, April 5, 1970.)
In all these places the beauty of the promenade is simply this:
people with a shared way of life gather together to rub shoulders
and confirm their community.

ls the promenade in fact a purely Latin institution 1 Our ex-

periments suggest that it is not. The fact is that the kinds of
promenades where this strolling happens are not common in a
city, and they are especially uncommon in a sprawling urban
region. But experiments by Luis Racionero at the Department of
 TOWNS

Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, have

shown that wherever the possibility of this public contact does
exist, people will seek it, as long as it is close enough. Racionero
interviewed 3 7 people in several parts of San Francisco, living
various distances from a promenade, and found that people who
lived within 20 minutes used it, while people who lived more
than 20 minutes away did not.
Do not use
Use the promenade the promenade

People who live less

than 20 minutes away 13
People who live more
than 20 minutes away 5 18

It seems that people, of all cultures, may have a general need

for the kind of human mixing which the promenade makes
possible; but that if it is too far, the effort to get there simply
outweighs the importance of the need. In short, to make sure that
all the people in a city can satisfy this need, there must be
promenades at frequent intervals.
Exactly how frequent should they be? Racionero establishes 20
minutes as the upper limit, but his survey does not investigate
frequency of use. We know that the closer the promenade is, the
more often people will use it. We guess that if the promenade is
within ro minutes or less, people will use it often-perhaps even
once or twice a week.
The relation between the catch basin of the promenade, and
the actual physical paved area of the promenade itself, is ex-
tremely critical. We show in PEDESTRIAN DENSITY (123), that
places with less than one person for every I 50 to 300 square feet
of paved surface, will seem dead and uninviting. It is therefore
essential to be certain that the number of people who might,
typically, be out strolling on the promenade, is large enough to
maintain this pedestrian density along its length. To check th is
relation, we calculate as follows:
A IO-minute walk amounts to roughly 1500 feet (150 feet per
minute), which is probably also about the right length for the
promenade itself. This means that the catch basin for a promenade
has a shape roughly like this:

170
 JI PROMENADE

A promenade and its catch basin.

This area contains 3 20 acres. If we assume an average density of

50 people per gross acre, then there are 16,000 people in the
area. If one-fifth of this population uses the promenade once a
week, for an hour between 6 and Io p.111., then at any given
moment between those hours, there are some I oo people on the
promenade. If it is I 500 feet long, at 300 square feet per person,
it can therefore be 20 feet wide, at the most, and would be better
if it were closer to Io feet wide. It is feasible, but only just.
We see then, that a promenade I 500 feet long, with the catch
basin we have defined and the population density stated, should
be able to maintain a lively density of activity, provided that it
is not more than about 20 feet wide. We want to emphasize that
a promenade will not work unless the pedestrian density is high
enough, and that a calculation of this kinrl must always be made
to check its feasibility.
The preceding figures arc meant to be illustrative. They estab-
lish a rough order of magnitude for promenades and th.cir catch
basin populations. But we have also seen successful promenades for
populations of 2000 (a fishing village in Peru); and we have seen
a promenade for 2,000,000 (Las Ramblas in Barcelona). They
both work, although they are very different in character. The
small one with its catch basin of 2000 works, because the cul-
tural habit of the paseo is so strong there, a higher percentage
of the people use it more often, and the density of people on
the promenade is less than we would imagine-it is so beautiful
that people enjoy it even if it is not so crowded. The large one
works as a citywide event. People are willing to drive a long
distance to it-they may not come as often, but when they do, it
is worth the ride-it is exciting-packed-teeming with people.
We imagine the pattern of promenades in a city to be just as
varied-a continuum ranging from small local promenades serv-

171
 TOWNS

ing 2000 people to large intense ones serving the entire city-each
different in character and density of action.
Finally, what are the characteristics of a successful promenade?
Since people come to see people and to be seen, a promenade
must have a high density of pedestrians using it. It must there-
fore be associated with places that in themselves attract people,
for example, clusters of eating places and small shops.

A promenade in Paris.

Further, even though the real reasons for coming might have
to do with seeing people and being seen, people find it easier
to take a walk if they have a "destination." This destination may
be real, like a coke shop or cafe, or it may be partly imaginary,
"let's walk round the block." But the promenade must provide
people with a strong goal.
It is also important that people do not have to walk too far be-
tween the most important points along the promenade. Informal
observation suggests that any point which is more than 1 50 feet
from activity becomes unsavory and unused. In short, good
promenades are part of a path through the most active parts of
the community; they are suitable as destinations for an evening
walk; the walk is not too long, and nowhere on it desolate: no
point of the stroll is more than 150 feet from a hub of activity.
A variety of facilities will function as destinations along the
promenade: ice cream parlors, coke shops, churches, public
gardens, movie houses, bars, volleyball courts. Their potential
will depend on the extent to which it is possible to make provisions
for people to stay: widening of pedestrian paths, planting of trees,
walls to lean against, stairs and benches and niches for sitting,

172
 JI PROMENADE

opening of street fronts to provide sidewalk cafes, or displays of

activities or goods where people might like to linger.
Therefore:

Encourage the gradual formation of a promenade at the

heart of every community, linking the main activity nodes,
and placed centrally, so that each point in the community
is within IO minutes' walk of it. Put main points of attrac-
tion at the two ends, to keep a constant movement up and
down.

10 minute walk

No matter how large the promenade is, there must be enough

people coming to it to make it dense with action, and this can be
precisely calculated by the formula of PEDESTRIANDENSITY ( I 23).
The promenade is mainly marked by concentrations of activity
along its length-ACTIVITY NODES (30); naturally, some of these
will be open at night-NIGHT LIFE ( 3 3) ; and somewhere on
the promenade there will be a concentration of shops-SHOPPING
STREET ( 3 2). It might also be appropriate to include CARNIVAL
(58) and DANCING IN THE STREET (63) in very large prome-
nades. The detailed physical character of the promenade is given
by PEDESTRIANSTREET ( I 00) and PATH SHAPE ( I 2 I).

1 73
36 DEGREES OF PUBLICNESS**
... within the neighoorhoods-JDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD
( I 4)-there are naturally some areas where life is rather concen-
trated ACTIVITYNODES( 30), others where it is slower, and others
in between-DENSITY RINGS ( 29). It is essential to diff eren ti ate
groups of houses and the paths which lead to them according to
this gradient.

People are different, and the way they want to place

their houses in a neighborhood is one of the most basic
kinds of difference.

Some people want to live where the action is. Others want
more isolation. This corresponds to a basic human personality di-
mension, which could be called the "extrovert-introvert" dimen-
sion, or the "community loving-privacy loving" dimension. Those
who want the action like being near services, near shops, they
like a lively atmosphere outside their houses, and they are happy
to have strangers going past their houses all the time. Those who
want more isolation like being away from services and shops, enjoy
a very small scale in the areas outside their houses, and don't want
strangers going past their houses. (See for example, Nancy Mar-
shall, "Orientations Toward Privacy: Environmental and Per-
sonality Components," James Madison College, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, Michigan.)
The variation of different people along the extrovert-introvert
dimension is very well described by Frank Hendricks and Mal-
colm MacNair in "Concepts of Environmental Quality Standards
Based on Life Styles," report to the American Public Health
Association, February I 2, 1969, pp. I 1-r 5. The authors identify
several kinds of persons and characterize each by the relative
amount of time spent in extroverted activities and in introverted
activities. Francis Loetterle has shed further light on the problem
in "Environment Attitudes and Social Life in Santa Clara
County," Santa Clara County Planning Department, San Jose,

1 93
 TOWNS

California, 1967. He asked 3 300 households how far they wanted

to be from various community services. The results were: 20 per
cent of the households interviewed wanted to be located less than
three blocks from commercial centers; 60 per cent wanted to be
located between four and six blocks away; 20 per cent wanted to
be located more than six blocks away (mean block size in Santa
Clara County is 1 50 yards). The exact distances apply only to
Santa Clara. But the overall result overwhelmingly supports our
contention that people vary in this way and shows that they have
quite different needs as far as the location and character of houses
is concerned.
To make sure that the different kinds of people can find houses
which satisfy their own particular desires, we suggest that each
cluster of houses, and each neighborhood should have three kinds
of houses, in about equal numbers: those which are nearest to the
action, those which are half-way between, and those which are
almost completely isolated. And, to support this pattern we need,
also, three distinct kinds of paths:
I. Paths along services, wide and open for activities and
crowds, paths that connect activities and encourage busy through
traffic.
2. Paths remote from services, narrow and twisting, to dis-
courage through traffic, with many at right angles and dead ends.
3. Intermediate types of paths linking the most remote and
quiet paths to the most central and busy ones.
This pattern is as important in the design of a cluster of a few
houses as it is in the design of a neighborhood. When we were
helping a group of people to design their own cluster of houses,
we first asked each person to consider his preference for location
on the basis of extrovert-introvert. Three groups emerged: four
"extroverts" who wished to be as near the pedestrian and com,-
munity action as possible, four "introverts" who desired as much
remoteness and privacy as possible, and the remaining four who
wanted a bit of both, The site plan they made, using this pat-
tern, is shown below, with the positions which the three kinds of
people chose.

1 94
 36 DEGREES OF PUBLICNESS

In oJte /,owe cluster: private l,omes,

public !tomes, aud in-between.

Therefore:

Make a clear distinction between three kinds of homes

-those on quiet backwaters, those on busy streets, and
those that are more or less in between. Make sure that those
on quiet backwaters are on twisting paths, and that these
houses are themselves physically secluded; make sure that
the more public houses are on busy streets with many
people passing by all day long and that the houses them-
selves are relatively exposed to the passers-by. The in-
between houses may then be located on the paths half-way
between the other two. Give every neighborhood about
equal numbers of these three kinds of homes.

Q "Q

in between

<>. ~
<)
<i<> Or:,
most private

1 95
 TOWNS

Use this pattern to help diJf erentiate the houses both in neigh-
borhoods and in house clusters. Within a neighborhood, place
higher density clusters along the busier streets-HOUSING HILL
( 3 9), ROW HOUSES ( 3 8), and lower density clusters along the
backwaters-HOUSE CLUSTER (3 7), ROW HOUSES( 3 8). The actual
busy streets themselves should either be PEDESTRIAN STREETS
( I oo) or RAISED WALKS ( 5 5) on major roads; the backwaters
GREEN STREETS ( 51), or narrow paths with a distinct PATH
SHAPE ( I 2 I). Where lively streets are wanted, make sure the
density of housing is high enough to generate the liveliness-
PEDESTRIANDENSITY (123). , ..
40 OLD PEOPLE
EVERYWHERE**

215
. . . when neighborhoods are properly formed they give the peo-
ple there a cross section of ages and stages of development-IDEN-
TIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD ( I 4), LIFE CYCLE ( 26), HOUSEHOLD
MIX ( 3 5) ; however, the old people are so often forgotten and
left alone in modern society, that it is necessary to formulate a
special pattern which underlines their needs.

❖ ❖ ❖

Old people need old people, but they also need the
young, and young people need contact with the old.

There is a natural tendency for old people to gather together

in clusters or communities. But when these elderly communities
are too isolated or too large, they damage young and old alike.
The young in other parts of town, have no chance of the benefit
of older company, and the old people themselves are far too iso-
lated.
Treated like outsiders, the aged have increasingly clustered to-
gether for mutual support or simply to enjoy themselves. A now fa-
miliar but still amazing phenom·enon has sprung up in the past
decade: dozens of good-sized new towns that exclude people under
155. Built on cheap, outlying land, such communities offer two-bedroom
houses starting at $18,000 plus a refuge from urban violence ...
and generational pressures. (Time, August 3, 1970.)

But the choice the old people have made by moving to these
communities and the remarks above are a serious and painful re-
flection of a very sad state of affairs in our culture. The fact is
that contemporary society shunts away old people; and the more
shunted away they are, the deeper the rift between the old and
young. The old people have no choice but to segregate themselves
-they, like anyone else, have pride; they would rather not be
with younger people who do not appreciate them, and they feign
satisfaction to justify their position.
And the segregation of the old causes the same rift inside each
individual life: as old people pass into old age communities their
ties with their own past become unacknowledged, lost, and there-

216
 40 OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

fore broken. Their youth is no longer alive in their old age-the

two become dissociated; their lives are cut in two.

In contrast to the situation today, consider how the aged were

respected and needed in traditional cultures:

Some degree of prestige for the aged seems to have been practically
universal in all known societies. This is so general, in fact, that it cuts
across many cultural factors that have appeared to determine trends
in other topics related to age. (The Role of Aged in Primitive So-
ciety, Leo W. Simmons, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945,
p. 69.)

More specifically:

... Another family relationship of great significance for the aged

has been the commonly obserl.'.edintimate association between the very
young and the very old. Frequently they have been left together at
home while the able-bodied have gone forth to earn the family liv-
ing. These oldsters, in their wisdom and experience, have protected
and instructed the little ones, while the children, in turn, have acted
as the "eyes, ears, hands, and feet" 0f their feeble old friends. Care
of the young has thus very generally provided the aged with a useful
occupation and a vivid interest in life during the long dull days of
senescence. (Ibid. p. 199.)

Clearly, old people cannot be integrated socially as in tradi-

tional cultures unless they are first integrated physically-unless
they share the same streets, shops, services, and common land with
everyone else. But, at the same time, they obviously need other
old people around them; and some old people who are infirm
need special services.
And of course old people vary in their need or desire to be
among their own age group. The more able-bodied and indepen-
dent they are, the less they need to be among other old people,
and the farther they can be from special medical services. The
variation in the amount of care they need ranges from complete
nursing care; to semi-nursing care involving house calls once a
day or twice a week; to an old person getting some help with
shopping, cooking, and cleaning; to an old person being com-
pletely independent. Right now, there is no such fine differentia-

217
 TOWNS

tion made in the care of old people-very often people who

simply need a little help cooking and cleaning are put into rest
homes which provide total nursing care, at huge expense to them,
their families, and the community. It is a psychologically de-
bilitating situation, and they turn frail and helpless because that
is the way they are treated.
We therefore need a way of taking care of old people which
provides for the full range of their needs:
r. It must allow them to stay in the neighborhood they know
best-hence some old people in every neighborhood.
2. It must allow old people to be together, yet in groups small
enough not to isolate them from the younger people in the neigh-
borhood.
3. It must allow those old people who are independent to live
independently, without losing the benefits of communality.
4. It must allow those who need nursing care or prepared
meals, to get it, without having to go to nursing homes far from
the neighborhood.
All these requirements can be solved together, very simply, if
every neighborhood contains a small pocket of old people, not
concentrated all in one place, but fuzzy at the edges like a swarm
of bees. This will both preserve the symbiosis between young and
old, and give the old people the mutual support they need within
the pockets. Perhaps 20 might live in a central group house,
another r o or r 5 in cottages close to this house, but interlaced
with other houses, and another ro to r 5 also in cottages, still
further from the core, in among the neighborhood, yet always
within I oo or 200 yards of the core, so they can easily walk there
to play chess, have a meal, or get help from the nurse.
The number 50 comes from Mumford's argument:

The first thing to be determined is the number of aged people to

be accommodated in a neighborhood unit; and the answer to this, I
submit, is that the normal age distribution in the community as a whole
should be maintained. This means that there should be from five to
eight people over sixty-five in every hundred people; so that in a
neighborhood unit of, say, six hundred people, there would be be-
tween thirty and fifty old people. (Lewis Mumford, The Human
Prospect, New York, 1968, p. 49.)

As for the character of the group house, it might vary from

218
 40 OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

case to case. In some cases it might be no more than a commune,

where people cook together and have part-time help from young
girls and boys, or professional nurses. However, about 5 per cent
of the nation's elderly need full-time care. This means that two
or three people in every 50 will need complete nursing care.
Since a nurse cm typically work with six to eight people, this
suggests that every second or third neighborhood group house
might be equipped with complete nursing care.
Therefore:

Create dwellings for some 50 old people in every neigh-

borhood. Place these dwellings in three rings ...
1. A central core with cooking and nursing provided.
2. Cottages near the core.
3. Cottages further out from the core, mixed among the
other houses of the neighborhood, but never more
than 200 yards from the core.
in such a way that the 50 houses together form a single
coherent swarm, with its own dear center, but interlocked
at its periphery with other ordinary houses of the neigh-
borhood.

;~~ ) ...l---- nearby cottages

~ (' :· .)
"4 ,·

further cottages

❖ ❖ ❖

Treat the core like any group house; make all the cottages,
both those close to and those further away, small-OLD AGE

219
 TOWNS

COTTAGE ( I 55), some of them perhaps connected to the larger

family houses in the neighborhood-THE FAMILY (75); provide
every second or third core with proper nursing facilities; some-
where in the orbit of the old age pocket, provide the kind of
work which old people can manage best-especially teaching
and looking after tiny children-NETWORK OF LEARNING ( 18),
CHILDREN'S HOME (86), SETTLED WORK (156), VEGETABLE
GARDEN(177) .. , ,

220
between the house clusters, around the centers, and
especially in the boundaries between neighborhoods,
encourage the formation of work communities;

4 I. WORK COMMUNITY

42. INDUSTRIAL RIBBON

43. UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

44• LOCAL TOWN HALL

45. NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

46. MARKET OF MANY SHOPS

47. HEALTH CENTER

48. HOUSING IN BETWEEN

221
43 UNIVERSITY AS
A MARKETPLACE
... the NETWORK OF LEARNING ( I 8) has established the im-
portance of a whole society devoted to the learning process with
decentralized opportunities for learning. The network of learn-
ing can be greatly helped by building a university, which treats
the learning process as a normal part of adult life, for all the peo-
ple in society.

Concentrated, cloistered univers1t1es,with closed admis-

sion policies and rigid procedures which dictate who may
teach a course, kill opportunities for learning.

The original universities in the middle ages were simply col-

lections of teachers who attracted students because they had some-
thing to off er. They were marketplaces of ideas, located all over
the town, where people could shop around for the kinds of ideas
and learning which made sense to them. By contrast, the isolated
and over-administered university of today kills the variety and in-
tensity of the different ideas at the university and also limits the
student's opportunity to shop for ideas.
To re-create this kind of academic freedom and the oppor-
tunity for exchange and growth of ideas two things are needed.
First, the social and physical environment must provide a
setting which encourages rather than discourages individuality
and freedom of thought. Second, the environment must provide
a setting which encourages the student to see for himself which
ideas make sense-a setting which gives him the maximum op-
portunity and exposure to a great variety of ideas, so that he can
make up his mind for himself.
The image which most clearly describes this kind of setting is
the image of the traditional marketplace, where hundreds of tiny
stalls, each one developing some specialty and unique flavor which
can attract people by its genuine quality, are so arranged that a
potential buyer can circulate freely, and examine the wares before
he buys.
 43 UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

What would it mean to fashion the university after this model?

I. Anyone can take a course. To begin with, in a university
marketplace there are no admission procedures. Anyone, at any
age, may come forward and seek to take a class. In effect, the
"course catalog" of the university is published and circulated at
large, in the newspapers and on radio, and posted in public
places throughout the region.
2. Anyone can give a course. Similarly, in a university market-
place, anyone can come forward and offer a course. There is no
hard and fast distinction between teachers and the rest of the
citizenry. If people come forward to take the course, then it is
established. There will certainly be groups of teachers banding
together and offering interrelated classes; and teachers may set
prerequisities and regulate enrollment however they see fit. But,
like a true marketplace, the students create the demand. If over
a period of time no one comes forward to take a professor's course,
then he must change his offering or find another way to make a
living.
Many courses, once they are organized, can meet in homes
and meeting rooms all across the town. But some will need more
space or special equipment, and all the classes will need access to
libraries and various other communal facilities. The university
marketplace, then, needs a physical structure to support its social
structure.
Certainly, a marketplace could never have the form of an iso-
lated campus. Rather it would tend to be open and public, woven
through the city, perhaps with one or two streets• where university
facilities are concentrated.
In an early version of this pattern, written expressly for the
University of Oregon m Eugene, we described in detail the
physical setting which we believe cornplernents the marketplace
of ideas. We advised:
Make the university a collection of small buildings, situated along
pedestrian paths, each containing one or two educational projects.
Make all the horizontal circulation among these projects, in the pub-
lic domain, at ground floor. This means that all projects open di-
rectly to a pedestrian path, and that the upper floors of buildings are
connected directly to the ground, by stairs and entrances. Connect all
the pedestrian paths, so that, like a marketplace, they form one major
pedestrian system, with many entrances and openings off it. The over-

2 33
 TOWNS

all result of this pattern, is that the environment becomes a collection

of relatively low buildings, opening off a major system of pedestrian
paths, each building containing a series of entrances and staircases, at
about 50 foot intervals.

We still believe that this image of the university, as a market-

place scattered through the town, is correct. Most of these details
are given by other patterns, in this book: BUILDING COMPLEX
( 9 s)' PEDESTRIAN STREET ( I 00)' ARCADES ( I 19)' and OPEN
STAIRS (158).
Finally, how should a university marketplace be administered?
We don't know. Certainly a voucher system where everyone has
egual access to payment vouchers seems sensible. And some
technigue for balancing payment to class size is reguired, so
teachers are not simply paid according to how many students they
enroll. Furthermore, some kind of evaluation technique is
needed, so that reliable information on courses and teachers
filters out to the towns people.
There are several experiments going forward in higher educa-
tion today which may help to solve these administrative questions.
The Open University of England, the various "free" universities,
such as Heliotrope in San Francisco, the 20 branches of the Uni-
versity Without Walls all over the United States, the university
extension programs, which gear their courses entirely to working
people-they are all examples of institutions experimenting with
different aspects of the marketplace idea.
Therefore:

Establish the university as a marketplace of higher edu-

cation. As a social conception this means that the university
is open to people of all ages, on a full-time, part-time, or
course by course basis. Anyone can offer a class. Anyone
can take a class. Physically, the university marketplace has
a central crossroads where its main buildings and offices
are, and the meeting rooms and labs ripple out from this
crossroads-at first concentrated in small buildings along
pedestrian streets and then gradually becoming more dis-
persed and mixed with the town.

234
 43 UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

marketplace of ideas

11
~ lJl
p 1/j p

'm,J Ill! "

nl university crossroads
~ p

fil ~ • l

" ' scattered facilities

open admission

Give the university a PROMENADE ( 3 I) at its central cross-

roads; and around the crossroads cluster the buildings along
0 treets-BUILDING COMPLEX ( 95)' PEDESTRIAN STREET ( 100).
Give this central area access to quiet greens-QUIET BACKS (59);
and a normal distribution of housing-HOUSING IN BETWEEN
( 48) ; as for the classes, wherever possible let them follow the
model of MASTERAND APPRENTICES (83) ....

2 35
 45 NECKLACE OF
COMMUNITY PROJECTS
... LOCAL TOWN HALL (44) calls for small centers of local
government at the heart of every community. This pattern em-
bellishes the local town hall and other public institutions like
it-UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE (43) and HEALTH CENTER
(47)-with a ground for community action.

❖ ❖ +

The local town hall will not be an honest part of the

community which lives around it, unless it is itself sur-
rounded by all kinds of small community activities and
projects, generated by the people for themselves.

A lively process of community self-government depends on an

endless series of ad hoc political and service groups, functioning
freely, each with a proper chance to test its ideas before the
townspeople. The spatial component of this idea is crucial: this
process will be stymied if people cannot get started in an office on
a shoestring.
We derive the geometry of this pattern from five reguirements:
I. Small, grass roots movements, unpopular at their inception,
play a vital role in society. They provide a critical opposition to
established ideas; their presence is a direct correlate of the right
to free speech; a basic part of the self-regulation of a successful
society, which will generate counter movements whenever things
get off the track. Such movements need a place to manifest them-
selves, in a way which puts their ideas directly into the public
domain. At this writing, a quick survey of the East Bay shows
about 30 or 40 bootstrap groups that are suffering for lack of
such a place: for example, Alcatraz Indians, Bang la Desh Relief,
Solidarity Films, Tenant Action Proj cct, November 7th Move-
ment, Gay Legal Defense, No on M, People's Translation
Service ....
2. But as a rule these groups are small and have very little
money. To nourish this kind of activity, the community must
provide minimal space to any group of this sort, rent free, with
some limit on the duration of the lease. The space must be like a

2 43
 TOWNS

small storefront and have typewriters, duplicating machines, and

telephones; and access to a meeting room.
3. To encourage the atmosphere of honest debate, these store-
front spaces must be near the town hall, the main crossroads of
public life. If they are scattered across the town, away from the
main town hall, they cannot seriously contend with the powers
that be.
4. The space must be highly visible. It must be built in a way
which lets the group get their ideas across, to people on the street.
And it must be physically organized to undermine the natural
tendency town governments have to wall themselves in and
isolate themselves from the community once they are in power.
5. Finally, to bring these groups into natural contact with
the community, the fabric of storefronts should be built to
include some of the stable shops and services that the community
needs-barbershop, cafe, laundromat.
These five requirements suggest a necklace of rather open store-
front spaces around the local town hall. This necklace of spaces is
a physical embodiment of the political process in an open society:
everyone has access to equipment, space to mount a campaign,
and the chance to get their ideas into the public arena.
Therefore:

Allow the growth of shop-size spaces around the local

town hall, and any other appropriate community building.
Front these shops on a busy path, and lease them for a mini-
mum rent to ad hoc community groups for political work,
trial services, research, and advocate groups. No ideological
restrictions.

2 44
 45 NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

Make each shop small, compact, and easily accessible like

INDIVIDUALLY OWNED SHOPS (87); build small public spaces for
loitering amongst them-PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM (69). Use
them to form the building edge-BUILDING FRONTS (122),
BUILDING EDGE ( 160), and keep them open to the street-OPEN-
ING TO THE STREET (165) .. , ,

2 45
57 CHILDREN IN
THE CITY

2 93
... roads, bike paths, and main pedestrian paths are given their
position by PARALLEL ROADS (23), PROMENADE (31), LOOPED
LOCAL ROADS (49), GREEN STREETS (51), NETWORK OF PATHS
AND CARS (52), BIKE PATHS AND RACKS (56). Some of them are
safe for children, others are less safe. Now, finally, to complete the
paths and roads, it is essential to define at least one place, right
in the very heart of cities, where children can be completely free
and safe. If handled properly, this pattern can play a great role
in helping to create the NETWORK OF LEARNING ( I 8).

If children are not able to explore the whole of the adult

world round about them, they cannot become adults. But
modern cities are so dangerous that children cannot be al-
lowed to explore them freely.

The need for children to have access to the world of adults is

so obvious that it goes with out saying. The adults transmit their
ethos and their w:iy of life to children through their actions, not
through statements. Children learn by doing and by copying.
If the child's education is limited to school and home, and all the
vast undertakings of a modern city are mysterious and inaccessible,
it is impossible for the child to find out what it really means to be
an adult and impossible, certainly, for him to copy it by doing.
This separation between the child's world and the adult world
is unknown among animals and unknown in traditional societies.
In simple villages, children spend their days side by side with
farmers in the fields, side by side with people who are building
houses, side by side, in fact, with all the daily actions of the men
and women round about them: making pottery, counting money,
curing the sick, praying to God, grinding corn, arguing about the
future of the village.
But in the city, l i fc is so enormous and so dangerous, that
children can't be left alone to roam around. There is constant
danger from fast-moving cars and trucks, and dangerous ma-
chinery. There is a small but ominous danger of kidnap, or rape,

2 94
 57 CHILDREN IN THE CITY

or assault. And, for the smallest children, there is the simple dan-
ger of getting lost. A small child just doesn't know enough to
find his way around a city.
The problem seems nearly insoluble. But we believe it can be
at least partly solved by enlarging those parts of cities where
small children can be left to roam, alone, and by trying to make
sure that these protected children's belts are so widespread and so
far-reaching that they touch the full variety of adult activities
and ways of life.
We imagine a carefully developed childrens' bicycle path,
within the larger network of bike paths. The path goes past and
through interesting parts of the city; and it is relatively safe. It
is part of the overall system and therefore used by everyone. It
is not a special children's "ride"-which would immediately be
shunned by the adventurous young-but it does have a special
name, and perhaps it is specially colored.

The path is always a bike path; it never runs beside cars.

Where it crosses traffic there arc lights or bridges. There are
many homes and shops along the path-adults are nearby, es-
pecially the old enjoy spending an hour a day sitting along this
path, themselves riding along the loop, watching the kids out of
the corner of one eye.
And most important, the great beauty of this path is that it
passes along and even through those functions and parts of a town
which are normally out of reach: the place where newspapers are
printed, the place where milk arrives from the countryside and
is bottled, the pier, the garage where people make doors and
windows, the alley behind restaurant row, the cemetery.
Therefore:

As part of the network of bike paths, develop one system

of paths that is extra safe-entirely separate from automo-

2 95
biles, with lights and bridges at the crossings, with homes
and shops along it, so that there are always many eyes on
the path. Let this path go through every neighborhood, so
that children can get onto it without crossing a main road.
And run the path all through the city, down pedestrian
streets, through workshops, assembly plants, warehouses,
interchanges, print houses, bakeries, all the interesting
"invisible" life of a town-so that the children can roam
freely on their bikes and trikes.

"children's way" bike path

city life

road crossings

Line the children's path with windows, especially from rooms

that are in frequent use, so that the eyes upon the street make it
safe for the children-STREET WIN Dows (I 64); make it touch
the children's places all along the path-coNNECTED PLAY ( 68),
ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND ( 73), SHOPFRONT SCHOOLS (8 5),
CHILDREN'S HOME (86), but also make it touch other phases of
the life cycle-OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE (40), WORK COM-
MUNITY (41), UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE (43), GRAVE SITES
(70), LOCAL SPORTS (72), ANIMALS (74), TEENAGE SOCIETY
(84) ....
in the communities and neighborhoods provide pub-
lic open land where people can relax, rub shoulders
and renew themselves;

58. CARNIVAL

59. QUIET BACKS

60. ACCESSIBLE GREEN

6 I. SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES

62. HIGH PLACES

63. DANCING IN THE STREET

64. POOLS AND STREAMS

65. BIRTH PLACES

66. HOLY GROUND

2 97
58 CARNIVAL
... once in a while, in a subculture which is particularly open
to it, a promenade may break into a wilder rhythm-PROMENADE
( 3 I), NIGHT LIFE ( 3 3 )-and perhaps every promenade may
have a touch of this.

Just as an individual person dreams fantastic happenings

to release the inner forces which cannot be encompassed by
ordinary events, so too a city needs its dreams.

Under normal circumstances, in today's world the entertain-

ments which are available are either healthy and harmless-going
to the movies, watching TV, cycling, playing tennis, taking
helicopter rides, going for walks, watching football-or down-
right sick and socially destructive-shooting heroin, driving reck-
lessly, group violence.
But man has a great need for mad, subconscious processes to
come into play, without unleashing them to such an extent that
they become socially destructive. There is, in short, a need for
socially sanctioned activities which are the social, outward equiva-
lents of dreaming.
In primitive societies this kind of process was provided by the
rites, witch doctors, shamans. In Western civilization during the
last three or four hundred years, the closest available source of
this outward acknowledgment of underground life has been the
circus, fairs, and carnivals. In the middle ages, the market place
itself had a good deal of this kind of atmosphere.
Today, on the whole, this kind of experience is gone. The
circuses and the carnivals are drying up. But the need persists. In
the Bay Area, the annual Renaissance Fair goes a little way to
meet the need-but it is much too bland. We imagine something
more along the following lines: street theater, clowns, mad games
in the streets and squares and houses; during certain weeks, peo-
ple may live in the carnival; simple food and shelter are free;
day and night people mixing; actors who mingle with the crowd
and involve you, willy nilly, in processes whose end cannot be

2 99
 TOWNS

foreseen; fighting-two men with bags on a slippery log, in

front of hundreds; Fellini-clowns, death, crazy people, brought
into mesh.
Remember the hunchbacked dwarf in Ship of Fools, the only
reasonable person on the ship, who says "Everyone has a problem;
but I have the good fortune to wear mine on my back, where
everyone can see it."
Therefore:

Set aside some part of the town as a carnival-mad side-

shows, tournaments, acts, displays, competitions, dancing,
music, street theater, clowns, transvestites, freak events,
which allow people to reveal their madness; weave a wide
pedestrian street through this area; run booths along the
street, narrow alleys; at one end an outdoor theater; per-
haps connect the theater stage directly to the carnival
street, so the two spill into and feed one another.

,
,
\
I
outdoor theater / \
booths

~1
--✓-•i~f}~~~-
mad games dancing

Dancing in the street, food stands, an outdoor room or two, a

square where the theater is, and tents and canvas will all help to
make it even livelier-SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES(61), DANCING IN
THE STREET (63), PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM (69), FOOD STANDS
(93), PEDESTRIAN STREET (100), CANVAS ROOFS (244) .. , ,

300
63 DANCING IN THE STREET*
... several patterns have laid the groundwork for evening
activity in public-MAGIC OF THE CITY (IO)) PROMENADE( 3 I))
NIGHT LIFE ( 3 3), CARNIVAL( 5 8), SMALLPUBLIC SQUARES( 6 I).
To make these places alive at night, there is nothing like music
and dancing; this pattern simply states the physical conditions
which will encourage dancing and music to fill the streets.

❖ ❖ ❖

Why is it that people don't dance in the streets today?

All over the earth, people once danced in the streets; in

theater, song, and natural speech, "dancing in the street" is an
image of supreme joy. Many cultures still have some version of
this activity. There are the Balinese dancers who fall into a
trance whirling around in the street; the mariachi bands in Mex-
icc--evcry town has several squares where the bands play and the
neighborhood comes out to dance; there is the European and
American tradition of bandstands and jubilees in the park; there
is the hon odori festival in Japan, when everybody claps and
dances in the streets.
But in those parts of the world that have become "modern"
and technically sophisticated, this experience has died. Communi-
ties are fragmented; people are uncomfortable in the streets,
afraid with one another; not many people play the right kind
of music; people are embarrassed.
Certainly there is no way in which a change in the environ-
ment, as simple as the one which we propose, can remedy these
circumstances. But we detect a change in mood. The embarrass-
ment and the alienation are recent developments, blocking a more
basic need. And as we get in touch with these needs, things start
to happen. People remember how to dance; everyone takes up an
instrument; many hundreds form little bands. At this writing,
in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland there is a controversy
over "street musicians"-bands that have spontaneously begun
playing in streets and plazas whenever the weather is good-
where should they be allowed to play, do they obstruct traffic,
shall people dance?

320
 63 DANCING IN THE STREET

It is in this atmosphere that we propose the pattern. Where

there is feeling for the importance of the activity re-emerging,
then the right setting can actualize it and give it roots. The essen-
tials are straightforward: a platform for the musicians, perhaps
with a cover; hard surface for dancing, all around the bandstand;
places to sit and Jean for people who want to watch and rest;
provision for some drink and refreshment (some Mexican band-
stands have a beautiful way of building tiny stalls into the base of
the bandstand, so that people are drawn though the dancers and
up to the music, for a fruit drink or a beer); the whole thing set
somewhere where people congregate.
Therefore:

Along promenades, in squares and evening centers, make

a slightly raised platform to form a bandstand, where street
musicians and local bands can play. Cover it, and perhaps
build in at ground level tiny stalls for refreshment. Sur-
round the bandstand with paved surface for dancing-no
admission charge.

paved surface for dancing

raised bandstand food and drink

Place the bandstand in a pocket of act1v11y, toward the edge

of a square or a promenade-ACTIVITY POCKETS( 124); make it a
room, defined by trellises and columns-PUBLIC OUTDOORROOM
(69); build FOOD STANDS(93) around the bandstand; and for
dancing, maybe colored canvas canopies, which reach out over
portions of the street, and make the street, or parts of it, into a
great, half-open tent-CANVAS ROOFS( 244).

321
68 CONNECTED PLAY*

341
... suppose the common land that connects clusters to one
another is being provided-COMMON LAND (67). Within this
common land, it is necessary to identify play space for children
and, above all, to make sure that the relationship between adjacent
pieces of common land allows this play space to form.

If children don't play enough with other children during

the first five years of life, there is a great chance that they
will have some kind of mental illness later in their lives.

Children need other children. Some findings suggest that they

need other children even more than they need their own mothers.
And empirical evidence shows that if they are forced to spend
their early years with too little contact with other children, they
will be likely to suffer from psychosis and neurosis in their later
years.

Alone

Since the layout of the land between the houses in a neighbor-

hood virtually controls the formation of play groups, it therefore
has a critical effect on people's mental health. A typical suburban
subdivision with private lots opening off streets almost confines

342
 68 CONNECTED PLAY

children to their houses. Parents, afraid of traffic or of their neigh-

bors, keep their small children indoors or in their own gardens:
so the children never have enough chance meetings with other
children of their own age to form the groups which are essential
to a healthy emotional development.
We shall show that children will only be able to have the access
to other children which they need, if each household opens onto
some kind of safe, connected common land, which touches at least
64 other households.
First, let us review the evidence for the problem. The most
dramatic evidence comes from the Harlows' work on monkeys.
The Harlows have shown that monkeys isolated from other infant
monkeys during the first six months of life are incapable of normal
social, sexual, or play relations with other monkeys in their later
lives:
They exhibit abnormalities of behavior rarely seen in animals born
in the wild. They sit in their cages and stare fixedly into space, circle
their cages in a repetitively stereotyped manner, and clasp their heads
in their hands or arms and rock for long periods of time ... the
animal may chew and tear at its body until it bleeds ... similar
symptoms of emotional pathology are observed in deprived children
in orphanages and in withdrawn adolescents and adults in mental
hospitals. (Henry F. Harlow and Margaret K. Harlow, "The Effect
of Rearing Conditions on Behavior," Bull. Menniger Clinic, 26,
1962, pp. 213-14.)

It is well known that infant monkeys-like infant human be-

ings-have these defects if brought up without a mother or a
mother surrogate. It is not well known that the effects of separa-
tion from other infant monkeys are even stronger than the effects
of maternal deprivation. Indeed, the Harlows showed that al-
though monkeys can be raised successfully without a mother, pro-
vided that they have other infant monkeys to play with, they
cannot be raised successfully by a mother alone, without other
infant monkeys, even if the mother is entirely normal. They con-
clude: "It seems possible that the infant-mother affectional system
is dispensable, whereas the infant-infant system is a sine-qua-non
for later adjustment in all spheres of monkey life." (Harry F.
Harlow and Margaret K. Harlow, "Social Deprivation in Mon-
keys," Scientific American, 207, No. 5, 1962, pp. 136-46.)

343
 TOWNS

The first six months of a rhesus monkey's life correspond to the

first three years of a child's life. Although there is no formal evi-
dence to show that lack of contact during these first three years
damages human children-and as far as we know, it has never
been studied-there is very strong evidence for the cff ect of iso-
lation between the ages of four to ten.
Herman Lantz questioned a random sample of 1,000 men in
the United States Army, who had been referred to a mental
hygiene clinic because of emotional difficulties. (Herman K.
Lantz, "Number of Childhood Friends as Reported in the Life
Histories of a Psychiatrically Diagnosed Group of I ,ooo," Mar-
riage and Family Life, May 1956, pp. 107~108.) Army psy-
chiatrists classified each of the men as normal, suffering from
mild psychoneurosis, severe psychoneurosis, or psychosis. Lantz
then put each man into one of three categories: those who re-
ported having five friends or more at any typical moment when
they were between four and ten years old, those who reported an
average of about two friends, and those who reported having no
friends at that time. The following table shows the relative per-
centages in each of the three friendship categories separately. The
results are astounding:
5 or More About 2
Friends Friends No Friends
Normal 39.5 7.2 0.0
Mild psychoneurosis 22.0 16.4 5.0
Severe psychoneurosis 27.0 54.6 47.5
Psychosis o.8 3. I 37.5
Other 10.7 I 8.7 10.0

100.0 100.0 100.0

Among people who have tive friends or more as children, 61 .5

per cent have mild cases, while 2 7 .8 per cent have severe cases.
Among people who had no friends, only 5 per cent have mild
cases, and 8 5 per cent have severe cases.
On the positive side, an informal account by Anna Freud shows
how powerful the effect of contact among tiny children can be
on the emotional development of the children. She describes five
young German children who lost their parents during infancy

344
 68 CONNECTED PLAY

in a concentration camp, and then looked after one another inside

the camp until the war ended, at which point they were brought
to England. (Anna Freud and Sophie Dann, "An Experiment in
Group Upbringing," Reading in Child Behavior and Develop-
ment, ed. Celia Stendler, New York, 1964, pp. 122-40.) She
describes the beautiful social and emotional maturity of these
tiny children. Reading the account, one feels that these children,
at the age of three, were more aware of each other and more
sensitive to each other's needs than many people ever are.
It is almost certain, then, that contact is essential, and that
lack of contact, when it is extreme, has extreme effects. A con-
siderable body of literature beyond that which we have quoted,
is given in Christopher Alexander, "The City as a Mechanism
for Sustaining Human Contact," Environment for Man, ed.
W. R. Ewald, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1967, pp.
60-!09.
If we assume that informal, neighborhood contact between
children is a vital experience, we may then ask what kinds of
neighborhoods support the formation of spontaneous play groups.
The answer, we believe, is some form of safe common land, con-
nected to a child's home, and from which he can make contact
with several other children. The critical question is: How many
households need to share this connected play space?
The exact number of households that are required depends on
the child population within the households. Let us assume that
children represent about one-fourth of a given population (slightly
less than the modal figure for suburban households), and that
these children are evenly distributed in age from o to 18.
Roughly speaking, a given pre-school child who is x years old will
play with children who are x - 1 or x or x + 1 years old. In or-
der to have a reasonable amount of contact, and in order for
playgroups to form, each child must be able to reach at least five
children in his age range. Statistical analysis shows that for each
child to have a 95 per cent chance of reaching five such potential
playmates, each child must be in reach of 64 households.
The problem may be stated as follows: In an infinite popula-
tion of children, one-sixth are the right age and five-sixths are
the wrong age for any given child. A group of r children is

345
 TOWNS

chosen at random. The probability that this group of r children

4
contains 5 or more right-age children in it is I - IP,., 1,, where
le= o
P,.,k is the hypergeometric distribution. If we now ask what is the
4
least r which makes I - .IP,., k > 0.95, 1· turns out to be 54.
I<= o
I ( we need 54 children, we need a total population of
4(54) = 216, which at 3.4 persons per household, needs 64
households.
Sixty-four is a rather large number of households to share con-
nected common land. In fact, in the face of this requirement,
there is a strong temptation to try to solve the problem by group-
ing IO or 12 homes in a cluster. But this will not work: while it
is a useful configuration for other reasons-HOUSE CLUSTER (37)
and COMMONLAND (67)-by itself it will not solve the problem
of connected play space for children. There must also be safe paths
to connect the bits of common ]and.

Connecting paths.

Therefore:

Lay out common land, paths, gardens, and bridges so

that groups of at least 64 households are connected by a
 68 CONNECTED PLAY

swath of land that does not cross traffic. Establish this

land as the connected play space for the children in these
households.

safe connections

play space
fast traffic
outside

Do this by connecting several HOUSE CLUSTERS ( 3 7) with

GREENSTREETS( 5 I) and safe paths. Place the local CHILDREN'S
HOME (86) in this play space. Within the play space, make sure
the children have access to mud, and plants, and animals, and
water-STILL WATER (71), ANIMALS(74); set aside one area
where there is all kinds of junk that they can use to make things
-ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND (73), , , .

347
PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM**
... the common land in MAIN GATEWAYS( 5 3), ACCESS IRLE
GREEN (60), SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES(6r), COMMON LAND (67),
PEDESTRIAN STREET ( I 00), PATHS AND GOALS ( I 20) needs at
least some place where hanging out and being "out" in public
become possible. For this purpose it is necessary to distinguish
one part of the common land and to define it with a little more
elaboration. Also, if none of the larger patterns exist yet, this
pattern can act as a nucleus, and help them to crystallize around it.

There are very few spots along the streets of modern

towns and neighborhoods where people can hang out,
comfortably, for hours at a time.

Men seek corner beer shops, where they spend hours talking
and drinking; teenagers, especially boys, choose special corners
too, where they hang around, waiting for their friends. Old peo-
ple like a special spot to go to, where they can expect to find
others; small children need sand lots, mud, plants, and water to
play with in the open; young mothers who go to watch their
children often use the children's play as an opportunity to meet
and talk with other mothers.
Because of the diverse and casual nature of these activities, they
require a space which has a subtle balance of being defined and
yet not too defined, so that any activity which is natural to the
neighborhood at any given time can develop freely and yet has
something to start from.
For example, it would be possible to leave an outdoor room
unfinished, with the understanding it can be finished by people
who live nearby, to fill whatever needs seem most pressing. It
may need sand, or water faucets, or play equipment for small
children-ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND(73); it may have steps and
seats, where teenagers can meet-TEENAGE SOCIETY (84); some-
one may build a smalJ bar or coffee shop in a house that opens
into the area, with an arcade, making the arcade a place to eat and

349
 TOWNS

drin k-FooD STANDS( 9 3) ; there may be games like chess and

checkers for old people.
Modern housing projects especially suffer from the lack of this
kind of space. When indoor community rooms are provided, they
are rarely used. People don't want to plunge into a situation
which they don't know; and the degree of involvement created
in such an enclosed space is too intimate to allow a casual passing
interest to build up gradually. On the other hand, vacant land is
not enclosed enough. It takes years for anything to happen on
vacant land; it provides too little shelter, and too little "reason to
be there."
What is needed is a framework which is just enough deli ned
so that people naturally tend to stop there; and so that curiosity
naturally takes people there, and invites them to stay. Then, once
community groups begin to gravitate toward this framework, there
is a good chance that they will themselves, if they are permitted,
create an environment which is appropriate to their activities.
We conjecture that a small open space, roofed, with columns,
but without walls at least in part, will just about provide the
necessary balance of "openness" and "closedness."
A beautiful example of the pattern was built by Dave Chapin
and George Gordon with architecture students from Case Western
Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio. They built a sequence of public out-

Public outdoor room built by Chapin and Go,·don in

Cleveland, O!tio.

3 50
 69 PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM

door rooms on the grounds and on the public land surrounding

a local mental health clinic. According to staff reports, these
places changed the life of the clinic dramatically: many more
people than had been usual were drawn into the outdoors, public
talk was more animated, outdoor space that had always been
dominated by automobiles suddenly became human and the
cars had to inch along.
In all, Chapin and Gordon and their crew built seven public
outdoor rooms in the neighborhood. Each one was slightly dif-
ferent, varying according to views, orientation, size.
We have also discovered a version of this pattern from medieval
society. Apparently, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there
were many such public structures dotted through the towns. They
were the scene of auctions, open-air meetings, and market fairs.
They are very much in the spirit of the places we are proposing
for neighborhoods and work communities.

Outdoor rooms in England and Peru.

Therefore:

In every neighborhood and work community, make a

35 I
 TOWNS

piece of the common land into an outdoor room-a partly

enclosed place, with some roof, columns, without walls,
perhaps with a trellis; place it beside an important path
and within view of many homes and workshops.

roof
columns Iii tangent path

1/~r-:·,
seats

r
❖ ❖ ❖

Place the outdoor room where several paths are tangent to it,
like any other common area-COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART
(129); in the bulge of a path-PATH SHAPE (121); or around a
square-ACTIVITY POCKETS ( I 24) ; use surrounding BUILDING
EDGES ( I 60) to define part of it; build it like any smaller outdoor
room, with columns, and half-trellised roofs-OUTDOOR ROOM
(163); perhaps put an open courtyard next to it-COURTYARDS
WHICH LIVE ( 1 1 5), an ARCADE( 1 19) around the edge, or other
simple cover-CANVAS ROOFS( 244), and seats for casual sitting-
STAIRSEATS(125), SEATSPOTS(241) ....

352
75 THE FAMILY*
... assume now, that you have decided to build a house for
yourself. If you place it properly, this house can help to form a
cluster, or a row of houses, or a hill of houses-HOUSE CLUSTER
(37), ROWHOUSES(38), HOUSINGHILL (39)-or it can help to
keep a working community alive-HOUSING IN BETWEEN (48).
This next pattern now gives you some vital information about the
social character of the household itself. If you succeed in follow-
ing this pattern, it will help repair LIFE CYCLE ( 26) and HOUSE-
HOLDMIX (35) in your community.

The nuclear family is not by itself a viable social form.

Until a few years ago, human society was based on the ex-
tended family: a family of at least three generations, with
parents, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, all
living together in a single or loosely knit multiple household.
But today people move hundreds of miles to marry, to find
education, and to work. Under these circumstances the only
family units which are left are those units called nuclear families:
father, mother, and children. And many of these are broken
down even further by divorce and separation.
Unfortunately, it seems very likely that the nuclear family is
not a viable social form. It is too small. Each person in a nuclear
family is too tightly linked to other members of the family; any
one relationship which goes sour, even for a few hours, becomes
critical; people cannot simply turn away toward uncles, aunts,
grandchildren, cousins, brothers. Instead, each difficulty twists
the family unit into ever tighter spirals of discomfort; the
children become prey to all kinds of dependencies and oedipal
neuroses; the parents are so dependent on each other that they
are finally forced to separate.
Philip Slater describes this situation for American families and
finds in the adults of the family, especially the women, a terrible,
brooding sense of deprivation. There are simply not enough
people around, not enough communal action, to give the ordinary

377
 TOWNS

experience around the home any depth or richness. (Philip E.

Slater, The Pursuit of Loneline,s, Boston: Beacon Press, 1970,
p. 67, and throughout.)
It seems essential that the people in a household have at least
a dozen people round them, so that they can find the comfort
and relationships they need to sustain the111 during their ups and
downs. Since the old extended family, based on blood ties, seems
to be gone-at least for the moment-this can only happen if
small families, couples, and single people join together in volun-
tary "families" of ten or so.
In his final book, Island, Aldous Huxley portrayed a lovely
vision of such a development:

"How many homes does a Palanese child have?"

"About twenty on the average."
"Twenty? My God!"
"We all belong," Susila explaine<l, "to a MAC-a Mutual Adop-
tion Club. Every MAC consists of anything from fifteen to twenty-
five assorted couples. Newly elected brides and bridegrooms, old-
timers with growing children, grandparents and great-grandparents-
everybody in the club adopts everyone else. Besides our own blood re-
lations, we all have our quota of deputy mothers, deputy fathers,
deputy aunts and uncles, deputy brothers and sisters, deputy babies
and toddlers and teen-agers."
Will shook his head. "Making twenty families grow where only
one grew before."
"But what grew before was your kind of family .... " As though
reading instructions from a cookery book, "Take one sexually inept
wage slave," she went on, "one dissatisfied female, two or (if pre-
ferred) three small television addicts; marinate in a mixture of
Freudism and dilute Christianity; then bottle up tightly in a four-
room flat and stew for fifteen years in their own juice. Our recipe is
rather different: Take twenty sexually satisfied couples and their
offspring; add science, intuition and humor in equal quantities;
steep in Tantrik Buddhism and simmer indefinitely in an open pan
in the open air over a brisk flame of affection."
"And what comes out of your open pan?" he asked.
"An entirely different kind of family. Not exclusive, like your
families, and not predestined, not compulsory. An inclusive, unpre-
destined and voluntary family. Twenty pairs of fathers and mothers,
eight or nine ex-fathers and ex-mothers, and forty or fifty assorted
children of all ages." (Aldous Huxley, Island, New York: Bantam,
1962, pp. 89-90.)

Physically, the setting for a large voluntary family must provide

 75 THE FAMILY

for a balance of privacy and communality. Each small family,

each person, each couple, needs a private realm, almost a private
household of their own, according to their territorial need. In
the movement to build communes, it is our experience that
groups have not taken this need for privacy seriously enough. It
has been shrugged off, as something to overcome. But it is a
deep and basic need; and if the setting does not let each
person and each small household regulate itself on this dimension,
it is sure to cause trouble. We propose, therefore, that individuals,
couples, people young and old-each subgroup-have its own
legally independent household-in some cases, physically separate
households and cottages, at least separate room~, suites, and
floors.
The private realms are then set off against the common space
and the common functions. The most vital commons are the
kitchen, the place to sit down and eat, and a garden. Common
meals, at least several nights a week, seem to play the biggest
role in binding the group. The meals, and taking time at the
cooking, provide the kind of casual meeting time when every-
thing else can be comfortably discussed: the child care arrange-
ments, maintenance, projects-see COMMUNAL EATING (147).
This would suggest, then, a large family room-farmhouse kitch-
en, right at the heart of the site-at the main crossroads, where
everyone would tend to meet toward the end of the day. Again,
according to the style of the family, this might be a separate
building, with workshop and gardens, or one wing of a house,
or the entire first floor of a two or three story building.
There is some evidence that processes which generate large
voluntary group households are already working in the society.
(Cf. Pamela Hollie, "More families share houses with others to
enhance 'life style,'" Wall Street Journal, July 7, 1972.)
One way to spur the growth of voluntary families: When some-
one turns over or sells their home or room or apartment, they
first tell everyone living around them-their neighbors. These
neighbors then have the right to find friends of theirs to take
the place-and thus to extend their "family." If friends are able
to move in, then they can arrange for themselves how to create a
functioning family, with commons, and so on. They might
build a connection between the homes, knock out a wall, add a

379
 TOWNS

room. If the people immediately around the place cannot make

the sale in a few months, then it reverts to the normal market-
place.
Therefore:

Set up processes which encourage groups of 8 to 12

people to come together and establish communal house-
holds. Morphologically, the important things are:
1. Private realms for the groups and individuals that
make up the extended family: couple's realms, private
rooms, sub-households for small families.
2. Common space for shared functions: cooking, work-
ing, gardening, child care.
3. At the important crossroads of the site, a place where
the entire group can meet and sit together.

private realms
communal household

❖ ❖ ❖

Each individual household within the larger family must, at

all costs, have a clearly defined territory of its own, which it
controls-YOUR OWN HOME (79); treat the individual territories
according to the nature of the individual households-HOUSE FOR
A SMALL FAMILY (76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77), HOUSE FOR
ONE PERSON (78); and build common space between them,
where the members of the different smaller households can meet
and eat together-COMMON AREASAT THE HEART ( I 29)' COM-
MUNAL EATING ( I 47). For the shape of the building, gardens,
parking, and surroundings, begin with BUILDING COMPLEX
( 9 5) • • • •

380
76 HOUSE FOR A SMALL
FAMILY*
... according to THE FAMILY (75), each nuclear family ought
to be a member household of a larger group household. If this is
not possible, do what you can, when building a house for a
small family, to generate some larger, possible group household,
by tying it together with the next door households; in any case,
at the very least, form the begin11ing of a HOUSE CLUSTER (3 7).

In a house for a small family, it is the relationship be-

tween children and adults which is most critical.

Many small households, not large enough to have a full fledged

nursery, not rich enough to have a nanny, find themselves
swamped by the children. The children naturally want to be
where the adults are; their parents don't have the heart, or the
energy, to keep them out of special areas; so finally the whole
house has the character of a children's room-children's clothes,
drawings, boots and shoes, tricycles, toy trucks, and disarray.
Yet, obviously few parents feel happy to give up the calm and
cleanliness and quiet of the adult world in every square inch of
their homes. To help achieve a balance, a house for a small family
needs three distinct areas: a couple's realm, reserved for the
adults; a children's realm, where children's needs hold sway; and
a common area, between the two, connected to them both.
The couple's realm should be more than a room, although
rooms are a part of it. It is territory which sustains them as two
adults, a couple-not father and mother. Other parts of their
lives are involved with children, friends, work; there must be a
place which becomes naturally an expression of them as adults,
alone. The children come in and out of this territory, but when
they are there, they are clearly in the adults' world. See COUPLE'S
REALM (136).
The children's world must also be looked upon as territory
that they share, as children, CHILDREN's REALM ( I 3 7); here, it
is important to establish that this is a part of the house, in balance
with the others. Again, the critical feature is not that adults are
 76 HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY

"excluded" but that, when they are in this world, they are m
children's territory.
The common area contains those functions that the children
and the adults share: eating together, sitting together, games, per-
haps bathing, gardening-again, whatever captures their needs
for shared territory. Quite likely, the common territory will be
larger than the two other parts of the house.
Finally, realize that this pattern is different from the way most
small family homes are made today. For example, a popular cur-
rent conception, comparable to this, but quite different, is a
suburban two part howe: sleeping and commons.

A typical suburban two part house.

Even though there is a "master bedroom" the sleeping part

of the house is essentially one thing-the children are all around
the master bedroom. This plan does not have the distinctions we
are arguing for.
Here is a beautiful plan which does:

A three-part house-t!te couple's realm upstairs.

 TOWNS

Therefore:

Give the house three distinct parts: a realm for parents,

a realm for the children, and a common area. Conceive
these three realms as roughly similar in size, with the com-
mons the largest.

parents' realm

children's realm

❖ ❖ ❖

Treat the house, like every house, as a distinct piece of territory

-YOUR OWN HOME (79); build the three main parts according
to the specific patterns for those parts-COMMON AREAS AT THE
HEART ( I 29)' COUPLE'S REALM ( I 36)' BED CLUSTER ( I 43) and
connect the common areas, and the bed cluster according to the
CHILDREN'S REALM (137). , , ,
77 HOUSE FOR A COUPLE*
... again, ideally, every couple is a part of a larger group house-
hold-THE FAMILY ( 7 5). If th is can not be so, try to build the
house for the couple in such a way as to tie it together with some
other households, to form the beginnings of a group household,
or, if this fails, at least to form the beginnings of a HOUSECLUSTER
( 37) •

❖ ❖ ❖

In a small household shared by two, the most important

problem which arises is the possibility that each may have
too little opportunity for solitude or privacy.

Consider these forces:

I. Of course, the couple need a shared realm, where they can
function together, invite friends, be alone together. This realm
needs to be made up of functions which they share.
2. But it is also true that each partner is trying to maintain
an individuality, and not be submerged in the identity of the
other, or the identity of the "couple." Each partner needs space
to nourish this need.
It is essential, therefore, that a small house be conceived as a
place where the two people may be together but where, from
time to time, either one of them may also be alone, in comfort,
in dignity, and in such a way that the other does not feel left
out or isolated. To this end, there must be two small places-
perhaps rooms, perhaps large alcoves, perhaps a corner, screened
off by a half-wall-places which are clearly understood as private
territories, where each person can keep to himself, pursue his
or her own activities.
Still, the problem of the balance of privacy in a couple's lives
is delicate. Even with a small place of one's own, tenuously con-
nected to the house, one partner may feel left out at various
moments. While we believe that the solution proposed in this
pattern helps, the problem will not be entirely settled until the
couple itself is in some close, neighborly, and family-like rela-
 77 HOUSE FOR A COUPLE

tionship to other adults. Then, when one needs privacy, the other
has other possibilities for companionship at hand. This idea and
its physical implications are discussed in the pattern, THE FAMILY
( 7 5) ·
Once the opportunity for withdrawal is satisfied, there is also
a genuine opportunity for the couple to be together; and then
the house can be a place where genuine intimacy, genuine con-
nection can happen.
There is one other problem, unique to a house for a couple,
that must be mentioned. In the first years of a couple's life, as
they learn more about each other, and find out if indeed they
have a future together, the evolution of the house plays a vital
role. Improving the house, fixing it up, enlarging it, provides a
frame for learning about one another: it brings out conflict, and
offers the chance, like almost no other activity, for concrete resolu-
tion and growth. This suggests that a couple find a place that
they can change gradually over the years, and not build or buy for
themselves a "dream" home from scratch. The experience of
making simple changes in the house, and tuning it to their lives,
provides some grist for their own growth. Therefore, it is best to
start small, with plenty of room for growth and change.
Therefore:

Conceive a house for a couple as being made up of two

kinds of places-a shared couple's realm and individual
private worlds. Imagine the shared realm as half-public
and half-intimate; and the private worlds as entirely in-
dividual and private.

shared couple's realm

 TOWNS

❖ ❖ ❖

Again, treat the house as a distinct piece of territory, m some

fashion owned by its users-YOUR OWN HOME ( 79). Lay out the
common part, according to the pattern COUPLE'S REALM ( I 36),
and give both persons an individual world of their own where
they can be alone-A ROOMOF oNE's OWN ( 141) . ...
78 HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON*
... the households with one person in them, more than any
other, need to be a part of some kind of larger household-THE
FAMILY ( 7 5). Either build them to fit into some larger group
household, or even attach them, as ancillary cottages to other,
ordinary family households like HOUSEFOR A SMALL FAMILY (76)
or HOUSEFOR A COUPLE ( 77).

Once a household for one person is part of some larger

group, the most critical problem which arises is the need
for simplicity.

The housing market contains few houses or apartments spe-

cifically built for one person. Most often men and women who
choose to live alone, live in larger houses and apartments, orig-
inally built for two people or families. And yet for one person
these larger places are most often uncom pact, unwieldy, hard to
live in, hard to look after. Most important of all, they do not
allow a person to develop a sense of self-sufficiency, simplicity,
compactness, and economy in his or her own life.
The kind of place which is most closely suited to one person's
needs, and most nearly overcomes this problem, is a place of the
utmost simplicity, in which only the bare bones of necessity are
there: a place, built like a ploughshare, where every corner, every
table, every shelf, each flower pot, each chair, each log, is placed
according to the simplest necessity, and supports the person's
life directly, plainly, with the harmony of nothing that is not
needed, and everything that is.
The plan of such a house will be characteristically different
from other houses, primarily because it requires almost no dif-
ferentiation of its spaces: it need only be one room. It can be a
cottage or a studio, built on the ground or in a larger building,
part of a group household or a detached structure. In essence, it
is simply a central space, with nooks around it. The nooks re-
place the rooms in a larger house; they are for bed, bath, kitchen,
workshop and entrance.
It is important to realize that very many of the patterns in
this book can be built into a small house; small size does not pre-

39°
 78 HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON

elude richness of form. The trick is to intensify and to overlay; to

compress the patterns; to reduce them to simple expressions; to
make every inch count double. When it is well done, a small
house feels wonderfully continuous-cooking a bowl of soup fills
the house; there is no rattling around. This cannot happen if the
place is divided into rooms.
We have found it necessary to call special attention to this
pattern because it is nearly impossible to build a house this small
in cities-there is no way to get hold of a very small lot. Zoning
codes and banking practices prohibit such tiny lots; they prohibit
"normal" lots from splitting down to the kind of scale that a
house for one person requires. The correct development of this
pattern will require a change in these ordinances.
Therefore:

Conceive a house for one person as a place of the utmost

simplicity: essentially a one-room cottage or studio, with
large and small alcoves around it. When it is most intense,
the entire house may be no more than 300 to 400 square
feet.

alcoves

❖ ❖ ❖

And again, make the house an individual piece of territory,

with its own garden, no matter how small-YOUR OWN HOME
( 79); make the main room essentially a kind of farmhouse kitchen
-FARMHOUSE KITCHEN (139), with alcoves opening off it for
sitting, working, bathing, sleeping, dressing-BATHING ROOM
(144), WINDOW PLACE (180), WORKSPACEENCLOSURE (183),
BED ALCOVE(188), DRESSINGROOM(189); if the house is meant
for an old person, or for someone very young, shape it also ac-
cording to the pattern for OLD AGE COTTAGE ( r 55) or TEEN-
AGER'SCOTTAGE( I 54), . . ,

39 1
79 YOUR OWN HOME,**

392
... according to THE FAMILY ( 7 5), each individual household
should be a part of a larger family group household. Whether this
is so, or not, each individual household, must also have a terri-
tory of its own which it controls completely-HousE FOR A SMALL
FAMILY (76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77), HOUSE FOR ONE
PERSON (78); this pattern, which simply sets down the need for
such a territory, helps especiaUy to form higher density house
clusters like ROW HOUSES(38), HOUSINGHILL (39), which often
do not have well-defined individual territories for the separate
households.

❖ ❖ ❖

People cannot be genuinely comfortable and healthy in

a house which is not theirs. All forms of rental-whether
from private landlords or public housing agencies-work
against the natural processes which allow people to form
stable, self-healing communities.

Income property.

in the imperishable primal language of the human heart house

means my house, your house, a man's own house. The house is the
winning throw of the dice which man has wrested from the uncanni-
ness of uni verse; it is his defense against the chaos that threatens to
invade him. Therefore his deeper wish is that it be his own house,
that he not have to share with anyone other than his own family.
(Martin Buber, A Believing Humanism: Gleanings, New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1969, p. 93.)
This pattern is not intended as an argument in favor of "private

393
 TOWNS

property," or the process of buying and selling land. Indeed, it

is very clear that all those processes which encourage speculation
in land, for the sake of profit, are unhealthy and destructive, be-
cause they invite people to treat houses as commodities, to build
things for "resale," and not in such a way as to fit their own
needs.
And just as speculation and the profit motive make it im-
possible for people to adapt their houses to their own needs, so
tenancy, rental, and landlords do the same. Rental areas are always
the first to turn to slums. The mechanism is clear and well known.
See, for example, George Sternlieb, The Tenement Landlord
(Rutgers University Press, 1966). The landlord tries to keep his
maintenance and repair costs as low as possible; the residents
have no incentive to maintain and repair the homes-in fact, the
opposite-since improvements add to the wealth of the landlord,
and even justify higher rent. And so the typical piece of rental
property degenerates over the years. Then landlords try to build
new rental properties which are immune to neglect-gardens are
replaced with concrete, carpets are replaced with lineoleum, and
wooden surfaces by formica: it is an attempt to make the new
units maintenance-free, and to stop the slums by force; but they
turn out cold and sterile and again turn into slums, because no-
body loves them.
People will only be able to feel comfortable in their houses,
if they can change their houses to suit themselves, add on what-
ever they need, rearrange the garden as they like it; and, of
course, they can only do this in circumstances where they are
the legal owners of the house and land; and if, in high density
multi-story housing, each apartment, like a house, has a well-
defined volume, in which the owner can make changes as he likes.
This requires then, that every house is owned-in some fashion
-by the people that live in it; it requires that every house,
whether at ground level or in the air, has a well-defined volume
within which the family is free to make whatever changes they
want; and it requires a form of ownership which discourages
speculation.
Several approaches have been put forward in recent years to
solve the problem of providing each household with a "home."

394
 79 YOUR OWN HOME

At one extreme there are ideas like Habraken's high density

"support" system, where families buy pads on publicly owned
superstructures and gradually develop their own homes. And at
the other extreme there are the rural communes, where people
have forsaken the city to create their own homes in the country.
Even modified forms of rental can help the situation if they
allow people to change their houses according to their needs
and give people some financial stake in the process of maintenance.
This helps, because renting is often a step along the way to home
ownership; but unless tenants can somehow recover their in-
vestments in money and labor, the hopeless cycle of degeneration
of rental property and the degeneration of the tenants' financial
capability will continue. (Cf. Rolf Goetze, "Urban Housing Re-
habilitation," in Turner and Fichter, eds., The Freedom to
Build, New York: Macmillan, 1972.)
A common element in all these cases is the understanding that
the successful development of a household's "home" depends upon
these features: Each household must possess a clearly defined site
for both a house and an outdoor space, and the household must
own this site in the sense that they are in full control of its de-
velopment.
Therefore:

Do everything possible to make the traditional forms of

rental impossible, indeed, illegal. Give every household its
own home, with space enough for a garden. Keep the
emphasis in the definition of ownership on control, not on
financial ownership. Indeed, where it is possible to con-
struct forms of ownership which give people control over
their houses and gardens, but make financial speculation
impossible, choose these forms above all others. In all
cases give people the legal power, and the physical oppor-
tunity to modify and repair their own places. Pay attention
to this rule especially, in the case of high density apart-
ments: build the apartments in such a way that every in-
dividual apartment has a garden, or a terrace where vege-
tables will grow, and that even in this situation, each family

395
can build, and change, and add on to their house as they
wish.

house
garden

control

❖ ❖ ❖

For the shape of the house, begin with BUILDING COMPLEX

( 9 5). For the shape of the lot, do not accept the common notion
of a lot which has a narrow frontage and a great deal of depth.
Instead, try to make every house lot roughly square, or even long
along the street and shallow. All this is necessary to create the
right relation between house and garden-HALF-HIDDEN GARDEN
(111).
the workgroups, including all kinds of workshops
and o!fices and even children's learning groups;

80. SELF-GOVERNING WORKSHOPS AND OFFICES

8 I. SMALL SER VICES WITHOUT RED TAPE

82. OFFICE CONNECTIONS

83. MASTER AND APPRENTICES

84. TEENAGE SOCIETY

85. SHOPFRONT SCHOOLS

86. CHILDREN'S HOME

397
8I SMALL SERVICES
WITHOUT RED TAPE*
... all offices which provide service to the public-WORK COM-
MUNITY (41), UNIVERSITYASA MARKETPLACE(43), LOCALTOWN
HALL (44), HEATH CENTER (47), TEENAGE SOCIETY (84) need
subsidiary departments, where the members of the public go. And
of course, piecemeal development of these small departments, one
department at a time, can also help to generate these larger pat-
terns gradually.

Departments and public services don't work if they are

too large. When they are large, their human qualities
vanish; they become bureaucratic; red tape takes over.

There is a great deal of literature on the way red tape and

bureaucracy work against human needs. See, for example, Gideon
Sjoberg, Richard Brymer, and Buford Farris, "Bureaucracy and
the Lower Class," Sociology and Social Research, 50, April, I 966,
pp. 3 25-77; and Alvin W. Gouldner, "Red Tape as a Social
Problem," in Robert Mertin, Reader in Bureaucracy, Free Press,
1952, pp. 410-18.
According to these authors, red tape can be overcome in two
ways. First, it can be overcome by making each service program
small and autonomous. A great deal of evidence shows that red
tape occurs largely as a result of impersonal relationships in
large institutions. When people on no longer communicate on a
face-to-face basis, they need formal regulations, and in the lower
echelons of the organization, these formal regulations are followed
blindly and narrowly.
Second, red tape can be overcome by changing the passive
nature of the clients' relation to service programs. There is con-
siderable evidence to show that when clients have an active
relationship with a social institution, the institution loses its power
to intimidate them.
We have therefore concluded that no service should have
more than 12 persons total (all staff, including clerks). We base
this figure on the fact that I 2 seems to be the largest number of
 TOWNS

people that can sit down in a face-to-face discussion. It seems

likely that a smaller staff size will work better still. Furthermore,
each service should be relatively autonomous-subject only to a
few simple, coordinative regulations from parent organizations-
and that this should be emphasized by physical autonomy. In
order to be physically autonomous, each service must have an
area which is entirely under its own jurisdiction; with its own
door on a public thoroughfare, and complete physical separation
from other services.
This pattern applies equally to the departments of a city hall,
a medical center, or to the local branches of a welfare agency. In
most of these cases the pattern would require basic changes m
administrative organization. However difficult they may be to
implement, we believe these changes are required.
Therefore:

In any institution whose departments provide public

service:
1. Make each service or department autonomous as far as
possible.
2. Allow no one service more than 12 staff members
total.
3. House each one in an identifiable piece of the build-
ing.
4. Give each one direct access to a public thoroughfare.

cf:J visible front

~
12
~u
people o(:J public thoroughfare
 8I SMALL SERVICES WITHOUT RED TAPE

❖ ❖ ❖

Arrange these departments in space, according to the prescrip-

tion of OFFICE CONNECTIONS (82) and BUILDING COMPLEX
(95); if the public thoroughfare is indoors, make it a BUILDING
THOROUGHFARE ( I 01), and make the fronts of the services
visible as a FAMILY OF ENTRANCES (102); wherever the services
are in any way connected to the political life of the community,
mix them with ad hoc groups created by the citizens or users-
NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS (45); arrange the inside
space of the department according to FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE
( 146) ; and provide rooms where people can team up in two's
and three's-SMALL WORKGROUPS(148) ....
 82 OFFICE CONNECTIONS*

in any work community or any office, there are always

various human groups-and it is always important to decide
how these groups shall be placed, in space. Which should be near
each other, which ones further apart? This pattern gives the
answer to this question, and in doing so, helps greatly to construct
the inner layout of a WORK COMMUNITY (41) or of SELF-GOVERN-
ING WORKSHOPS AND OFFICES (80) or of SMALL SERVICES WITH-
OUT RED TAPE (81).

❖ ❖ ❖

If two parts of an office are too far apart, people will

not move between them as often as they need to; and if
they are more than one floor apart, there will be almost no
communication between the two.

Current architectural methods often include a proximity

matrix, which shows the amount of movement between different
people and functions in an office or a hospital. These methods
always make the tacit assumption that the functions which have
the most movement between them should be closest together.
However, as usually stated, this concept is completely invalid,
The concept has been created by a kind of Taylorian quest
for efficiency, in which it is assumed that the less people walk
about, the less of their salary is spent on "wasteful" walking. The
logical conclusion of this kind of analysis is that, if it were only
possible, people should not have to walk at all, and should spend
the day vegetating in their armchairs.
The fact is that people work best only when they are healthy
in mind and body. A person who is forced to sit all day long
behind a desk, without ever stretching his legs, will become
restless and unable to work, and inefficient in this way. Some
walking is very good for you. It is not only good for the body,
but also gives people an opportunity for a change of scene, a way

408
 82 OFFICE CONNECTIONS

of thinking about something else, a chance to reflect on some

detail of the morning's work or one of the everyday human
problems in the office.
On the other hand, if a person has to make the same trip,
many times, there is a point at which the length of the trip
becomes time-consuming and annoying, and then inefficient, be-
cause it makes the person irritable, and fina1ly critical when a
person starts avoiding trips because they are too long and too
frequent.
An office will function efficiently so long as the people who
work there do not feel that the trips they have to take are a
nuisance_. Trips need to be short enough so they are not felt a
nuisance-but they do not need to be any shorter.
The nuisance of a trip depends on the relationship between
length and frequency. You can walk Io feet to a file many times
a day without being annoyed by it; you can walk 400 feet
occasionally without being annoyed. In the graph below we plot
the nuisance threshold for various combinations of length and
frequency.
The graph is based on r 2 7 observations in the Berkeley City
Hall. People were asked to define all the trips they had to make
regularly during the work week, to state their frequency, and
then to state whether they considered the trip to be a nuisance.
The line on the graph shows the median of the distances said
to be a nuisance for each different frequency. We define distances
to the right of this line as nuisance distances. The nuisance
distance for any trip frequency is the distance at which we
predict that at least 50 per cent of all people will begin to con-
sider this distance a nuisance.

r/wk.
:g__2/wk.
·5 r/day
'-t 2/day
c 4/day
5 r/hr.
"'
g< 2/hr.
J::
0 JOO 200 300 400 500
trip length, ft.
Nuisance d1stances.
 So far, our discussion of proximity has been based on horizontal
distances. How do stairs enter in? What part does vertical
distance play in the experience of proximity? Or, to put it more
precisely, what is the horizontal equivalent of one flight of stairs?
Suppose two departments need to be within I oo feet of one
another, according to the proximity graph-and suppose that
they are for some reason on different stories, one floor apart. How
much of the roo feet does the stair eat up: with the stair between
them, how far apart can they be horizontally?
We do not know the exact answer to this question. However,
we do have some indirect evidence from an unpublished study by
Marina Estabrook and Robert Sommer. As we shall see, this
study shows that stairs play a much greater role, and eat up much
more "distance" than you might imagine.
Estabrook and Sommer studied the formation of acquaintances
in a three-story university building, where several different
departments were housed. They asked people to name all the
people they knew in departments other than their own. Their
results were as follows:
Percent of people known: When departments are:
I 2.2 on same floor
8.9 one floor apart
2.2 two floors apart
People knew I 2.2 per cent of the people from other depart-
ments on the same floor as their own, 8.9 per cent of the people
from other departments one floor apart from their own floor,
and only 2.2 per cent of the people from other departments two
floors apart from their own. In short, by the time departments are
separated by two floors or more, there is virtually no informal
contact between the departments.
Unfortunately, our own study of proximity was done before
we knew about these findings by Estabrook and Sommer; so we
have not yet been able to define the relation between the two
kinds of distance, It is clear, though, that one stair must be
equivalent to a rather considerable horizontal distance; and that
two flights of stairs have almost three times the effect of a single
stair. On the basis of this evidence, we conjecture that one stair
is equal to about !00 horizontal feet in its effect on interaction

410
 82 OFFICE CONNECTIONS

and feelings of distance; and that two flights of stairs are equal
to about 300 horizontal feet.
Therefore:

To establish distances between departments, calculate the

number of trips per day made between each two depart-
ments; get the "nuisance distance" from the graph above;
then make sure that the physical distance between the two
departments is less than the nuisance distance. Reckon one
flight of stairs as about 100 feet, and two flights of stairs as

.a
about 300 feet.

<wo flooG m,.U,rnm

mrnifWt«E~
less than nuisance distance

❖ ❖ ❖

Keep the buildings which house the departments in line with

the FOUR-STORYLIMIT ( 2 I), and get their shape from BUILDING
COMPLEX ( 9 5). Give every working group on upper storys its
own stair to connect it directly to the public world-PEDESTRIAN
STREET ( I 00)' OPEN STAIRS( I 58) ; if there are internal cor-
ridors between groups, make them large enough to function as
streets-BUILDING THOROUGHFARE (101); and identify each
workgroup clearly, and give it a well-marked entrance, so that
people easily find their way from one to another-FAMILY OF
ENTRANCES( I 02). . . .

41 I
88 STREET CAFE**
... neighborhoods are defined by IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBOR-
HOOD ( I 4); their natural points of focus are given by ACTIVITY
NODES (30) and SMALL ?UBLIC SQUARES (61). This pattern, and
the ones which follow it, give the neighborhood and its points
of focus, their identity.

+ ❖ +

The street cafe provides a unique setting, special to cities:

a place where people can sit lazily, legitimately, be on view,
and watch the world go by.

The most humane c1t1es are always full of street cafes. Let us
try to understand the experience which makes these places so
attractive.
We know that people enjoy mixing in public, in parks, squares,
along promenades and avenues, in street cafes. The preconditions
seem to be: the setting gives you the right to be there, by custom;
there are a few things to do that are part of the scene, almost
ritual: reading the newspaper, strolling, nursing a beer, playing
catch; and people feel safe enough to relax, nod at each other,
perhaps even meet. A good cafe terrace meets these conditions.
But it has in addition, special qualities of its own: a person may
sit there for hours-in public! Strolling, a person must keep up a
pace; loitering is only for a few minutes. You can sit still in a
park, but there is not the volume of people passing, it is more a
private, peaceful experience. And sitting at home on one's porch
is again different: it is far more protected; and there is not the
mix of people passing by. But on the cafe terrace, you can sit
still, relax, and be very public. As an experience it has special
possibilities; "perhaps the next person ... "; it is a risky place.
It is this experience that the street cafe supports. And it is one
of the attractions of cities, for only in cities do we have the con-
centration of people required to bring it off. But this experience
need not be confined to the special, extraordinary parts of town.
In European cities and towns, there is a street cafe in every neigh-
borhood-they are as ordinary as gas stations are in the United

437
 TOWNS

States. And the existence of such places provides social glue for
the community. They become like clubs-people tend to return to
their favorite, the faces become familiar. When there is a success-
ful cafe within walking distance of your home, in the neighbor-
hood, so much the better. It helps enormously to increase the
identity of a neighborhood. It is one of the few settings where a
newcomer to the neighborhood can start learning the ropes and
meeting the people who have been there many years.
The ingredients of a successful street cafc seem to be:
I. There is an established local clientele. That is, by name,
location, and staff, the cafe is ,·cry much anchored in the neigh-
borhood in which it is situated.
2. In addition to the terrace which is open to the street, the
cafe contains several other spaces: with games, lire, soft chairs,
newspapers .... Th is allows a variety of people to start using it,
according to slightly different social styles.
3. The cafe serves simple food and drinks-some alcoholic
drinks, but it is not a bar. It is a place where you are as likely to go
in the morning, to start the day, as in the evening, for a nightcap.
When these conditions are present, and the cafe takes hold, it
offers something unique to the lives of the people who use it: it
offers a setting for discussions of great spirit-talks, two-bit lec-
tures, half-public, half-private, learning, exchange of thought.
When we worked for the University of Oregon, we compared
the importance of such discussion in cafes and cafc-like places,
with the instruction students receive in the classroom. We inter-
viewed 30 students to measure the extent that shops and cafes con-
tributed to their intellectual and emotional growth at the Uni-
versity. We found that "talking with a small group of students
in a coffee shop" and "discussion over a glass of beer" scored as
high and higher than "examinations" and "laboratory study."
Apparently the informal activities of shops and cafes contribute
as much to the growth of students, as the more formal educa-
tional activities.
We believe this phenomenon is general. The quality that we
tried to capture in these interviews, and which is present m a
neighborhood ofc, is essential to all neighborhoods-not only
srndcnt neighborhoods. It is part of their life-blood.

438
 88 STREET CAFE

Therefore:

Encourage local cafes to spring up in each neighborhood.

Make them intimate places, with several rooms, open to a
busy path, where people can sit with coffee or a drink and
watch the world go by. Build the front of the cafe so that
a set of tables stretch out of the cafe, right into the street.

several rooms

tables terrace

newspapers

busy path

Build a wide, substantial opening between the terrace and the

indoors-OPENING To THE STREET (165); make the terrace
double as A PLACE TO WAIT ( 1 50) for nearby bus stops and
offices; both indoors and on the terrace use a great variety of
different kinds of chairs and tables-DIFFERENT CHAIRS (25 I);
and give the terrace some low definition at the street edge if it
is in danger of being in terrnpted by street action-STAIR SEATS
(125), SITTING WALL (243), perhaps a CANVASROOF (244). For
the shape of the building, the terrace, and the surroundings,
begin with BUILDING COMPLEX ( 9 5). . . .

439
BUS STOP*

451
... within a town whose public transportation is based on MINI-
BUSES (20), genuinely able to serve people, almost door to door,
for a low price, and very fast, there need to be bus stops within
a few hundred feet of every house and workplace. This pattern
gives the form of the bus stops.

❖ ❖ ❖

Bus stops must be easy to recognize, and pleasant, with

enough activity around them to make people comfortable
and safe.

Bus stops are often dreary because they are set down inde-
pendently, with very little thought given to the experience of
waiting there, to the relationship between the bus stop and its
surroundings. They are places to stand idly, perhaps anxiously,
waiting for the bus, always watching for the bus. It is a shabby
experience; nothing that would encourage people to use public
transportation.
The secret lies in the web of relationships that are present in
the tiny system around the bus stop. If they knit together, and
reinforce each other, adding choice and shape to the experience,
the system is a good one: but the relationships that make up
such a system are extremely subtle. For example, a system as
simple as a traffic light, a curb, and street corner can be enhanced
by viewing it as a distinct node of public life: people wait for the
light to change, their eyes wander, perhaps they are not in such
a hurry. Place a newsstand and a flower wagon at the corner and
the experience becomes more coherent.
The curb and the light, the paperstand and the flowers, the
awning over the shop on the corner, the change in people's
pockets-all this forms a web of mutually sustaining relationships.
The possibilities for each bus stop to become part of such a web
are different-in some cases it will be right to make a system
that will draw people into a private reverie-an old tree; another
time one that will do the opposite-give shape to the social
possibilities-a coffee stand, a canvas roof, a decent place to sit
for people who are not waiting for the bus.

45 2
 92 BUS STOP

Two bus stops.

Therefore:

Build bus stops so that they form tiny centers of public

life. Build them as part of the gateways into neighbor-
hoods, work communities, parts of town. Locate them so
that they work together with several other activities, at
least a newsstand, maps, outdoor shelter, seats, and in
various combinations, corner groceries, smoke shops, coffee
bar, tree places, special road crossings, public bathrooms,
squares. ...

hot coffee

bench gateway

Make a full gateway to the neighborhood next to the bus stop,

or place the bus stop where the best gateway is already-MAIN
GATEWAY (53); treat the physical arrangement according to the
patterns for PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM (69), PATH SHAPE (121),
and A PLACE To WAIT ( I 50) ; provide a FOOD STAND ( 93): place
the seats according to sun, wind protection, and view-SEAT SPOTS
(241) ....

453
93 FOOD STANDS*

4S4
... throughout the neighborhood there are natural public
gathering places-ACTIVITY NODES ( 30), ROAD CROSSINGS( 5 4),
RAISED WALKS (55), SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES (61), BUS STOPS
( 92). All draw their life, to some extent, from the food stands,
the hawkers, and the vendors who fill the street with the smell of
food.

Many of our habits and institutions are bolstered by the

fact that we can get simple, inexpensive food on the street,
on the way to shopping, work, and friends.

The food stands which make the best food, and which con-
tribute most to city life, are the smallest shacks and carts from
which individual vendors sell their wares. Everyone has memories
of them.
But in their place we now have shining hamburger kitchens,
fried chicken shops, and pancake houses. They are chain opera-
tions, with no roots in the local community. They sell "plastic,"
mass-produced frozen food, and they generate a shabby quality
of life around them. They are built to attract the eye of a person
driving: the signs are huge; the light is bright neon. They are
insensitive to the fabric of the community. Their parking lots
around them kill the public open space.
If we want food in our streets contributing to the social life
of the streets, not helping to destroy it, the food stands must be
made and placed accordingly.
We propose four rules:
I. The food stands are concentrated at ROADCROSSINGS( 5 4)
of the NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52). It is possible to see
them from cars and to expect them at certain kinds of intersec-
tions, but they do not have special par'king lots around them--see
NINE PER CENT PARKING (22).
2. The food stands are free to take on a character that is
compatible with the neighborhood around them. They can be

455
 TOWNS

freestanding carts, or built into the corners and crevices of

existing buildings; they can be small huts, part of the fabric of
the street.
3. The smell of the food is out in the street; the place can
be surrounded with covered seats, sitting walls, places to lean
and sip coffee, part of the larger scene, not sealed away in a
plate glass structure, surrounded by cars. The more they smell, the
better.
4. They are never franchises, but always operated by their
owners. The best food always comes from family restaurants; and
the best food in a foodstand always comes when people prepare
the food and sell it themselves, according to their own ideas, their
own recipes, their own choice.
Therefore:

Concentrate food stands where cars and paths meet-

either portable stands or small huts, or built into the fronts
of buildings, half-open to the street.

•
hut or stall

ll

"
smell of food ll
•

Treat these food stands as ACT!VITYPOCKETS( I 24) when they

are part of a square; Use canvas roofs to make a simple shelter
over them-CANVAS ROOF( 244); and keep them in line with the
precepts of INDIVIDUALLYOWNED SHOPS (87): the best food
always comes from people who are in business for themselves, who
buy the raw food, and prepare it in their own style.
I 00 PEDESTRIAN STREET**
... the earlier patterns-PROMENADE ( 3 r), SHOPPING STREET
(32) and NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52), all call for dense
pedestrian streets; ROW HOUSES (38), HOUSING HILL (39), UNI-
VERSITYASA MARKETPLACE (43), MARKET OF MANYSHOPS(46),
all do the same; and within the BUILDING COMPLEX ( 95), CIR-
CULATION REALMS ( 98) calls for the same. As you build a pedes-
trian street, make sure you place it so that it helps to generate a
NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS ( 5 2), RAISED WALKS ( 5 5), and
CIRCULATIONREALMS( 98) in the town around it.

❖ + +

The simple social intercourse created when people rub

shoulders in public is one of the most essential kinds of
social "glue" in society.

In today's society this situation, and therefore this glue, is

largely missing. It is missing in large part because so much of the
actual process of movement is now taking place in indoor corridors
and lobbies, instead of outdoors. This happens partly because the
cars have taken over streets, and made them uninhabitable, and
partly because the corridors, which have been built in response,
encourage the same process. But it is doubly damaging in its
effect.
It is damaging because it robs the streets of people. Most of the
moving about which people do is indoors-hence lost to the
street; the street becomes abandoned and dangerous.
And it is damaging because the indoor lobbies and corridors are
most often dead. This happens partly because indoor space is not
as public as outdoor space; and partly because, in a multi-story
building each corridor carries a lower density of traffic than a
public outdoor street. It is therefore unpleasant, even unnerving,
to move through them; people in them are in no state to generate,
or benefit from, social intercourse.
To recreate the social intercourse of public movement, as far as
possible, the movement between rooms, offices, departments, build-
ings, must actually be outdoors, on sheltered walks, arcades, paths,
 BUILDINGS

streets, which are truly public and separate from cars. Individual
wings, small buildings, departments must as often as possible have
their own entrances-so that the number of entrances onto the
street increases and life comes back to the street.
In short, the solution to these two problems we have mentioned
-the streets infected by cars and the bland corridors-is the
pedestrian street. Pedestrian streets are both places to walk along
( from car, bus, or train to one's destination) and places to pass
through (between apartments, shops, offices, services, classes).
To function properly, pedestrian streets need two special prop-
erties. First, of course, no cars; but frequent crossings by streets
with traffic, see NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52): deliveries and
other activities which make it essential to bring cars and trucks
onto the pedestrian street must be arranged at the early hours of
the morning, when the streets are deserted. Second, the buildings
along pedestrian streets must be planned in a way which as nearly
as possible eliminates indoor staircases, corridors, and lobbies, and
leaves most circulation outdoors. This creates a street lined with
stairs, which lead from all upstairs offices and rooms directly to
the street, and many many entrances, which help to increase the
life of the street.
Finally it should be noted that the pedestrian streets which
seem most comfortable are the ones where the width of the street
does not exceed the height of the surrounding buildings. (See
"Vehicle free zones in city centers," International Brief # 16,
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of
International Affairs, June 1972).

A bout square or even narrower.

Therefore:

Arrange buildings so that they form pedestrian streets

with many entrances and open stairs directly from the
upper storys to the street, so that even movement between
rooms is outdoors, not just movement between buildings.

49°
 I 00 PEDESTRIAN STREET

❖ ❖ ❖

The street absolutely will not work unless its total area is small
enough to be well filled by the pedestrians in it-PEDESTRIAN
DENSITY ( I 23). Make frequent entrances and open stairs along
the street, instead of building indoor corridors, to bring the
people out; and give these entrances a family resemblance so one
sees them as a system-FAMILY OF ENTRANCES( I 02), OPEN STAJRS
( I 58); give people indoor and outdoor spaces which look on the
street-PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET ( 140), STREET WIN-
DOWS (164), OPENING TO THE STREET (165), GALLERY SUR-
ROUND ( 166), SIX-FOOTBALCONY ( 167) ; and shape the street to
make a space of it-ARCADE (119), PATH SHAPE (121) ....

491
I 20 PATHS AND GOALS*

585
... once buildings and arcades and open spaces have been
roughly fixed by BUILDING COMPLEX ( 9 5), WINGS OF LIGHT
(107), POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE (106), ARCADES (119)-it is
time to pay attention to the paths which run between the
buildings. This pattern shapes these paths and also helps to give
more detailed form to DEGREES OF PUBLICNESS (36), NETWORK
OF PATHS AND CARS (52), and CIRCULATION REALMS (98).

The layout of paths will seem right and comfortable only

when it is compatible with the process of walking. And the
process of walking is far more subtle than one might
imagine.

Essentially there are three complementary processes:

I. As you walk along you scan the landscape for intermediate
destinations-the furthest points along the path which you can
see. You try, more or less, to walk in a straight line toward these
points. This naturally has the effect that you will cut corners
and take "diagonal" paths, since these are the ones which often
form straight lines between your present position and the point
which you are making for.

Path to a goal.

2. These intermediate destinations keep changing. The further

you walk, the more you can see around the corner. If you always
walk straight toward this furthest point and the furthest point
keeps changing, you will actually move in a slow curve, like a
missile tracking a moving target.

586
 I 20 PATHS AND GOALS

•
-- -•- -- - _.,,
...

Series of goals.
.
,, ,,
fi
,,

3. Since you do not want to keep changing direction while you

walk and do not want to spend your whole time re-calculating
your best direction of travel, you arrange your walking process
in such a way that you pick a temporary "goal"-some clearly
visible landmark-which is more or less in the direction you want
to take and then walk in a straight line toward it for a hundred
yards, then, as you get close, pick another new goal, once more a
hundred yards further on, and walk toward it. ... You do this
so that in between, you can talk, think, daydream, smell the
spring, without having to think about your walking direction
every minute.

T J,eactual pat!t.

In the diagram above a person begins at A and heads for point

E. Along the way, his intermediate goals are points B, C, and
D. Since he is trying to walk in a roughly straight line toward
E, his intermediate goal changes from B to C, as soon as C is
visible; and from C to D, as soon as Dis visible.
The proper arrangements of paths is one with enough inter-
mediate goals, to make th is process workable. If there aren't
enough intermediate goals, the process of walking becomes more
difficult, and consumes unnecessary emotional energy.
Therefore:

To lay out paths, first place goals at natural points of in-

terest. Then connect the goals to one another to form the
 BUILDINGS

paths. The paths may be straight, or gently curving be-

tween goals; their paving should swell around the goal.
The goals should never be more than a few hundred feet
apart.

All the ordinary things in the outdoors-trees, fountains, en-

trances, gateways, seats, statues, a swing, an outdoor room-can
be the goals. See FAMJLY OF ENTRANCES ( 1oz), MAIN ENTRANCE
(110), TREE PLACES (171), SEAT SPOTS (241), RAISED FLOWERS
( 245); build the "goals" according to the rules of SOMETHING
ROUGHLY IN THE MIDDLE ( I 26); and shape the paths according
to PATH SHAPE ( 1 2 I). To pave the paths use PAVING WITH CRACKS
BETWEEN THE STONES (247) .. , .

588
I2 I PATH SHAPE*
... paths of various kinds have been defined by larger pat-
terns-PROMENADE ( 3 I)) SHOPPING STREET ( 3 2)) NETWORK OF
PATHS AND CARS (52), RAISEDWALK (55), PEDESTRIAN STREET
(mo), and PATHS AND GOALS(120). This pattern defines their
shape: and it can also help to generate these larger patterns piece-
meal, through the very process of shaping parts of the path.

❖ ❖ ❖

Streets should be for staying in, and not just for moving
through, the way they are today.

For centuries, the street provided city dwellers with usable

public space right outside their houses. Now, in a number of
subtle ways, the modern city has made streets which are for "going
through," not for "staying in." This is reinforced by regulations
which make it a crime to loiter, by the greater attractions in-
side the side itself, and by streets which are so unattractive to
stay in, that they almost force people into their houses.
From an environmental standpoint, the essence of the problem
is this: streets are "centrifugal" not "centripetal": they drive
people out instead of attracting them in. In order to combat this
effect, the pedestrian world outside houses must be made into the
kind of place where you stay, rather than the kind of place you
move through. It must, in short, be made like a kind of outside
public room, with a greater sense of enclosure than a street.
This can be accomplished if we make residential pedestrian
streets subtly convex in plan with seats and galleries around the
edges, and even sometimes roof the streets with beams or trellis-
work.
Here are two examples of this pattern, at two different scales.
First, we show a plan of ours for fourteen houses in Peru. The
street shape is created by gradually stepping back the houses, in
plan. The result is a street with a positive, somewhat elliptical
shape. We hope it is a place that will encourage people to
slow down and spend time there.

590
 I2 I PATH SHAPE

Tlze patlz shape formed by fourteen J,ouses.

The second example is a very small path, cutting through a

neighborhood in the hills of Berkeley. Again, the shape swells out
subtly, just in those places where it is good to pause and sit.

A spot along a path in the hills of Berkeley.

Therefore:

Make a bulge in the middle of a public path, and make

the ends narrower, so that the path forms an enclosure
which is a place to stay, not just a place to pass through.

59 1
 BUILDINGS

❖ + +

Above all, to create the shape of the path, move the building
fronts into the right positions, and on no acount allow a set-back
between the building and the path-BUILDING FRONTS ( I z z) ;
decide on the appropriate area for the "bulge" by using the
arithmetic of PEDESTRIAN DENSITY ( 123) ; then form the derails
of the bulge with ARCADES(II 9), ACTIVITY POCKETS ( I 24) and
STAIR SEATS (125); perhaps even with a PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM
(69); and give as much life as you can to the path all along its
length with windows-STREET WINDOWS(164) ....

592
 122 BUILDING FRONTS*

... this pattern helps to shape the paths and buildings simul-
taneously; and so completes BUILDING COMPLEX (95), WINGS OF
LIGHT (107), POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE (106), ARCADES (119),
PATH SHAPE ( l 21)' and also ACTIVITY POCKETS ( I 24).

Building set-backs from the street, originally invented to

protect the public welfare by giving every building light
and air, have actually helped greatly to destroy the street
as a social space.

In POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE ( 106) we have described the fact

that buildings are not merely placed into the outdoors, but that
they actually shape the outdoors. Since streets and squares have
such enormous social importance, it is natural to pay close atten-
tion to the way that they are shaped by building fronts.
The early twentieth-century urge for "cleanliness" at all costs,
and the social efforts to clean up slums, led social reformers to
pass laws which make it necessary to place buildings several feet
back from the street edge, to make sure that buildings cannot
crowd the street and cut off sunshine, light, and air.
But, the set backs have destroyed the streets. Since it is possible
to guarantee plenty of air and sun in buildings and streets in other
ways-see, for example., FOUR-STORY LIMIT ( 2 I) and WINGS OF
LIGHT ( 107)-it is e'ssential to build the front of buildings on the
street, so that the streets which they create are usable.
Finally, note that the positive shape of the street cannot be
achieved by merely staggering building fronts. If the building
fronts are adjusted to the shape of the outdoors, they will almost
always take on a variety of slightly uneven angles.

593
 BUILDINGS

Slight angles in the building fronts.

Therefore:

On no account allow set-backs between streets or paths or

public open land and the buildings which front on them.
The set-backs do nothing valuable and almost always de-
stroy the value of the open areas between the buildings.
Build right up to the paths; change the laws in all commu-
nities where obsolete by-laws make this impossible. And let
the building fronts take on slightly uneven angles as they
accommodate to the shape of the street.

594
 I 22 BUILDING FRONTS

❖ ❖ ❖

Detail the fronts of buildings, indeed the whole building

perimeter, according to the pattern BUILDING EDGE ( r 60). If
some outdoor space is needed at the front of the building, make
it part of the street life by making it a PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE
STREET ( I 40) or GALLERY SURROUND ( I 66); and give the
building many openings onto the street-STAIR SEATS ( 12 5),
OPEN STAIRS (158), STREET WINDOWS (164), OPENING TO THE
STREET (165), FRONT DOORBENCH (242) ....•

595
I2 3 PEDESTRIAN DENSITY*
 in vanous places there are pedestrian areas, paved so that
people will congregate there or walk up and down-PROMENADE
( 3 I), SMALLPUBLIC SQUARES( 6 I), PEDESTRIANSTREET ( 100),
BUILDING THOROUGHFARE(101), PATH SHAPE (121). It is es-
sential to limit the sizes of these places very strictly, especially
the size of areas which are paved, so that they stay alive.

❖ ❖ ❖

Many of our modern public squares, though intended as

lively plazas, are in fact deserted and dead.

In this pattern, we call attention to the relationship between

the number of people in a pedestrian area, the size of the area,
and a subjective estimate of the extent to which the area is alive.
We do not say categorically that the number of people per
square foot controls the apparent liveliness of a pedestrian area.
Other factors-the nature of the land around the edge, the
grouping of people, what the people are doing-obviously con-
tribute greatly. People who are running, especially if they are
making noise, add to the liveliness. A small group attracted to a
couple of folk singers in a plaza give much more life to the
place than the same number sunning on the grass.
However, the number of square feet per person does give a
reasonably crude estimate of the liveliness of a space. Christie
Coffin's observations show the following figures for various public
places in and around San Francisco. Her estimate of the liveliness
of the places is given in the right-hand column.

Sq. ft. per person

Golden Gate Plaza, noon : 1000 Dead
Fresno Mall: 100 Alive
Sprou 1 Plaza, daytime: 150 Alive
Sproul Plaza, evening: 2000 Dead
Union Square, central part: 600 Half-dead

Although these subjective estimates are clearly open to ques-

tion, they suggest the following rule of thumb: At I 50 square feet
per person, an area is lively. If there are more than 500 square feet
per person, the area begins to be dead.

597
 BUILDINGS

Even if these figures are only correct to within an order of

magnitude, we can use them to shape public pedestrian areas-
squares, indoor streets, shopping streets, promenades.
To use the pattern it is essential to make a rough estimate of
the number of people that are typically found in a given space
at any moment of its use. In the front area of a market, for ex-
ample, we might /ind that typically there are three people linger-
ing and walking. Then we shall want the front of this market to
form a little square, no larger than 450 square feet. If we esti-
mate a pedestrian street will typically contain 3 5 people window
shopping and walking, we shall want the street to form an enclo-
sure of roughly 5000 square feet. (For an example of this calcula-
tion in a more complicated case-the case of a square in a public
building that has yet to be built-see A Pattern Language Which
Generates Multi-Se1·vice Centers, Alexander, Ishikawa, Silver-
stein, Center for Environmental Structure, 1968, p. r 48.)
Therefore:

For public squares, courts, pedestrian streets, any place

where crowds are drawn together, estimate the mean num-
ber of people in the place at any given moment (P), and
make the area of the place between 150P and 300P square
feet.
average number of people, P

Embellish the density and feeling of life with areas at the

edge which are especially crowded-STREET CAFE ( 8 8), ACTIVtTY
POCKETS (124), STAIR SEATS (125), PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE
STREET (140), BUILDING EDGE (160), STREET WINDOWS(164),
OPENING TO THE STREET ( I 6 5), GALLERYSURROUND ( I 66).
I 24 ACTIVITY POCKETS**

599
... in many large scale patterns which define public space, the
edge is critical: PROMENADE (31), SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES (61),
PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM (69), PEDESTRIAN STREET (roo), BUILD-
ING THOROUGHFARE (IOI), PATH SHAPE ( I 21). This pattern
helps complete the edge of all these larger patterns.

The life of a public square forms naturally around its

edge. If the edge fails, then the space never becomes lively.

In more detail: people gravitate naturally toward the edge of

public spaces. They do not linger out in the open. If the edge
does not provide them with places where it is natural to lin-
ger, the space becomes a place to walk through, not a place to
stop. It is therefore clear that a public square should be surrounded
by pockets of activity: shops, stands, benches, displays, rails, courts,
gardens, news racks. In effect, the edge must be scalloped.
Further, the process of lingering is a gradual one; it happens;
people do not make up their minds to stay; they stay or go, accord-
ing to a process of gradual involvement. This means that the
various pockets of activity around the edge should all be next to
paths and entrances so that people pass right by them as they pass
through. The goal-oriented activity of coming and going then has
a chance to turn gradually into something more relaxed. And
once many small groups form around the edge, it is likely that
they will begin to overlap and spill in toward the center of the
square. We therefore specify that pockets of activity must alter-
nate with access points.

II conceptual diagram.

600
 I 24 ACTIVITY POCKETS

The scalloped edge must surround the space entirely. We may

see this clearly as follows: draw a circle to represent the space, and
darken some part of its perimeter to stand for the scalloped edge.
Now draw chords which join different points along this
darkened perimeter. As the length of the darkened edge gets
smaller, the area of the space covered by these chords wanes dras-
tically. This shows how quickly the life in the space will drop
when the length of the scalloped edge gets shorter. To make the
space lively, the scalloped edge must surround the space com-
pletely.

QC)
As tl,e activities grow around the space,
it becomes more lively.

When we say that the edge must be scalloped with activity, we

mean this conceptually-not literally. In fact, to build ·this pat-
tern, you must build the activity pockets forward into the
square: first rough out the major paths that cross the space and the
spaces left over between these paths; then build the activity poc-
kets into these "in-between" spaces, bringing them forward, into
the square.

A pocket of activity wl,ich bulges into the square.

Therefore:

Surround public gathering places with pockets of activity

-small, partly enclosed areas at the edges, which jut for-

601
 BUILDINGS

ward into the open space between the paths, and contain
activities which make it natural for people to pause and
get involved.

pockets
of activity

Lead paths between the pockets of activity-PATHS AND GOALS

(120)-and shape the pockets themselves with arcades and seats,
and sitting walls, and columns and trellises-ARCADES ( 11 9),
OUTDOOR ROOM (163), TRELLISED WALK (174), SEAT SPOTS
(241), SITTING WALL (243); above all shape them with the
fronts of buildings-BUILDING FRONTS ( I 22) ; and include,
within the pockets, newsstands-Bus STOPS ( 92), FOOD STANDS
( 93), gardens, games, small shops, STREET CAFES (88), and A
PLACE TO WAIT (150) ... ,

602
I25 STAIR SEATS*
... we know that paths and larger public gathering places need
a definite shape and a degree of enclosure, with people looking
into them, not out of them-SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES ( 61),
POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE ( I 06)' PATH SHAPE ( I 2 I). Stairs
around the edge do it just perfectly; and they also help embellish
FAMILY OF ENTRANCES (!02), MAIN ENTRANCES (110), and
OPEN STAIRS(158),

❖ ❖ ❖

Wherever there is action in a place, the spots which are

the most inviting, are those high enough to give people a
vantage point, and low enough to put them in action.

On the one hand, people seek a vantage point from which they
can take in the action as a whole. On the other hand, they still
want to be part of the action; they do not want to be mere
onlookers. Unless a public space provides for both these tenden-
cies, a lot of people simply will not stay there.
For a person looking at the horizon, the visual field is far
larger below the horizon than above it. It is therefore clear that
anybody who is "people-watching" will naturally try to take up
a position a few feet above the action.
The trouble is that this position will usually have the effect of
removing a person from the action. Yet most people want to be
able to take the action in and to be part of it at the same time.
This means that any places which are slightly elevated must also
be within easy reach of passers-by, hence on circulation paths, and
directly accessible from below.
The bottom few steps of stairs, and the balusters and rails
along stairs, are precisely the kinds of places which resolve these
tendencies. People sit on the edges of the lower steps, if they are
wide enough and inviting, and they lean against the rails.
There is a simple kind of evidence, both for the reality of the
forces described here and for the value of the pattern. When
there are areas in public places which are both slightly raised
and very accessible, people naturally gravitate toward them.
 I 25 STAIR SEATS

Stepped cafe terraces, steps surrounding public plazas, stepped

porches, stepped statues and seats, are all examples.
Therefore:

In any public place where people loiter, add a few steps

at the edge where stairs come down or where there is a
change of level. Make these raised areas immediately acces-
sible from below, so that people may congregate and sit
to watch the goings-on.
public place

❖ ❖ ❖

Give the stair seats the same orientation as SEAT SPOTS ( 24 I).
Make the steps out of wood or tile or brick so that they wear with
time, and show the marks of feet, and are soft to the touch for
people sitting on them-SOFT TILE AND BRICK ( 248); and make
the steps connect directly to surrounding buildings-CONNEC-
TION TO THE EARTH (168) ....

605
126 SOMETHING ROUGHLY
IN THE MIDDLE
, , , SMALLPUBLIC SQUARES(61), COMMONLAND (67), COURT-
YARDSWHICH LJVE ( 11 5), PATH SHAPE ( I 2 I) all draw their
life from the activities around their edges-ACTIVITY POCKETS
(124) and STAIR SEATS (125). But even then, the middle is
still empty, ,md it needs embellishment.

❖ ❖ ❖

A public space without a middle 1s quite likely to stay

empty.

We have discussed the fact that people tend to take up positions

from which they are protected, partly, at their backs-HIERARCHY
or- OPEN SPACE ( 114), and the way this fact tends to make the
action grow around the edge of public sguares-ACTIVITY POCKEH
(124), STA!ll SEATS(125). If the space is .1 tiny one, there is no
need for anything beyond an edge. But if there is a reasonable
area in the middle, intended for public use, it will be wasted
unless there are trees, monuments, scats, fountains-., place
where people can protect their backs, as easilr as they crn around
the edge. This reason for setting something roughly in the middle
of a sguarc is obvious and pr:ictical. But perhaps there is an ffCn
more primitive instinct ;it work.
l1mginc :i bare t:ible in vour house. Think of the power of the
instinct which tells you to put a candle or a bowl of flowers in
the middle. And think of the power of the effect once you h:11·c
done it. Obviously, it is an act of greM significance; yet clearly
it has nothing to do with actil"ities at the edge or in the center.
Apparently the effect is purely geometrical. Perhaps it is the
sheer fact that the space of the table is given a center, and the
point at the center then organizes the space around it, and makes
it clear, and puts it roughly at rest. The same thing happens in :i
courtyard or a public square. It is perhaps related to the man-

606
 I26 SOMETHING ROUGHLY IN THE MIDDLE

dala instinct, which finds in any centrally symmetric figure a

powerful receptacle for dreams and images and for conjugations
of the self.
We believe that this instinct is at work in every courtyard and
every square. Even in the Piazza San Marco, one of the few
squares without an obvious center piece, the campanile juts out
and creates an off beat center to the two plazas together.

The campanile forms a rough center to t!te t'LVOpiazzas.

Camillo Sitte, the great Italian planner, describes the evolution

of such focal points and their functional significance in his book
City Planning According to Artistic Principles (New York: Ran-
dom House, 1965, pp. 20-31). But interestingly, he claims that
the impulse to center something perfectly in a square is an "afflic-
tion" of modern times.

Imagine the open square of a small market town in the country,

covered with deep snow and criss-crossed by several roads and
paths that, shaped by the traffic, form the natural lines of communi-
cation. Between them are left irregularly distributed patches un-
touched by traffic. . . .
On exactly such spots, undisturbed by the flow of vehicles, rose the
fountains and monuments of old communities.
Therefore:

Between the natural paths which cross a public square

or courtyard or a piece of common land choose something
to stand roughly in the middle: a fountain, a tree, a statue,
a clock-tower with seats, a windmill, a bandstand. Make
 BUILDINGS

it something which gives a strong and steady pulse to the

square, drawing people in toward the center. Leave it ex-
actly where it falls between the paths; resist the impulse to
put it exactly in the middle.

off center

Connect the different "somethings" to one another with the

path system-PATHS AND GOALS ( I 20). They may include
HIGH PLACES (62), DANCING IN THE STREETS (63), POOLS AND
STREAMS (64), PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM (69), STILL WATER
( 7 I), TREE PLACES ( I 71) ; make sure that each one has a SIT-
TING WALL (243) around it ....

608
Now, with the paths fixed, we come back to the
building: Within the various wings of any one
building, work out the fundamental gradients of
space, and decide how the movemr.nt will connect
the spaces in the gradients;

I 27. INTIMACY GRADIENT

I 28. INDOOR SUNLIGHT

I 29. COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART

I 30. ENTRANCE ROOM

I 3 I. THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS

132. SHORT PASSAGES

I 33· STAIRCASE AS A STAGE

1 34· ZEN VIEW

I 35• TAPESTRY OF LIGHT AND DARK

I 27 INTIMACY GRADIENT**

... if you know roughly where you intend to place the building
wings-WINGS OF LIGHT ( r 07), and how many stories they will
have-NUMBER OF STORIES( 96), and where the MAIN ENTRANCE
( 1 ro) is, it is time to work out the rough disposition of the
major areas on every floor. In every building the relationship
between the public areas and private areas is most important.

❖ ❖ ❖

Unless the spaces in a building are arranged in a se-

quence which corresponds to their degrees of privateness,
the visits made by strangers, friends, guests, clients, family,
will always be a little awkward.

In any building-house, office, public building, summer cot-

tage-people need a gradient of settings, which have different
degrees of intimacy. A bedroom or boudoir is most intimate; a
back sitting room or study less so; a common area or kitchen more
public still; a front porch or entrance room most public of all.
When there is a gradient of this kind, people can give each en-
counter different shades of meaning, by choosing its position
on the gradient very carefully. In a building which has its
rooms so interlaced that there is no clearly defined gradient
of intimacy, it is not possible to choose the spot for any particular
encounter so carefully; and it is therefore impossible to give the
encounter this dimension of added meaning by the choice of
space. This homogeneity of space, where every room has a similar
degree of intimacy, rubs out all possible subtlety of social inter-
action in the building.
We illustrate th is general fact by giving an exam pie from
Peru-a case which we have studied in detail. In Peru, friendship
is taken very seriously and exists at a number of levels. Casual
neighborhood friends will probably never enter the house at all.

610
 I 27 INTIMACY GRADIENT

Formal friends, such as the priest, the daughter's boyfriend, and

friends from work may be invited in, but tend to be limited to a
well-furnished and maintained part of the house, the sala. This
room is sheltered from the clutter and more obvious informality of
the rest of the house. Relatives and intimate friends may be made
to feel at home in the family room (comedor-estar), where the
family is likely to spend much of its time. A few relatives and
friends, particularly women, will be allowed into the kitchen,
other workspaces, and, perhaps, the bedrooms of the house. In
this way, the family maintains both privacy and pride.
The phenomenon of the intimacy gradient is particularly
evident at the time of a fiesta. Even though the house is full of
people, some people never get beyond the sala; some do not even
get beyond the th res hold of the front door. Others go all the
way into the kitchen, where the cooking is going on, and stay
there throughout the evening. Each person has a very accurate
sense of his degree of intimacy with the family and knows
exactly how far into the house he may penetrate, according to
this established level of intimacy.
Even extremely poor people try to have a sala if they can: we
saw many in the barriadas. Yet modern houses and apartments in
Peru combine sala and family room in order to save space, Al-
most everyone we talked to complained about this situation. As
far as we can tell, a Peruvian house must not, under any circum-
stances, violate the principle of the intimacy gradient.
The intimacy gradient is unusually crucial in a Peruvian house.
But in some form the pattern seems to exist in almost all cultures.
We see it in widely different cultures-compare the plan of an
African compound, a traditional Japanese house, and early Ameri-
can colonial homes-and it also applies to almost every building
type-compare a house, a small shop, a large office building, and
even a church. It is almost an archetypal ordering principle for
all man's buildings. All buildings, and all parts of buildings
which house well-denned human groups, need a delinite gradient
from "front" to "back," from the most formal spaces at the
front to the most intimate spaces at the back.
In an office the sequence might be: entry lobby, coffee and
reception areas, offices and workspaces, private lounge.

6JI
 BUILDINGS

0 ffice intimacy gradient.

In a small shop the sequence might be: shop entrance, customer

milling space, browsing area, sales counter, behind the counter,
private place for workers.
In a house: gate, outdoor porch, entrance, sitting wall, common
space and kitchen, private garden, bed alcoves.

Intimacy gradient in a !touse.

And in a more formal house, the sequence might begin with

something like the Peruvian sala-a parlor or sitting room for
guests.

Formal version of t!te front of t!te gradient.

612
 127 INTIMACY GRADIENT

Therefore:

Lay out the spaces of a building so that they create a se-

quence which begins with the entrance and the most public
parts of the building, then leads into the slightly more

- ------
private areas, and finally to the most private domains.

_--)-·~·

-==!=
--~

----+--
-------+-== •
___ __
___,__ .
~......,._
entrance public semi-public private

At the same time that common areas are to the front, make
sure that they are also at the heart and soul of the activity, and
that all paths between more private rooms pass tangent to the
common ones-COMMON AREASAT THE HEART (129). In private
houses make the ENTRANCE ROOM ( 130) the most formal and
public place and arrange the most private areas so that each
person has a room of his own, where he can retire to be alone-
A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN ( 141). Place bathing rooms and toilets
half-way between the common areas and the private ones, so
that people can reach them comfortably from both-BATHING
ROOM ( I 44); and place sitting areas at all the different degrees
of intimacy, and shape them according to their position in the
gradient-SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES ( 142). In offices put
RECEPTION WELCOMES You (149) at the front of the gradient
and HALF-PRIVATE OFFICE ( 152) at the back ....

613
 I 29 COMMON AREAS
AT THE HEART**
. . . along the INTIMACY GRADIENT ( I 2 7), in every building
and in every social group within the building, it is necessary to
place the common areas. Place them on the sunlit side to rein-
force the pattern of JNDOORsUNLJGHT ( I 28) ; and, when they
are large, give them the higher roofs of the CASCADEOF ROOFS
(I 16).

No social group-whether a family, a work group, or a

school group-can survive without constant informal con-
tact among its members.

Any building which houses a social group supports this kind of

contact by providing common areas. The form and location of
the common areas is critical. Here is a perfect example-a descrip-
tion of the family room in a Peruvian worker's house:
For a ]ow-income Peruvian family, the family room is the
heart of family life. The family eat here, they watch TV here,
and everyone who comes into the house comes into this room to
say hello to the others, kiss them, shake hands with them, ex-
change news. The same happens when people leave the house.
The family room functions as the heart of the family life by
helping to support these processes. The room is so placed in
the house, that people naturally pass through it on their way into
and out of the house. The end where they pass through it allows
them to linger for a few moments, without having to pull out a
chair to sit down. The TV set is at the opposite end of the
room from this throughway, and a glance at the screen is often
the excuse for a moment's further lingering. The part of the
room for the TV set is often darkened; the family room and the
TV function just as much during midday as they do at night.
Let us now generalize from this example. If a common area is

618
 I 29 COM MON AREAS AT THE HEART

located at the end of a corridor and people have to make a

special, deliberate effort to go there, they are not likely to use it
informally and spontaneously.

~ ... At one end.

Alternati1·ely, if the circulation path cuts too deeply through

the common area, the space will be too exposed, it will not be
comfortable to linger there and settle down .

. . . T hroug!t the middle.

The only balanced situation is the one where a common path,

which people use every day, runs tangent to the common areas
and is open to them in passing. Then people will be constantly
passing the space; but because the path is to one side, they are
not forced to stop. If they want to, they can keep going. If they
want to, they can stop for a moment, and see what's happening;
if they want to, they can come right in and settle down .

. . . Tangent.

It is worth mentioning, that this pattern has occurred, in some

form, in every single project we have worked on. In the multi-
service center, we had a pattern called Staff lounge based on the
same geometry (A pattern language which generates multi-service
centers, C.E.S., 1968, p. 241); in our work on mental health
centers, we had Patient's choice of being involved, the same pat-
tern again, as an essential element in therapy; in our work on
Peruvian housing, we had Family room cirwlation-this is the
example we ha1·e given for a family (Hou.res generaterl by patte.ms,
C.E.S., 1969, p. 140); and in our work on universities, The
 BUILDINGS

Oregon Experiment, we had a pattern called Department hearth,

again the same, for each department. It is perhaps the most basic
pattern there is in forming group cohesion.
In detail, we have isolated three characteristics for a successful
common area:
I. It must be at the center of gravity of the building complex,
building, or building wing which the group occupies. In other
words, it must be at the physical heart of the organization, so that
it is equally accessible to everyone and can be felt as the center
of the group.
2. Most important of all, it must be "on the way" from the
entrance to private rooms, so people always go by it on the way in
and out of the building. It is crucial that it not be a dead-end
room which one would have to go out of one's way to get to.
For this reason, the paths which pass it must lie tangent to it .

.,
:.:··' ' :
: , ,:.
~-;,...~,._t,.... -:..

t
,i
-:_-~?i
~,'g 10
-- -
~~~-=
__ I ..
..
·- 1111 -

The common area of a clinic we /,ave built in Modes to,

California, w!tere we managed to put tangent paths on all
four sides.

3. It must have the right components in it-usually a kitchen

and eating space, since eating is one of the most communal of
activities, and a sitting space-at least some comfortable chairs,
so people will feel like staying. It should also include an outdoor
area-on nice days there is always the longing to be outside-
to step out for a smoke, to sit down on the grass, to carry on a
discussion.

620
 I29 COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART

Therefore:

Create a single common area for every social group. Lo-

cate it at the center of gravity of all the spaces the group
occupies, and in such a way that the paths which go in and
out of the building lie tangent to it.

11
center of gravity of social life

tangent paths
communal functions

❖ ❖ ❖

Most basic of all to common areas are food and fire. Include
FARMHOUSE KITCHEN (139), COMMUNAL EATING (147), and
THE FIRE ( I 8 I). For the shape of the common area in fine
detail, see LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM (159) and THE
SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE ( 19 l). Make sure that there are plenty
of different sitting places, different in character for different
kinds of moments-SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES ( I 42). Include
an OUTDOOR ROOM (163). And make the paths properly tangent
to the common areas-ARCADES ( 119), THE FLOW THROUGH
ROOMS(131), SHORT PASSAGES(132) ....

621
I 30 ENTRANCE ROOM**

622
... the pos1t10n and overall shape of entrances is given by
FAMILY OF ENTRANCES (102), MAIN ENTRANCE (110) and
ENTRANCE TRANSITION ( 112). This pattern gives the entrances
their detailed shape, their shape and body and three dimensions,
and helps complete the form begun by CAR CONNECTION ( 1 I 3),
and the PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET (140).

Arriving in a building, or leaving it, you need a room

to pass through, both inside the building and outside it.
This is the entrance room.

The most impressionistic and intuitive way to describe the

need for the entrance room is to say that the time of arriving,
or leaving, seems to swell with respect to the minutes which
precede and follow it, and that in order to be congruent with
the importance of the moment, the space too must follow suit
and swell with respect to the immediate inside and the immediate
outside of the building.
We shall see now that there are a tremendous number of
miniscule forces which all come together to support this general
intuition. All these forces, tendencies, and solutions were orig-
inally describe by Alexander and Poyner, in the Atoms of En-
vironmental Structure, Ministry of Public Works, Research and
Development, SFB Ba4, London, 1966. At that time it seemed
important to emphasize the separate and individual patterns de-
fined by these forces. However, at the present writing it seems
clear that these original patterns are, in fact, all faces of the one
larger and more comprehensive entity, which we call the EN-
TRANCE ROOM ( I 30).

I. The relationship of windows to the entrance

(a) A person answering the door often tries to see who is
at the door before they open it.
(b) People do not want to go out of their way to peer at
people on the doorstep.
 BUILDINGS

(c) If the people meeting are old friends, they seek a chance
to shout out and wave in anticipation.
The entrance room therefore needs a window-or windows-
on the path from the family room or kitchen to the door, facing
the area outside the door from the side.

2. The need for shelter outside the door

(a) People try to get shelter from the rain, wind, and cold
while they are waiting.
(b) People stand near the door while they arc waiting for it
to open.
On the outside, therefore, give the entrance room walls enclos-
ing three sides of a covered space.

3. The subtleties of saying goodbye

When hosts and guests are saying goodbye, the lack of a clearly
marked "goodbye" point can easily lead to endless "Well, we
really must be going now,." and then further conversations linger-
ing on, over and over again.
(a) Once they have finally decided to go, people try to leave
without hesitation.
(b) People try to make their goodbye as nonabrupt as possible
and seek a comfortable break.
Give the entrance room, therefore, a clearly defined area, at
least 20 square feet, outside the front door, raised with a natural
threshold-perhaps a railing, or a low wall, or a step-between
it and the visitors' cars.

4. Shelf near the entrance

When a person is going into the house with a package:
(a) He tries to hold onto the package; he tries to keep it
upright, and off the ground.
(6) At the same time he tries to get both hands free to hunt
through pockets or handbag for a key.
And leaving the house with a package:
(c) At the moment of leaving people tend to be preoccupied
with other things, and this makes them forget the package which
they meant to take.
 I JO ENTRANCE ROOM

You can avoid these conflicts if there are shelves both inside
and outside the door, at about waist height; a place to leave
packages in readiness; a place to put them down while opening
the door.

5. Interior of the entrance room

(a) Politeness demands that when someone comes to the door,
the door is opened wide.
(b) People seek privacy for the inside of their houses.
(c) The family, sitting, talking, or at table, do not want to
feel disturbed or intruded upon when someone comes to the
door.
Make the inside of the entrance room zigzag, or obstructed,
so that a person standing on the doorstep of the open door can
see no rooms inside, except the entrance room itself, nor
through the doors of any rooms.

6. Coats, shoes, children's bikes

(a) Muddy boots have got to come off.
(b) People need a five foot diameter of clear space to take off
their coats.
( c) People take prams, bicycles, and so on indoors to protect
them from theft and weather; and children will tend to leave
all kinds of clutter-bikes, wagons, roller skates, trikes, shovels,
balls-around the door they use most often.
Therefore, give the entrance room a dead corner for storage,
put coat pegs in a position which can be seen from the front door,
and make an area five feet in diameter next to the pegs.
Therefore:

At the main entrance to a building, make a light-filled

room which marks the entrance and straddles the boundary
between indoors and outdoors, covering some space out-
doors and some space indoors. The outside part may be like
an old-fashioned porch; the inside like a hall or sitting room.

625
 BUILDINGS

indoor part

outdoor part

Give that part of the entrance which sticks out into the street
or garden a physical character which, as far as possible, make it
one 0£ the family of entrances along the street-FAMILY OF EN-
TRANCES ( r02) ; where it is appropriate, make it a porch-
GALLERY SURROUND ( 166) ; and include a bench or seat, where
people can watch the world go by or wait for someone-FRONT
DOOR BENCH (242). As for the indoor part of the entrance
room, above all, make sure that it is filled with light from two or
even three sides, so that the first impression of the building is of
light-TAPESTRY OF LIGHT AND DARK ( I 3 5), LIGHT ON TWO SIDES
OF EVERY ROOM ( 15 9). Put windows in the door itself-soLID
DOORS WITH GLASS (237). Put in BUILT-IN SEATS (202) and
make the room part of the SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES ( 142);
provide a WAIST-HIGH SHELF (201) for packages. And finally,
for the overall shape of the entrance room and its construction,
begin with THE SHAPE OF INDOORSPACE (191) ....
I 3I THE FLOW THROUGH
ROOMS
... next to the gradient of spaces created by INTIMACY GRA-
DIENT ( I 2 7) and COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART ( I 29)' the way
that rooms connect to one another will play the largest role in
governing the character of indoor space. This pattern describes
the most fundamental way of linking rooms to one another.

The movement between rooms is as important as the

rooms themselves; and its arrangement has as much effect
on social interaction in the rooms, as the interiors of the
rooms.

The movement between rooms, the circulation space, may be

generous or mean. In a building where the movement is mean,
the passages are dark and narrow-rooms open off them as dead
ends; you spend your time entering the building, or moving
between rooms, like a crab scuttling in the dark.
Compare this with a building where the movement is generous.
The passages are broad, sunlit, with seats in them, views into
gardens, and they are more or less continuous with the rooms
themselves, so that the smell of woodsmoke and cigars, the sound
of glasses, whispers, laughter, all that which enlivens a room,
also enlivens the places where you move.
These two approaches to movement have entirely different
psychological effects.
In a complex social fabric, human relations are inevitably
subtle. It is essential that each person feels free to make con-
nections or not, to move or not, to talk or not, to change the
situation or not, according to his judgment. If the physical en-
vironment inhibits him and reduces his freedom of action, it will
prevent him from doing the best he can to keep healing and im-
proving the social situations he is in as he sees lit.
The building with generous circulation allows each person's
instincts and intuitions full play. The building with ungenerous
circulation inhibits them. It not only separates rooms from one
another to such an extent that it is an ordeal to move from room

628
 I 3I THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS
•
to room, but kills the joy of time spent between rooms and may
discourage movement altogether.
The following incident shows how important freedom of move-
ment is to the life of a building. An industrial company in Lau-
sanne had the following experience. They installed TV-phone in-
tercoms between all offices to improve communication. A few
months later, the firm was going down the drain-and they called
in a management consultant. He finally traced their problems
back to the TV-phones. People were calling each other on the
TV-phone to ask specific questions-but as a result, people never
talked in the halls and passages any more-no more "Hey, how
are you, say, by the way, what do you think of this idea ... "
The organization was falling apart, because the informal talk-
the glue which held the organization together-had been
destroyed. The consultant advised them to junk the TV-phones
-and they lived happily ever after.
This incident happened in a large organization. But the prin-
ciple is just the same in a small work group or a family. The
possibility of small momentary conversations, gestures, kindnesses,
explanations which clear up misunderstandings, jokes and stories
is the lifeblood of a human group. If it get, prevented, the group
will fall apart as people's individual relationships go gradually
downhill.
1t is almost certain that the building with ungenerous circula-
tion makes it harder for people to maintain their social fabric.
In the long run, there is a good chance that social order in the
building with ungenerous circulation will break down altogether.
The generosity of movement depends on the overall arrange-
ment of the movement in the building, not on the detailed design
of individual passages. In fact, it is at its most generous, when
there are no passages at all and movement is created by a string of
interconnecting rooms with doors between them.

r~J-~7
"~~-
~(j~7-:~:·r=~:-~·":,~;"
~
- -7? :r- ~,,....
' ' ' .•. · f,

~:~ti.a•-~
t~.1~:-11~1~ : •=•~~~~j
A sequence of rooms without a passage.
 BUILDINGS

Even better, is the case where there 1s a loop. A loop, which

passes through all the major rooms, public and common, estab-
lishes an enormous feeling of generosity. With a loop it is always
possible to come and go in two different directions. It is possi-
ble to walk around and around, and it ties the rooms together.
And, when such a loop passes through rooms (at one end so as
not to disturb them), it connects rooms far more than a simple
passage does.

~-----11• .as•

II generous circulation loop.

A building where there is a chain of rooms in sequence also

works like this, if there is a passage in parallel with the chain of
rooms.

Passage in parallel forms the loop.

Therefore:

As far as possible, avoid the use of corridors and pas-

sages. Instead, use public rooms and common rooms as
rooms for movement and for gathering. To do this, place
the common rooms to form a chain, or loop, so that it be-
comes possible to walk from room to room-and so that
private rooms open directly off these public rooms. In every
 I JI THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS

case, give this indoor circulation from room to room a

feeling of great generosity, passing in a wide and ample loop
around the house, with views of fires and great windows.

loops through rooms

wide doors

generosity of movement

❖ ❖ ❖

Whenever passages or corridors are unavoidable, make them

wide and generous too; and try to place them on one side of the
building, so that they can be Ii.lied with light-SHORT PASSAGES
( I 3 2). Furnish them like rooms, with carpets, bookshelves, easy
chairs and tables, filtered light, and do the same for ENTRANCE
ROOM (130) and STAIRCASEAS A STAGE (133). Always make sure
that these rooms for movement have plenty of light in them and
perhaps a view-ZEN VIEW ( 134), TAPESTRYOF LIGHT AND DARK
( 135), and LIGHT ON TWO SIDESOF EVERY ROOM ( 159). Keep
doors which open into rooms, or doors between rooms which create
the flow through rooms, in the corners of the rooms-CORNER
DOORS( I 96) , , , ,

631
132 SHORT PASSAGES*

63 2
..• THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS ( I 3 I) describes the gener-
osity of light and movement in the way that rooms connect to
one another and recommends against the use of passages. But
when there has to be a passage in an office or a house and when
it is too small to be a BUILDING THOROUGHFARE (IOI)' it must
be treated very specially, as if it were itself a room. This pattern
gives the character of these smallest passages, and so completes the
circulation system laid down by CIRCULATION REALMS ( 98) and
BUILDING THOROUGHFARE (101) and THE FLOW THROUGH
ROOMS ( I 3 I).

" ... long, sterile corridors set the scene for everything
bad about modern architecture."

In fact, the ugly long repet1t1ve corridors of the machine age

have so far infected the word "corridor" that it is hard to
imagine that a corridor could ever be a place of beauty, a
moment in your passage from room to room, which means as
much as all the moments you spend in the rooms themselves.

Long corridors.

We shall now t:-y to pinpoint the difference Lc:tween the

corridors which live, which give pleasure, and make people feel

633
 BUILDINGS

alive, and those which do not. There are four main issues.
The most profound issue, to our minds, is natural light. A hall
or passage that is generously 1it by the sun is almost always
pleasant. The archetype is the one-sided hall, lined with windows
and doors on its open side. (Notice that this is one of the few
places where it is a good idea to light a space from one side).
The second issue is the relation of the passage to the rooms
which open off it. Interior windows, opening from these rooms
into the hall, help animate the hall. They establish a /low between
the rooms and the passage; they support a more informal style
of communication; they give the person moving through the hall
a taste of life inside the rooms. Even in an office, this contact is
fine so long as it is not extreme; so long as the workplaces are
protected individually by distance or by a partial wall-see
HALF-PRIVATE OFFICE (152), WORKSPACE ENCLOSURE (183).
The third issue which makes the difference between a lively
passage and a dead one is the presence of furnishings. If the
passage is made in a way which invites people to furnish it with
book cases, small tables, places to lean, even seats, then it becomes
very much a part of the living space of the building, not some-
thing entirely separate.
And finally, there is the critical issue of length. We know
intuitively that corridors in office buildings, hospitals, hotelr,
apartment buildings-even sometimes in houses-are far too
long. People dislike them: they represent bureaucracy and
monotony. And there is even evidence to show that they do
actual damage.
Consider a study by Mayer Spivack on the unconscious effects
of long hospital corridors on perception, communication, and be-
havior:

Four examples of long mental hospital corridors are examined

it is concluded that such spaces interfere with normal verbal
communication due to their characteristic acoustical properties. Op-
tical phenomena common to these passageways obscure the perception
of the human figure and face, and distort distance perception. Para-
doxical visual cues produced by one tunnel created interrelated,
cross-sensory illusions involving room size, distance, walking speed
and time. Observations of patient behavior suggest the effect of
narrow conidors upon anxiety is via the penetration of the personal
 IJ2 SHORT PASSAGES

space envelope. (M. Spivack, "Sensory Distortion in Tunnels and

Corridors," Hospital and Community Psycf1iatry, 18, No. 1, Janu-
ary 1967.)
When docs a corridor become too long' In an earlier version of
this pattern (Short corridors in A P{)ttern L{)nguage Which
Generates Multi-Service Centers, CES, 1967, pp. 179-82), we
have presented evidence which s,1ggests that there is a definite
cognitive breakpoint between long corridors and short halls: the
evidence points to a figure of some 50 feet as a critical threshold.
Beyond that, passages begin to feel dead and monotonous.
Of course it is possible to make even very long corridors in a
human way; but if they have to be longer than 50 feet, it is
essential to break down their scale in some fashion. For example,
a long hall that is lit in patches from one side at short intervals
can be ,·ery pleasant indeed: the sequence of light and dark and
the chance to pause and glance out, breaks down the feeling of
the endless dead corridor; or a hall which opens out into wider
rooms, every now and then, has the same effect. However, do
everything you can to keep the passages really short.
Therefore:

Keep passages short. Make them as much like rooms as

possible, with carpets or wood on the floor, furniture, book-
shelves, beautiful windows. Make them generous in shape,
and always give them plenty of light; the best corridors
and passages of all are those which have windows along
an entire wall.

furniture

J~
like a room

' • • light

not too long

 BUILDINGS

Put in windows, bookshelves, and furnishings to make them as

much like actual rooms as possible, with alcoves, seats along the
edge-LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM ( 1 59), ALCOVES
(179), WINDOW PLACE (180), THICK WALLS (197), CLOSETSBE-
TWEEN ROOMS ( 198); open up the long side into the garden or
out onto balconies-OUTDOOR ROOM (163), GALLERY SURROUND
(166), LOW SILL (222). Make interior windows between the
passage and the rooms which open off it-INTERIOR WINDows
( I 94), SOLID DOORSWITH GLASS( 2 37). And finally, for the shape
of the passages, in detail, start with THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE
(191) ....
I 33 STAIRCASE AS A STAGE

637
... if the entrances are in pos1t1on-MAIN ENTRANCE ( II o) ;
and the pattern of movement through the building is established
-THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS (131), SHORT PASSAGES(132),
the main stairs must be put in and given -an appropriate social
character.

+ ❖ ❖

A staircase is not just a way of getting from one floor to

another. The stair is itself a space, a volume, a part of the
building; and unless this space is made to live, it will be
a dead spot, and work to disconnect the building and to
tear its processes apart.

Our feelings for the general shape of the stair are based on
this conjecture: changes of level play a crucial role at many mo-
ments during social gatherings; they provide special places to sit, a
place where someone can make a grace£ □ ! or dramatic entrance, a
place from which to speak, a place from which to look at other
people while also being seen, a place which increases face to face
contact when many people are together.
If this is so, then the stair is one of the few places in a build-
ing which is capable of providing for this requirement, since it
is almost the only place in a building where a transition between
levels occurs naturally.
This suggests that the stair always be made rather open to the
room below it, embracing the room, coming down around the
outer perimeter of the room, so that the stairs together with the
room form a socially connected space. Stairs that are enclosed in
stairwells ,or stairs that are free standing and chop up the space

Examples of stair roo111s.

 133 STAIRCASE AS A STAGE

below, do not have this character at all. But straight stairs, stairs
that follow the contour of the walls below, or stairs that double
back can all be made to work this way.
Furthermore, the first four or five steps are the places where
people are most likely to sit if the stair is working well. To
support this fact, make the bottom of the staircase flare out,
widen the steps, and make them comfortable to sit on.

;::~::::~::::}:=:
0 {" c-
,::~OQ,::.OQ
<> 0 ,., ., ~

e ·o e- o. e. o c- o

Stair seats.

Finally, we must decide where to place the stair. On the

one hand, of course, the stair is the key to movement in a build-
ing. It must therefore be visible from the front door; and, in a
building with many different rooms upstairs, it must be in a posi-
tion which commands as many of these rooms as possible, so that it
forms a kind of axis people can keep clearly in their minds.
However, if the stair is too near the door, it will be so public
that its position will undermine the vital social character we
have described. Instead, we suggest that the stair be clear, and
central, yes-but in the common area of the building, a little
further back from the front door than usual. Not usually in the
ENTRANCE ROOM ( I 30)) but in the COMMON AREA AT THE
HEART ( r 29). Then it will be clear and visible, and also keep its
necessary social character.
Therefore:

Place the main stair in a key position, central and vis-

 BUILDINGS

ible. Treat the whole staircase as a room ( or if it is out-

side, as a courtyard). Arrange it so that the stair and the
room are one, with the stair coming down around one or
two walls of the room. Flare out the bottom of the stair
with open windows or balustrades and with wide steps
so that the people coming down the stair become part of
the action in the room while they are on the stair, and so
that people below will naturally use the stair for seats.

wrapped round
room

l flared at bottom

❖ ❖ ❖

Treat the bottom steps as STAIR SEATS (125); provide a wm-

dow or a view half-way up the stair, both to light the stair and
to create a natural focus of attention-ZEN vrnw ( 134), TAPESTRY
OF LIGHT AND DARK ( 135) ; remember to calculate the length and
shape of the stair while you are working out its position-
STAIRCASEVOLUME (195). Get the final shape of the staircase
room and the beginnings of its construction from THE SHAPE OF
INDOORSPACE ( I 9 I) ... ,
I 34 ZEN VIEW*
... how should we make the most of a view? It turns out that
the pattern which answers this question helps to govern not the
rooms and windows in a building, but the places of transition.
It helps to place and detail ENTRANCE TRANSITION ( I I 2), EN-
TRANCE ROOM ( I 30) 1 SHORT PASSAGES ( I 3 2), THE STAIRCASE AS
A STAGE ( I 3 3)-and outside, PATHS AND GOALS ( 120).

❖ ❖ ❖

The archetypal zen view occurs in a famous Japanese

house, which gives this pattern its name.

A Buddhist monk lived high in the mountains, in a small

stone house. Far, far in the distance was the ocean, visible and
beautiful from the mountains. But it was not visible from the
monk's house itself, nor from the approach road to the house.
However, in front of the house there stood a courtyard surrounded
by a thick stone wall. As one came to the house, one passed
through a gate into this court, and then diagonally across the court
to the front door of the house. On the far side of the courtyard
there was a slit in the wall, narrow and diagonal, cut through the
thickness of the wall. As a person walked across the court, at one
spot, where his position lined up with the slit in the wall, for an
instant, he could see the ocean. And then he was past it once
again, and went into the house.

The monk's house.

What is it that happens in this courtyard? The view of the

distant sea is so restrained that it stays alive forever. Who, that
 I 34 ZEN VIEW

has ever seen that view, can ever forget it? Its power will never
fade. Even for the man who lives there, coming past that view
day after day for fifty years, it will still be alive.
This is the essence of the problem with any view. 1t is a beau-
tiful thing. One wants to enjoy it and drink it in every day. But
the more open it is, the more obvious, the more it shouts, the
sooner it will fade. Gradually it will become part of the building,
like the wallpaper; and the intensity of its beauty will no
longer be accessible to the people who live there.
Therefore:

If there is a beautiful view, don't spoil it by building

huge windows that gape incessantly at it. Instead, put the
windows which look onto the view at places of transition-
along paths, in hallways, in entry ways, on stairs, between
rooms.
If the view window is correctly placed, people will see
a glimpse of the distant view as they come up to the win-
dow or pass it: but the view is never visible from the
places where people stay.

distant view

place of
transition

Put in the windows to complete the indirectness of the view

-NATURAL DOORSAND WINDOWS( 2 2 r) ; place them to help the
TAPESTRY OF LIGHT AND DARK ( I 3 5) ; and build a seat from
which a person can enjoy the view-WINDOW PLACE ( I 80). If
the view must be visible from inside a room, make a special
corner of the room which looks onto the view, so that the enjoy-
ment of the view becomes a definite act in its own right.
I 35 TAPESTRY OF LIGHT
AND DARK*
... passages, entrances, stairs are given their rough position by
THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS( I 3 I), SHORT PASSAGES ( I 3 2), STAIR-
CASEASA STAGE (133), ZEN vrEw (134). This pattern helps you
fine tune their positions by placing light correctly.

In a building with uniform light level, there are few

"places" which function as effective settings for human
events. This happens because, to a large extent, the places
which make effective settings are defined by light.

People are by nature phototropic-they move toward light,

and, when stationary, they orient themselves toward the light. As
a result the much loved and much used places in buildings, where
the most things happen, are places like window seats, verandas,
fireside corners, trellised arbors; all of them defined by non-
uniformities in light, and all of them allowing tne people who are
in them to orient themselves toward the light.
We may say that these places become the settings for the
human events that occur in the building. Since there is good
reason to believe that people need a rich variety of settings in
their lives (see for instance, Roger Barker, The Stream of
Behavior: Explorations of its Structure and Content, New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, I 963), and since settings are defined by
"places," which in turn seem often to be defined by light, and
since light places can only be defined by contrast with darker
ones, this suggests that the interior parts of buildings where
people spend much time should contain a great deal of alternating
light and dark. The building needs to be a tapestry of light and
dark.
This tapestry of light and dark must then fit together with the
flow of movement, too. As we have said, people naturally tend
to walk toward the light. It is therefore obvious that any en-
trance, or any key point in a circulation system, must be systemat-
ically lighter than its surroundings-with light (daylight and
artificial light) flooded there, so that its intensity becomes a
 BUILDINGS

natural target. The reason is simple. If there are places which

have more light than the entrances and circulation nodes, people
will tend to walk toward them (because of their phototropic
tendency) and will therefore end up in the wrong place-with
frustration and confusion as the only possibl~ result.
If the places where the Light falls are not the places you are
meant lo go toward, or if the light is uniform, the environment is
giving information which contradicts its own meaning. The en-
vironment is only functioning in a single-hearted manner, as
information, when the lightest spots coincide with the points of
maximum importance.
Therefore:

Create alternating areas of light and dark throughout the

building, in such a way that people naturally walk toward
the light, whenever they are going to important places:
seats, entrances, stairs, passages, places of special beauty, and
make other areas darker, to increase the contrast.

strong natural light

Where the light to walk toward is natural light, build seats

and alcoves in those windows which attract the movement-
WINDOW PLACE ( I Bo). If you use skylights, then make the
surfaces around the skylight warm in color-WARM COLORS
(250); otherwise the direct light from the sky is almost always
cold. At night make pools of incandescent light which guide the
movement-POOLS OF LIGHT (252).
within the framework of the wings and their
internal gradients of space and movement, de fine
the most important areas and rooms. First, for a
house;

136. COUPLE'S REALM

I 37· CHILDREN'S REALM

I 38. SLEEPING TO THE EAST

I 39· FARMHOUSE KITCHEN

140. PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET

141. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

I 42. SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES

143· BED CLUSTER

144. BATHING ROOM

I 45 • BULK STORAGE
I 36 COUPLE'S REALM*
... this pattern helps to complete THE FAMJLY (75), HOUSE
FOR A SMALL FAMlLY (76) and HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77). It
also ties in to a particular position on the INTIMACY GRADIENT
(127), and can be used to help generate that gradient, if it
doesn't exist already.

The presence of children in a family often destroys the

closeness and the special privacy which a man and wife
need together.

Every couple start out sharing each other's adult lives. When
children come, concern for parenthood often overwhelms the
private sharing, and everything becomes exclusively oriented
toward the children.
In most houses this is aggravated by the physical design of the
environment. Specifically:
I. Children are able to run everywhere in the house, and
therefore tend to dominate all of it. No rooms are private.
2. The bathroom is often placed so that adtilts must walk past
children's bedrooms to reach it.
3. The walls of the master bedroom are usually too th in to
afford much acoustical privacy.
The result is that the private life of the couple is continually
interrupted by the awareness that the children are nearby.
Their role as parents rather than as a couple permeates all aspects
of their private relations.
On the other hand, of course, they do not want to be com-
pletely separated from the children's rooms. They also want to be
close to them, especially while the children are young. A mother
wants to run quickly to the bed of an infant in an emergency.
These problems can only be solved if there is a part of the
house, which we call the couple's realm; that is, a world in
which the intimacy of the man and woman, their joys and
sorrows, can be shared and Ii ved through. It is a place not only
insulated from the children's world, but also complete in itself, a
 BUILDINGS

world, a domain. In many respects 1t 1s a version of the pattern

HOUSE FOR A COUPLE ( 77), embedded in the larger house with
children.
The couple's realm needs to be the kind of place that one
might sit in and talk privately, perhaps with its own entrance to
the outdoors, to a balcony. It is a sitting room, a place for privacy,
a place for projects; the bed is part of it, but tucked away into an
alcove with its own window; a fireplace is wonderful; and it
needs some kind of a double door, an ante-room, to protect its
pnvacy.
Therefore:

Make a special part of the house distinct from the com-

mon areas and all the children's rooms, where the man
and woman of the house can be together in private. Give
this place a quick path to the children's rooms, but, at all
costs, make it a distinctly separate realm.

sitting area
I' - - •
I
I
I
/ 1/ ( __,,,,,.,,..--,,
\. '-➔
psychologically
\
bed , .../ far from children
dressing rooms

Even if it's very tiny, give it a sitting area, a place to relax,

read, make love, play music-SITTING CIRCLE ( 185). Give it
LIGHT ON TWO SIDES (159). At the heart of the couple's realm,
place the bed-MARRIAGE BED ( I 87) so it has morning light-
SLEEPING TO THE EAST ( 13 8), and, beside it, the DRESSINGROOM
( I 89); if possible, try to place the bathing room to open off the
couple's realm-BATHING ROOM ( I 44). For the shape of this
room in fine detail and its construction, see THE SHAPE OF INDOOR
SPACE ( 191). And keep the area private with a Low DOORWAY
(224) or two doors-CLOSETS BETWEEN ROOMS(198) ....

650
I 37 CHILDREN'S REALM*
... in a HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY ( 76), there are three main
areas: a COMMON AREA AT THE HEART ( I 29)' a COUPLE'S REALM
( I 36), and a CHILDREN'S REALM which overlaps the common
area. If the common area and couple's realm are in position, it
is now possible to weave in this partly separate, partly over-
lapping place for children, which we call a realm, although we
recognize that it is not a separate realm but more an aspect of
the house, reserved for children, a mode of functioning which is
physically separate only in certain parts. It is that component of
CONNECTED PLAY (68) which acts within the individual houses.

❖ ❖ ❖

If children do not have space to release a tremendous

amount of energy when they need to, they will drive them-
selves and everybody else in the family up the wall.

/1 frenzy in the dining room.

For a graphic example, visualize what happens when children

bring in friends after school and have a whole number of ideas in
their heads of what to do or play. They are loud and boisterous
after being pent up in school all day and they need a lot of indoor
and outdoor space to expend all this energy. Obviously, the
mood calls for space which contains long distances because they
suggest the possibility of physical freedom much more.
 IJ7 CHILDREN'S REALM

And, in general, the child's world is not some single space

or room-it is a continuum of spaces. The sidewalk where he
sells lemonade and talks with friends, the outdoor play area of
his house into which he can invite his friends, the indoor play-
space, his private space in the house where he can be alone with
a friend, the bathroom, the kitchen where his mother is, the
family room where the rest of the family is-for the child, all
of these together form his world. If any other kind of space
interrupts this continuum, it will be swallowed up into the
child's world as part of his circulation path.
If the private rooms, the couple's realm, the quiet sitting
areas are scattered randomly among the places that form the
children's world, then they will certainly be violated. But if
the children's world is one continuous swath, then these quiet,
private, adult places will be protected by the mere fact that they
are not part of the continuum. We therefore conclude that all
the places which children need and use should form one continu-
ous geometrical swath, which does not include the couple's
realm, the adult private rooms, or any formal, quiet sitting
spaces. This continuous playspace needs certain additional prop-
erties.
I. Children are apt to be very demanding of everyone's atten-
tion when they are in this specially energetic state. The mother is
particularly susceptible to being totally swallowed up by them.
They will want to show her things, ask her questions, ask her to
do things ... "Look what I found. Look what I made. Where
shall I put this1 Where's the clayl Make some paint." The
mother must be available for all this, but not forced to be in the
thick of it. Her workroom and the kitchen need to be protected,
yet tangential to the playspace.
2. The family room is also part of the continuum since it is
where children and the rest of the family have contact with each
other. The playspace, therefore, should enter the common area-
preferably to one side-sec COMMON AREA AT THE HEART ( 129).
3. The children's private spaces (whether they are alcoves or
bedrooms) can be off the playspace, but it must be possible to
close them off. Children naturally want to be exclusive at times-
they often invite their closest friends into such a space for a
private chat or to show off some prized possession.
 BUILDINGS

4. It is usually too expensive to create a special playspace; but

it is always possible to make a hallway function as the indoor part
of the playspace. It needs to be a bit wider than a normal hall
(perhaps seven feet) with nooks and stages along the edge. Chil-
dren take up the suggestive qualities of spaces-on sight of a
little cave-like space, they will decide to play house; on sight of
a raised platform, they will decide to put on a play. Thus, both
indoor and outdoor parts of the playspace need different levels,
little nooks, counters, or tables, and so on. A lot of open storage
for toys, costumes, and so forth should also be provided in these
spaces. When toys are visible, they are more likely to be used.
5. The outdoor space just adjacent to the indoor space should
be partially roofed, to provide transition between the two and to
reinforce the continuity.
Remember that this kind of playspace is as much in the interest
of the adults in the family, as in the interest of the children.
If the house is organized so that the children's world gradually
spreads throughout the home, it will disrupt and dominate the
world of tranquility, preciousness, and freedom that adults
need, to live their own lives. If there is an adequate children's
world, in the manner described in this pattern, then both the
adults and children can co-exist, each without dominating the
other.
Therefore:

Start by placing the small area which will belong en-

tirely to the children-the cluster of their beds. Place it in a
separate position toward the back of the house, and in
such a way that a continuous playspace can be made from
this cluster to the street, almost like a wide swath inside
the house, muddy, toys strewn along the way, touching
those family rooms which children need-the bathroom
and the kitchen most of all-passing the common area
along one side (but leaving quiet sitting areas and the
couple's realm entirely separate and inviolate), reaching
out to the street, either through its own door or through the
entrance room, and ending in an outdoor room, connected
 I 37 CHILDREN'S REALM

to the street, and sheltered, and large enough so that the

children can play in it when it rains, yet still be outdoors.

entrance
cluster
of
~treet
beds

As you place this swath between the children's beds and the
street, place the FARMHOUSE KITCHEN ( I 39) and the HOME
WORKSHOP (157) to one side of the path, touching it, yet not
violated by it. Do the same for BATHING ROOM ( I 44), and give
it some connection to the children's beds. Develop the cluster
of children's beds according to BED CLUSTERS (143); make the
long passages which form the realm as light and warm as possible
-SHORT PASSAGES (132); make the OUTDOOR ROOM (163) large
enough for boisterous activity ....

655
I 4I A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN**

668
... the INTIMACY GRADIENT ( I 27) makes it clear that every
house needs rooms where individuals can be alone. In any house-
hold which has more than one person, this need is fundamental
and essential-THE FAMILY (75), HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY
(76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77). This pattern, which defines
the rooms that people can have to themselves, is the natural
counterpart and complement to the social activity provided for in
COMMONAREASAT THE HEART ( 129).

No one can be close to others, without also having

frequent opportunities to be alone.

A person in a household without a room of his own will always

be confronted with a problem: he wants to participate in family
life and to be recognized as an important member of that group;
but he cannot individualize himself because no part of the house
is totally in his control. It is rather like expecting one drowning
man to save anoth.cr. Only a person who has a well-developed
strong personal self, can venture out to participate in communal
Jife.
This notion has been explored by two American sociologists,
Foote and Cottrell:

There is a critical point beyond which closer contact with another

person will no longer lead to an increase in ernpathy. (A) Up to a
certain point, intirnate interaction with others increases the capacity
to empathize with them. But when others are too constantly present,
the organism appears to develop a protective resistance to responding
to them .... This limit to the capacity to empathize should be
taken into account in planning the optimal size and concentration of
urban populations, as well as in planning the schools and the housing
of individual families. (B) Families who provide time and space for
privacy, and who teach chilrlren the utility and satisfaction of with-
drawing for private reveries, will show higher average empathic
capacity than those who do not. (Foote, N. and L. Cottrell, Identity
and fn1erperso11al Competence, Chicago, 1955, pp. 72-73, 79.)
Alexander Leighton has made a similar point, emphasizing
the mental damage that results from a systematic lack of privacy
 BUILDINGS

["Psychiatric Disorder and Social Environment," Psychiatry, I 8

(3), P· 374, 1 955].
In terms of space, what is required to solve the problem?
Simply, a room of one's own. A place to go and close the door; a
retreat. Visual and acoustic privacy. And to make certain that the
rooms are truly private, they must be located at the extremities of
the house: at the ends of building wings; at the ends of the
INTIMACY GRADIENT ( I 2 7) ; far from the common areas.
We shall now look at the individual members of the family
one at a time, in slightly more detail.
Wife. We put the wife first, because, classically, it is she who
has the greatest difficulty with this problem. She belongs every-
where, and every place inside the house is in a vague sense hers-
yet it is only very rarely that the woman of the house has a small
room which is specifically and exclusively her own. Virginia
Woolf's famous essay "A room of one's own" is the strongest and
most important statement on this issue-and has given this
pattern its name.
Husband. In older houses, the man of the house usually had a
study or a workshop of his own. However, in modern houses
and apartments, this has become as rare as the woman's own room.
And it is certainly just as essential. Many a man associates his
house with the mad scene of young children and the enormous
demands put on him there. If he has no room of his own, he has
to stay at his office, away from home, to get peace and quiet.
Teenagers. For teenage children, we have devoted an entire
pattern to this problem: TEENAGER'S COTTAGE (154). We have
argued there that it is the teenagers who are faced with the
problem of building a firm and strong identity; yet among the
adults, it is the young who are most often prevented from having
a place in the home that is clearly marked as their own.
Child1·en. Very young children experience the need for privacv
less-but they still experience it. They need some place to keep
their possessions, to be alone at times, to have a private visit with
a playmate. See BED CLUSTER ( I 43) and BED ALCOVE ( 1 88).
John Madge has written a good survey of a family's need for
private space ("Privacy and Social InterKtion," Transactions of
the Bartlett Society, Vol. 3, 1964-65), and concerning the
children he says:
 I4I A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

The bedroom is often the repository of most of these items of

personal property around which the individual builds his own satis-
factions and which help to differentiate him from the other mem-
bers of the inner circle of his life-indeed he will often reveal them
more freely to a peer in age and sex than to a member of his own
family.

In summary then, we propose that a room of one's own-an

alcove or bed nook for younger children-is essential for each
member of the family. It helps develop one's own sense of
identity; it strengthens one's relationship to the rest of the
family; and ir creates personal territory, thereby building ties
with the house itself.
Therefore:

Give each member of the family a room of his own,

especially adults. A minimum room of one's own is an
alcove with desk, shelves, and curtain. The maximum
is a cottage-like a TEENAGER'S COTTAGE(154), or an OLD
AGE COTTAGE (155). In all cases, especially the adult ones,
place these rooms at the far ends of the intimacy gradient-
far from the common rooms.

private rooms

dead ends

Use this pattern as an antidote to the extremes of "togetl1er-

ness" created by COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART (129). Even for
 BUILDINGS

small children, give them at least an alcove in the communal

sleeping area-BED ALCOVE ( I 88); and for the man and woman,
give each of them a separate room, beyond the couples realm they
share; it may be an expanded dressing room-DRESSJNG ROOM
(189), a home workshop-HOME WORKSHOP (157), or once
again, an alcove off some other room-ALCOVES ( I 79), WORK-
SPACE ENCLOSURE (183). If there is money for it, it may even
be possible to give a person a cottage, attached to the main
structure-TEENAGER'S COTTAGE ( 1 54), OLD AGE COTTAGE ( 155).
In every case there must at least be room for a desk, a chair, and
THINGS FROM YOUR LIFE ( 2 53). And for the detailed shape of
the room, see LIGHT ON TWO SlDES OF EVERY ROOM ( 159) and
THE SHAPE OF INDOORSPACE (191) . ...
 I 42 SEQUENCE OF
SITTING SPACES*

... at various points along the INTIMACY GRADIENT ( I 27) of a

house, or office, or a public building, there is a need for sitting
space. Some of this space may take the form of rooms devoted
entirely to sitting, like the formal sitting rooms of old; others
may be simply areas or corners of other rooms. This pattern states
the range and distribution of these sitting spaces, and helps create
the intimacy gradient by doing so.

❖ ❖ ❖

Every corner of a building is a potential s1ttmg space.

But each sitting space has different needs for comfort and
enclosure according to its position in the intimacy gradi-
ent.

We know from INTIMACY GRADIENT (127) that a building has

a natural sequence of spaces in it, ranging from the most public
areas, outside the entrance, to the most private, in individual
rooms and couples realms. Here is a sequence of sitting spaces that
would correspond roughly to the INTIMACY GRADIENT ( 12 7):
I. Outside the entrance-ENTRANCE ROOM ( 1 30), FRONT
DOORBENCH (242)
2. Inside the entrance-ENTRANCE ROOM ( I 30), RECEPTION
WELCOMESYOU ( I 49)
3· Common rooms-COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART (129),
SHORT PASSAGES( I 3 2), FARMHOUSE KITCHEN ( I 39), SMALL
MEETING ROOMS( I 5 I)
4. Half-private rooms-CHILDREN'S REALM ( 137), PRIVATE
TERRACE ON THE STREET ( I 40), HALF-PRIVATE OFFICE
( I 52), ALCOVES( I 79)
5. Private rooms-COUPLE'S REALM ( 13 6)) A ROOM OF ONE'S
OWN (141), GARDENSEAT (176).

673
 BUILDINGS

Now, what is the problem? Simply, it is the following. People

have a tendency to think about the sitting room, as though a
building, and especially a house, has just one room made for
sitting. Within this frame of reference, this one sitting room gets
a great deal of care and attention. But the fact that human activity
naturally occurs all through the house, at a variety of degrees of
intensity and intimacy, is forgotten-and the sitting spaces
throughout the building fail to support the real rhythms of sitting
and hanging around.
To solve the problem, recognize that your building should
contain a sequence of sitting spaces of varying degrees of intimacy,
and that each space in this sequence needs the degree of enclosure
and comfort appropriate to its position. Pay attention to the full
sequence, not just to one room. Ask yourself if the building you
are making or repairing has the full sequence of sitting spaces,
and what needs to be done to create this sequence, in its full
richness and variety.
Of course, you may want to build a special sitting room-a sala
or a parlor or a library or a living room-as one of the sitting
spaces in your house. But remember that each office and workroom
needs a sitting space too; so does a kitchen, so does a couple's
realm, so does a garden, so does an entrance room, so does a
corridor even, so does a roof, so does a window place. Pick the
sequence of sitting spaces quite deliberately, mark it, and pay
equal attention to the various spaces in the sequence as you go
further into the details of the design.
Therefore:

Put in a sequence of graded s1ttmg spaces throughout

the building, varying according to their degree of enclosure.
Enclose the most formal ones entirely, in rooms by them-
selves; put the least formal ones in corners of other rooms,
without any kind of screen around them; and place the
intermediate one with a partial enclosure round them to
keep them connected to some larger space, but also partly
separate.
 I 42 SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES

private rooms

'
inside the entrance •
f
k
outside the entrance·. __IU
• \Fi/EiJ
t

Put the most formal sitting spaces in the COMMON AREAS AT

THE HEART (129) and in the ENTRANCE ROOM (130); put the
intermediate spaces also in the COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART
(129), in FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE (146), in a PLACE TO WAlT
( I 50), and on the PRIVATE TERRACE oN THE STREET ( I 40) ; and
put the most intimate and most informal sitting spaces in the
COUPLE'S REALM (136), the FARMHOUSE KITCHEN (139), the
ROOMS OF ONE'S OWN ( 141), and the HALF-PRIVATE OFFICES
(152). Build the enclosure round each space, according to its posi-
tion in the scale of sitting spaces-THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE
( 191); and make each one, wherever it is, comfortable and
lazy by placing chairs correctly with respect to fires and windows
-ZEN VIEW (134), WINDOW PLACE (180), THE FIRE (181),
SITTING CIRCLE (185), SEAT SPOTS (241) ....
150 A PLACE TO WAIT*
 in any office, or workshop, or public service, or station, or
clinic, where people have to wait-INTERCHANGE (34), HEALTH
CENTER (4 7), SMALLSERVICESWITHOUT RED TAPE ( 8 I), OFFICE
CONNECTIONS( 8 z), it is essential to provide a special place for
waiting, and doubly essential that this place not have the sordid,
enclosed, time-slowed character of ordinary waiting rooms.

The process of waiting has inherent conflicts in it.

On the one hand, whatever people are waiting for-the doctor,

an airplane, a business appointment-has built in uncertainties,
which make it inevitable that they must spend a long time hang-
ing around, waiting, doing nothing.
On the other hand, they cannot usually afford to enjoy this
time. Because it is unpredictable, they must hang at the very
door. Since they never know exactly when their turn will come,
they cannot even take a stroll or sit outside. They must stay in
the narrow confine of the waiting room, waiting their turn. But
this, of course, is an extremely demoralizing situation: nobody
wants to wait at somebody else's beck and call. Kafka's greatest
works, The Castle and The Trial, both deal almost entirely with
the way this kind of atmosphere destroys a man.
The classic "waiting room" does nothing to resolve this
problem. A tight dreary little room, with people staring at each
other, fidgeting, a magazine or two to flip-this is the very
situation which creates the conflict. Evidence for the deadening
effect of this situation comes from Scott Briar ("Welfare From
Below: Recipients' Views of the Public Welfare System," in
Jacobus Tenbroek, ed., The Law and the Poor, San Francisco:
Chandler Publishing Company, I 966, p. 5 z). We all know that
time seems to pass more slowly when we are bored or anxious or
restless. Briar found that people waiting in welfare agencies con-
sistently thought they had been waiting for longer than they really
had. Some thought they had been wating four times as Jong.
The fundamental problem then, is this. How can the people
 I 50 A PLACE TO WAIT

who are waiting, spend their time wholeheartedly-live the

hours or minutes while they wait, as fully as the other hours of
their day-and yet still be on hand, whenever the event or the
person they are waiting for is ready!
It can be done best when the waiting is fused with some other
activity: an activity that draws in other people who are not there
essentially to wait-a cafe, pool tables, tables, a reading room,
where the activities and the sears around them are within earshot
of the signal that the interviewer (or the plane, or whatever) is
ready. For example, the Pediatrics Clinic at San Francisco
General Hospital built a small playground beside the entrance, to
serve as a waiting area for children and a play area for the
neighborhood.

Waiting room at t!te pediatrics clinic.

In another example we know, a horseshoe pit was built along-

side a terrace where people came to wait for appointments. The
people waiting inevitably started pitching horseshoes, others
joined in, people lefr as their appointments came up-there was
an easy flow between the horseshoe pit, the terrace, and the
offices.
Waiting can also be a situation where the person waiting finds
himself with free time, and, with the support of the surroundings,
is able to draw into himself, become still, meditative-quite the
opposite of the activity described above.
The right atmosphere will come naturally if the waiting area
provides some places that are quiet, protected, and do not draw
out the anxiety of the wait. Some examples: a seat near a bus
 BUILDINGS

stop, under a tree, protected from the street; a window seat that
looks down upon a street scene below; a protected seat in a
garden, a swing or a hammock; a dark place and a glass of beer,
far enough away from passages so that a person is not always
looking up when someone comes or goes; a private seat by a fish
tank.
In summary, then, people who are waiting must be free to do
what they want. If they want to sit outside the interviewer's door,
they can. If they want to get up and take a stroll, or play a game
of pool, or have a cup of coffee, or watch other people, they can.
If they want to sit privately and fall into a daydream, they can.
And all this without having to fear that they are losing their
place in line.

Quiet waiting.

Therefore:

In places where people end up waiting (for a bus, for an

appointment, for a plane), create a situation which makes
the waiting positive. Fuse the waiting with some other
activity-newspaper, coffee, pool tables, horseshoes; some-
thing which draws people in who are not simply waiting.
And also the opposite: make a place which can draw a per-
son waiting into a reverie; quiet; a positive silence.

710
 I 50 A PLACE TO WAIT

activities where people meet ithin earshot

/ f some signal
'('" /}'>
::,

n
C
quiet corners for private waiting

The active part might have a window on the street--STREET

WINDOWS( 164)' WINDOW PLACE ( 180)' a cafe-STREET CAFE
(88), games, positive engagements with the people passing by-
OPENING TO THE STREET (165). The quiet part might have a
quiet garden seat-GARDEN SEAT ( l 76), a place for people to
doze-SLEEPING IN PUBLIC ( 94), perhaps a pond with fish in
it-STILL WATER ( 71). To the extent that this waiting space
is a room, or a group of rooms, it gets its detailed shape from
LIGHT ON TWO SIDESOF EVERY ROOM ( 159) and THE SHAPE OF
INDOORSPACE (191). , , ,

711
I 54 TEENAGER'S COTTAGE*
... in any house which has teenagers in it-THE FAMILY (75),
HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY (76)-it is necessary to give special
consideration to their rooms-A ROOM OF ONE's OWN ( I 4 I). If
possible, these rooms should be attached but separate, and made to
help create the possibility of later being ROOMSTo RENT ( I 5 3).

If a teenager's place in the home does not reflect his

need for a measure of independence, he will be locked m
conflict with his family.

In most family homes the rooms for children and adolescents

are essentiaUy the same. But when children become adolescents,
their relationship to the family changes considerably. They be-
come less and less dependent on the family; they take on greater
responsibilities; their life outside the home becomes richer, more
absorbing. Most of the time they want more independence; oc-
casionally they really need the family to fall back on; sometimes
they are terrified by the confusion within and around them. All
of this places new demands on the organization of the family
and, accordingly, on the organization of the house.
To really help a young person go through. this time, home life
must strike a subtle balance. It must offer tremendous oppor-
tunities for initiative and independence, as well as a constant sense
of support, no matter what happens. But American family life
never seems to strike this balance. The studies of adolescent
family life depict a time of endless petty conflict, tyranny, de-
linquency, and acquiescence. As a social process, adolescence, it
seems, is geared more to breaking the spirit of young boys and
girls, than to helping them find themselves in the world. (5ee, for
example, Jules Henry, Culture Against Man, New York: Random
House, 1963.)
In physical terms these problems boil down to this. A teenager
needs a place in the house that has more autonomy and character
and is more a base for independent action than a child's bed-
room or bed alcove. He needs a place from which he can come
 I 54 TEENAGER'S COTTAGE

and go as he pleases, a place within which his privacy is respected.

At the same time he needs the chance to establish a closeness with
his family that is more mutual and less strictly dependent than
ever before. What seems to be required is a cottage which, in its
organization and location, strikes the balance between a new
independence and new ties to the family.
The teenager's cottage might be made from the child's old
bedroom, the boy and his father knocking a door through the
wall and enlarging the room. It might be built from scratch,
with the intention that it later serve as a workshop, or a place
for grandfather to live out his life, or a room to rent. The cottage
might even be an entirely detached structure in the garden, but
in this case, a very strong connection to the main house is
essential: perhaps a short covered path from the cottage into the
main kitchen. Even in row housing, or apartments, it is possible to
give teenagers rooms with private entry.
Is the idea of the teenage cottage acceptable to parents? Silver-
stein interviewed I 2 mothers living in Foster City, a suburb of
San Francisco, and asked them whether they would like a teenage
cottage in their family. Their resistance to the idea revolved
around three objections:
I. The cottage would be useful for only a few years, and
would then stand empty.
2. The cottage would break up the family; it isolates the
teenager.
3. It gives the teenager too much freedom in his comings and
goings.
Silverstein then suggested three modifications, to meet these
objections:
To meet the first objection, make the space double as a work-
shop, guest room, studio, place for grandmother; and build it
with wood, so it can be modified easily with hand tools.
To meet the second objection, attach the cottage to the house,
but with its own entrance; attach the cottage to the house via a
short hall or vestibule or keep the cottage to the back of the lot,
behind the house.
To meet the third objection, place the cottage so that the
path from the room to the street passes through an important
communal part of the house-the kitchen, a courtyard.
 BUILDINGS

He discussed these modifications with the same twelve

mothers. Eleven of the twelve now felt that the modified version
had some merit, and was worth trying. This material is reported
by Murray Silverstein, in "The Boy's Room: Twelve Mothers
Respond to an Architectural Pattern," University of California,
Department of Architecture, December 1967.
Here are some possible variants containing these modifications.

Variations of teenager's cottage.

Among the Comanches, " ... the boy after puberty was
given a separate tepee in which he slept, entertained his friends,
and spent most of his time." (Abram Kardiner, Psychological
Frontiers of Society, New York: Columbia University Press, 1945,
p. 75 .)

Plan of a Yungur Compound, Africa; , is t!te master

bedroom; 3 is the daughter's hut; 4 is the son's hut.

And finally, from Simone De Beauvoir:

When I was twelve I had suffered through not having a private
retreat of my own at home. Leafing through Mon Journal I had
found a story about an English schoolgirl, and gazed enviously at
 I 54 TEENAGER'S COTTAGE

the colored illustration portraying her room. There was a desk, and
a divan, and shelves filled with books. Here, within these gaily
painted walls, she read and worked and drank tea, with no one
watching her-how envious I felt! For the first time ever I had
glimpsed a more fortunate way of life than my own. And now, at
long last, I too had a room to myself. My grandmother had stripped
her drawing room of all its armchairs, occasional tables, and knick-
knacks. I had bought some unpainted furniture, and my sister had
helped me to give it a coat of brown varnish. I had a table, two
chairs, a large chest which served both as a seat and as a hold-all,
shelves for my books. I papered the walls orange, and got a divan to
match. From my fifth-floor balcony I looked out over the Lion of
Belfort and the plane trees on the Rue Denfert-Rochereau. I kept
myself warm with an evil-smelling kerosene stove. Somehow its
stink seemed to protect my solitude, and I loved it. It was wonderful
to be able to shut my door and keep my daily life free of other
people's inquisitiveness. For a long time I remained indifferent to the
decor of my surroundings. Possibly because of that picture in Mon
Journal I preferred rooms that offered me a divan and bookshelves,
but I was prepared to put up with any sort of retreat in a pinch.
To have a door that I could shut was still the height of bliss for
me ... I was free to come and go as I pleased. I could get home
with the milk, read in bed all night, sleep till midday, shut myself
up for forty-eight hours at a stretch, or go out on the spur of the
moment ... my chief delight was in doing as I pleased. (Simone
De Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, New York: Lancer Books, 1966,
pp. 9-10.)
Therefore:

To mark a child's coming of age, transform his place

in the home into a kind of cottage that expresses in a
physical way the beginnings of independence. Keep the
cottage attached to the home, but make it a distinctly
visible bulge, far away from the master bedroom, with
its own private entrance, perhaps its own roof.

~cou,g,

~
path through
commons .,
separate entrance

727
 BUILDINGS

Arrange the cottage to contain a SITTING CIRCLE ( I 8 5) and a

BED ALCOVE ( I 88) but not a private bath and kitchen-sharing
these is essential: it allows the boy or girl to keep enough con-
nection with the family. Make it a place that can eventually be-
come a guest room, room to rent, workshop, and so on-ROOMS
TO RENT ( 153), HOME WORKSHOP ( 15 7). If it is on an upper
story, give it a separate private OPEN STAIR ( I 58). And for the
shape of the cottage and its construction, start with THE SHAPE
OF INDOOR SPACE ( 191) and STRUCTURE FOLLOWSSOCIALSPACES
(205) ....
155 OLD AGE COTTAGE**
... we have explained, in OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE ( 40), that
it is essential to have a balanced number of old people in every
neighborhood, partly centered around a communal place, but
largely strung out among the other houses of the neighborhood.
This pattern now defines the nature of the houses for old people
in more detail: both those which are a part of clusters and those
which are tucked, autonomously, between the larger houses. As
we shall see, it seems desirable that every family should have a
cottage like this, attached to it-THE FAMILY (75). Like ROOMS
TO RENT (153) and TEENAG!::R's COTfAGE (154), this cottage
can be rented out or used for other purposes in time of trouble.

Old people, especially when they are alone, face a ter-

rible dilemma. On the one hand, there are inescapable forces
pushing them toward independence: their children move
away; the neighborhood changes; their friends and wives
and husbands die. On the other hand, by the very nature of
aging, old people become dependent on simple conve-
niences, simple connections to the society about them.

This conflict is reflected often in their children's conflict. On

the one hand, children feel responsible for their parents, because,
of course, they sense their growing need for care and comfort. On
the other hand, as families are whittled down, parent-child con-
flicts become more acute, and few people can imagine actually
being able or willing to take care of their parents in their dotage.
The conflict can be partly resolved, if each house which houses
a nuclear family has, somewhere near it, a small cottage where
a grandparent can live, far enough away to be independent, and
yet close enough to feel some tie and to be cared for in a time of
trouble or approaching death.
But the conflict is more general. Even if we ignore, altogether,
the complexities of parent-child relationships, the fact is that most
old people face enormous difficulties as they grow older. The wel-

730
 I55 OLD AGE COTTAGE

fare state tries to replace the comfort of the extended family

with payments-social security or pensions. This income is
always tiny; and inflation makes it worse. In the United States,
one-quarter of the population over 65 lives on less than $4000 a
year. Many of the old people in our society are forced to live in
miserable tiny rooms, way in the back of some run-down old
folks hotel. They cannnot have a decent house, because there are
no decent tiny houses compatible with a small income and re-
duced activity.
This second conflict, between the need for someplace really
small and modest and the need for social contact, a view of pass-
ing people, someone to nod to, a place in the sun, can also be
resolved, like the first conflict, by cottages. It can be resolved,
if there are many tiny cottages, dotted among the houses of
communities and always strung along pedestrian paths-tiny
enough to be really cheap.
Therefore:

Build small cottages specifically for old people. Build

some of them on the land of larger houses, for a grand-
parent; build others on individual lots, much smaller
than ordinary lots. In all cases, place these cottages at
ground level, right on the street, where people are walk-
ing by, and close to neighborhood services and common
land.

street

73 1
 BUILDINGS

Perhaps the most important part of an old age cottage is the

front porch and front door bench outside the door, right on
the street-PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET ( 140), FRONT
DOOR BENCH (242); for the rest, arrange the cottage pretty much
according to the layout of any HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON (78); make
provisions for SETTLED WORK ( I 56) ; and give the cottage a
STREET WINDOW ( I 64). And for the shape of the cottage start
with THE SHAPE OF INDOOR Sl'ACE ( 191) and STRUCTURE FOL-
LOWSSOCIALSPACES ( 205) ....

73 2
I 57 HOME WORKSHOP

737
... at the center of each HOUSE CL USER ( 3 7) and in YOUR
OWN HOME (79) there needs to be one room or outbuilding, which
is freely attached and accessible from the outside. This is the
workshop. The following pattern tells us how important work-
shops are, how widely they ought to be scattered, how omni-
present, and when they are built, how easy to reach, and how
public they should always be. It helps to reinforce the patterns of
SCATTERED WORK ( 9), NETWORK OF LEARNING ( 18), and MEN
AND WOMEN (27).

❖ ❖ ❖

As the decentralization of work becomes more and more

effective, the workshop in the home grows and grows in
importance.

We have explained in SCATTERED WORK (9), NETWORK OF

LEARNING (18), MEN AND WOMEN (27), SELF-GOVERNING
WORKSHOPS AND OFFICES (So), and other patterns that we
imagine a society in which work and family are far more inter-
mingled than today; a society in which people-businessmen,
artists, craftsmen, shopkeepers, professionals-work for themselves,
alone and in small groups, with much more relation to their im-
mediate surroundings than they have today.
In such a society, the home workshop becomes far more than a
basement or a garage hobby shop. It becomes an integral part of
every house; as central to the house's function as the kitchen or
the bedrooms. And we believe its most important characteristic
is its relationship to the public street. For most of us, work life
is relatively public. Certainly, compared to the privacy of the
hearth, it is a public affair. Even where the public relationship is
slight, there is something to be gained, both for the worker and
the community, by enlarging the connection between the two.
In the case of the home workshop, the public nature of the
work is especially valuable. It brings the workshop out of the
realm of backyard hobbies and into the public domain. The
people working there have a view of the street; they are exposed

738
 I 57 HOME WORKSHOP

to the people passing by. And the people passing learn something
about the nature of the community. The children especially are
enlivened by this contact. And according to the nature of the
work, the public connection takes the form of a shopfront, a
driveway for loading and unloading materials, a work bench in
the open, a small meeting room . . .
We therefore advocate provision for a substantial workshop
with all the character of a real workplace and some degree of
connection to the public street: at least a glancing connection
so that people can see in and out; and perhaps a full connection,
like an open shop front.
Therefore:

Make a place in the home, where substantial work can

be done; not just a hobby, but a job. Change the zoning
laws to encourage modest, quiet work operations to locate
in neighborhoods. Give the workshop perhaps a few
hundred square feet; and locate it so it can be seen from
the street and the owner can hang out a shingle.

workshop~

U~ . . ~opening to the street

Give the workshop a corner where it is especially nice to work

-LIGHT ON TWO SIDES( l 59), WORKSPACEENCLOSURE ( I 8 3) j a
strong connection to the street-OPENING TO THE STREET (165),
WINDOWSOVERLOOKINGLIFE ( 192); perhaps a place to work in
the sun on warm days-SUNNY PLACE ( I 61). For the shape of
the workshop and its construction, start with THE SHAPE OF
INDOORSPACE ( l 9 I) ....

739
OPEN STAIRS*

740
... most of the last patterns-ROOMS TO RENT ( 153), TEEN-
AGER'S COTTAGE ( I 54), SETTLED WORK ( I 56), HOME WORKSHOP
( I 5 7 )-can be upstairs, provided that they have direct connec-
tions to the street. Far more generally, it is true that many of the
households, public services, and workgroups given by earlier
patterns can be successful when they lie upstairs, only if they are
given direct connections to the street. For instance, in a work
community SELF-GOVERNING WORKSHOPS AND OFFICES (So),
SMALL SERVICESWITHOUT RED TAPE (8 I), SMALL WORK GROUPS
( I 48) all require direct access to the public street when they are
on the upper storys of a building. And in the individual house-
holds-HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY ( 76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE
(77), HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON (78) also need direct connections
to the street, so people do not need to go through lower floors to
get to them. This pattern describes the open stairs which may be
used to form these many individual connections to the street.
They play a major role in helping to create PEDESTRIANSTREETS
( I 00).

Internal staircases reduce the connection between upper

stories and the life of the street to such an extent that they
can do enormous social damage.

The simple fact of the matter is that an apartment on the

second floor of a building is wonderful when it has a direct stair
to the street, and much less wonderful when it is merely one of
several apartments served by an internal stair. The following,
perhaps rather laborious discussion, is our effort to explain this
vital and commonplace intuition.
In a traditional culture where buildings are built incrementally,
outdoor stairs leading to upper stories are common. And half "out-
door" stairs-protected by walls and roofs, but nonetheless open
to the street-are also common.

741
 BUILDINGS

The beauty of open stairs.

By contrast, in industrialized, authoritarian societies most

stairs are indoor stairs. The access to these stairs is from internal
lobbies and corridors; the upper stories are cut off from direct
access to the life of the street.

T !tis is not an open stair-don't be fooled.

This difference is not an incidental by-product of fire laws or

construction techniques. It is fundamen ta! to the difference be-
tween a free anarchical society, in which there is a voluntary
exchange of ideas between equals, and a highly centralized
authoritarian society, in which most individuals are subservient
to large government and business organizations.
In effect we are saying that a centralized entrance, which
funnels everyone in a building through it, has in its nature the
trappings of control; while the pattern of many open stairs,
leading off the public streets, direct to private doors, has in its
nature the fact of independence, free comings and goings.

74 2
 158 OPEN STAIRS

We can see this most easily in the cases where the centralized
door is, without question, a source of social control. In work-
places with a central entrance and a time-clock, workers punch
in and out, and they have to make excuses when they are leaving
at a time that is not normal. In some kinds of student housing,
people are asked to sign in and out; and if they are not back by
"lock-out" time, they are in trouble.
Then there are cases where the control is more subtle. In an
apartment house or a workplace where everyone is free to come or
go as he pleases it is not uncommon for the main door to be kept
locked. Of course the residents have a key to the building; but
their friends do not. When the front door is locked-after normal
hours, say-they are effectively cut off from the spontaneous
"dropping in" that can occur freely only where all paths arc
public right up to the thresholds of private territory.
Then there is the still more subtle fact that, even where the
centralized entrance carries with it no explicit policy of social
control-let us say that it is a door that is always open-it still
has an uneasy feeling about it for people who cherish basic
liberties. The single, centralized entrance is the precise pattern
that a tyrant would propose who wanted to control people's
comings and goings. It makes one uneasy to live with such a form,
even where the social policy is relatively free.
This may very easily sound paranoid. But the point is this:
socially, a libertarian society tries to build for itself structures
which cannot easily be controlled by one person or one group "at
the helm." It tries to decentralize social structures so that there
are many centers, and no one group can come to have excessive
control.
A physical environment which supports the same libertarian
ideal will certainly put a premium on structures that allow people
freedom to come and go as they please. And it will try to protect
this right by building it into the very ground plan of buildings
and cities. When we feel uneasy in a building that is spatially
over-centralized and authoritarian, it is because we feel unpro-
tected in this way; we feel that one of our basic rights is poten-
tially vulnerable and is not being fully affirmed by the physical
structure of the environment.
Open stairs which act as extensions of the public world and
which reach up to the very threshold of each household's and each

743
 BUILDINGS

workgroup's own space solve this problem. These spaces are then
connected directly to the world at large. People on the street
recognize each entry as the domain of real people-not the
domain of corporations and institutions, which have the actual
or potential power to tyrannize.
Therefore:

Do away, as far as possible, with internal staircases in

institutions. Connect all autonomous households, public
services, and workgroups on the upper floors of build-
ings directly to the ground. Do this by creating open stairs
which are approached directly from the street. Keep the
stair roofed or unroofed, according to climate, but at all
events leave the stair open at ground level, without a door,
so that the stair is functionally a continuation of the street.
And build no upstairs corridors. Instead, make open land-
ings or an open arcade where upstairs units share a single
stair.

,"', ..~, ;r; _ pu~ic open stairs

~
~

Where the stair comes down to the ground, make an entrance

which helps to repair the family of entrances that exist already
on the street-FAMILY OF ENTRANCES(102); make the landings
and the top of the stair, where it reaches the roof, into gardens
where things can grow and where people can sit in the sun-
ROOF GARDEN ( 1 1 8), SUNNY PLACE ( 161). Remember STAIR
SEATS( 1 25), and build the stair according to STAIRCASEVOLUME
(195) ....

744
prepare to knit the inside of the building to the out-
side, by treating the edge between the two as a
place in its own right, and making human details
there;

I 59. LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM

160. BUILDING EDGE

161. SUNNY PLACE

162. NORTH FACE

163. OUTDOOR ROOM

I 64. STREET WINDOWS

165. OPENING TO THE STREET

166. GALLERY SURROUND

I 67. SIX-FOOT BALCONY

168. CONNECTION TO THE EARTH

745
I 59 LIGHT ON TWO SIDES
OF EVERY ROOM**
... once the building's major rooms are in pos1t1on, we have
to fix its actual shape: and this we do essentially with the i:,osition
of the edge. The edge has got its rough position already from
the overall form of the building-WINGS OF LIGHT ( 107), POSI-
TIVE OUTDOORSPACE (106), LONG THIN HOUSE (109), CASCADE
OF ROOFS(116). This pattern now completes the work of WINGS
oF LICHT ( 107), by placing each individual room exactly where
it needs to be to get the light. It forms the exact line of the
building edge, according to the position of these individual
rooms. The next pattern starts to shape the edge.

When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to

those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the
rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty.

This pattern, perhaps more than any other single pattern,

determines the success or failure of a room. The arrangement of
daylight in a room, and the presence of windows on two sides, is
fundamental. If you build a room with light on one side only, you
can be almost certain that you are wasting your money. People
will stay out of that room if they can possibly avoid it. Of course,
if all the rooms are lit from one side only, people will have to use
them. But we can be fairly sure that they are subtly uncomfortable
there, always wishing they weren't there, wanting to leave-just
because we are so sure of what people do when they do have the
choice.
Our experiments on this matter have been rather informal and
drawn out over several years. We have been aware of the idea for
some time-as have many builders. (We have even heard that
"light on two sides" was a tenet of the old Beaux Arts design
tradition.) In any case, our experiments were simple: over and
over again, in one building after another, wherever we happened
to find ourselves, we would check to see if the pattern held.
Were people in fact avoiding rooms lit only on one side, pre-
ferring the two-sided rooms-what did they think about it/

747
 BUILDINGS

We have gone through this with our friends, in offices, in

many homes-and overwhelmingly the two-sided pattern seems
significant. People are aware, or half-aware of the pattern-they
understand exactly what we mean.

With ligl,t on two sides .... and without

If this evidence seems too haphazard, please try these observa-

tions yourself. Bear the pattern in mind, and examine all the
buildings you come across in your daily life. We believe that you
will find, as we have done, that those rooms you intuitively
recognize as pleasant, friendly rooms have the pattern; and those
you intuitively reject as unfriendly, unpleasant, are the ones
which do not have the pattern. ln short, this one pattern alone, is
able to distinguish good rooms from unpleasant ones.
The importance of this pattern lies partly in the social atmo-
sphere it creates in the room. Rooms lit on two sides, with natural
light, create less glare around people and objects; this lets us see
things more intricately; and most important, it allows us to read in
detail the minute expressions that flash across people's faces, the
motion of their hands ... and thereby understand, more
clearly, the meaning they are after. The light on two sides allows
people to understand each other.
In a room lit on only one side, the light gradient on the walls
and floors inside the room is very steep, so that the part furthest
from the window is uncomfortably dark, compared with the part
near the window. Even worse, since there is little reflected light
on the room's inner surfaces, the interior wall immediately next
to the window is usually dark, creating discomfort and glare
against this light. In rooms lit on one side, the glare which sur-
 I 59 LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM

rounds people's faces prevents people from understanding one

another.
Although this glare may be somewhat reduced by supplemen-
tary artificial lighting, and by well-designed window reveals, the
most simple and most basic way of overcoming glare, is to give
every room two windows. The light from each window illuminates
the wall surfaces just inside the other window, thus reducing the
contrast between those walls and the sky outside. For details and
illustrations, see R. G. Hopkinson, Architectural Physics: Light-
ing, London: Building Research Station, 1963, pp. 29, 103.
A supreme example of the complete neglect of this pattern is
Le Corbusier's Marseilles Block apartments. Each apartment unit
is very long and relatively narrow, and gets all its light from one
end, the narrow end. The rooms are very bright just at the
windows and dark everywhere else. And, as a result, the glare
created by the light-dark contrast around the windows is very
disturbing.
In a small building, it is easy to give every room light on two
sides: one room in each of the four corners of a house does it
automatically.
In a slightly larger building, it is necessary to wrinkle the
edge, turn corners, to get the same effect. Juxtaposition of large
rooms and small, helps also.

Wrinkle the edge.

In an even larger building, it may be necessary to build in

some sort of systematic widening· in the plan or to convolute the
edge still further, to get light on two sides for every room.

749
 BUILDINGS

But of course, no matter how clever we are with the plan, no

matter how carefully we convolute the building edge, sometimes
it is just impossible. In these cases, the rooms can get the effect
of light on two sides under two conditions. They can get it, if
the room is very shallow-not more than about eight feet deep
-with at least two windows side by side. The light bounces off
the back wall, and bounces sideways between the two windows,
so that the light still has the glare-free character of light on two
sides.
And finally, if a room simply has to be more than eight feet
deep, but cannot have light from two sides-then the problem can
be solved by making the ceiling very high, by painting the walls
very white, and by putting great high windows in the wall, set
into very deep reveals, deep enough to offset the glare. Eliza-
bethan dining halls and living rooms in Georgian mansions were
often built like this. Remember, though, that it is very hard to
make it work.
Therefore:

Locate each room so that it has outdoor space outside it

on at least two sides, and then place windows in these out-
door walls so that natural light falls into every room from
more than one direction.

each room has light on two sides

\/,'

'i,'

❖ ❖ ❖

Don't let this pattern make your plans too wild-otherwise

you will destroy the simplicity of POSITIVEOUTDOORSPACE( 106),
and you will have a terrible time roofing the building-ROOF

750
 I 59 LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM

LAYOUT ( 209). Remember that it is possible to keep the essence

of the pattern with windows on one side, if the room is unusually
high, if it is shallow compared with the length of the window
wall, the windows large, the walls of the room white, and massive
deep reveals on the windows to make quite certain that the big
windows, bright against the sky, do not create glare.
Place the individual windows to look onto something beauti-
ful-WINDOWS OVERLOOKINGLJFE ( I 92), NATURAL DOORS AND
WINDOWS( 221); and make one of the windows in the room a
special one, so that a place gathers itself around it-WINDOW
PLACE (180). Use DEEP REVEALS (223) and F!L'rERED LIGHT
( 23 8) ....

75 1
I7 I TREE PLACES**

797
. . . trees are precious. Keep them. Leave them in tact. If you
have followed SITE REPAlR ( 104), you have already taken care to
leave the trees intact and undisturbed by new construction; you
may have planted FRUIT TREES ( I 70) ; and you may perhaps
also have other additional trees in mind. This pattern re-
emphasizes the importance of leaving trees intact, and shows
you how to plant them, and care for them, and use them, in
such a way that the spaces which they form are useful as exten-
sions of the building.

When trees are planted or pruned without regard for the

special places they can create, they are as good as dead for
the people who need them.

Trees have a very deep and crucial meaning to human beings.

The significance of old trees is archetypal; in our dreams very
often they stand for the wholeness of personality: "Since ...
psychic growth cannot be brought about by a conscious effort of
will power, but happens involuntarily and naturally, it is in
dreams frequently symbolized by the tree, whose slow, powerful
involuntary growth fulfills a definite pattern." (M. L. van Franz,
"The process of individuation," in C. G. Jung, Man and his
Symbols, New York: Doubleday, 1964, pp. 161, 163-64.)
There is even indication that trees, along with houses and
other people, constitute one of the three most basic parts of
the human environment. The House-Tree-Person Technique,
developed by Psychologist John Buck, takes the drawings a per-
son makes of each of these three "wholes" as a basis for pro-
jective tests. The mere fact that trees are considered as full of
meaning, as houses and people, is, alone, a very powerful indica-
tion of their importance (V. J. Bicliauskas, The H-T-P Research
Review, 1965 Edition, Western Psychological Services, Los
Angeles, California, 1965; and Isaac Jolles, Catalog for the
Qualitative Interpretation of the House-Tree-Person, Los Angeles,
California: Western Psychological Services, 1964, pp. 75-97).
 I7I TREE PLACES

But for the most part, the trees that are being planted and
transplanted in cities and suburbs today do not satisfy people's
craving for trees. They will never come to provide a sense of
beauty and peace, because they are being set down and built
around without regard for the places they create.
The trees that people love create special social places: places to
be in, and pass through, places you can dream about, and places
you can draw. Trees have the potential to create various kinds of
social places: an umbrella-where a single, low-sprawling tree
like an oak defines an outdoor room; a pair-where two trees
form a gateway; a grove-where several trees cluster together; a
square-where they enclose an open space; and an avenue-
where a double row of trees, their crowns touching, line a path or
street. It is only when a tree's potential to form places is realized
that the real presence and meaning of the tree is felt.
The trees that are being set down nowadays have nothing of
this character-they are in tubs on parking lots and along streets,
in specially "landscaped areas" that you can see but cannot get
to. They do not form places in any sense of the word-and so
they mean nothing to people.
Now, there is a great danger that a person who has read this
argument so far, may misinterpret it to mean that trees should
be "used" instrumentally for the good of people. And there is,
unfortunately, a strong tendency in cities today to do just that
-to treat trees instrumentally, as means to our own pleasure.
But our argument says just the opposite. Trees in a city, round
a building, in a park, or in a garden are not in the forest. They
need attention. As soon as we decide to have trees in a city, we
must recognize that the tree becomes a different sort of ecological
being. For instance, in a forest, trees grow in positions favorable to
them: their density, sunlight, wind, moisture are all chosen by
the process of selection. But in a city, a tree grows where it is
planted, and it will not survive unless it is most carefully tended
-pruned, watched, cared for when its bark gets pierced ...
But now we come to a very subtle interaction. The trees will
not get tended unless the places where they grow are Ii ked and
used by people. If they are randomly planted in some garden or
in the shrubbery of some park, they are not near enough to

799
 BUILDINGS

people to make people aware of them; and this in turn makes it

unlikely that they will get the care they need.
So, finally, we see the nature of the complex interactive sym-
biosis between trees and people.
I. First, people need trees-for the reasons given.
2. But when people plant trees, the trees need care (unlike
the forest trees).
3. The trees won't get the care they need unless they are in
places people like.
4. And this in turn requires that the trees form social spaces.
5. Once the trees form social spaces, they are able to grow
naturally.
So we see, by a curious twist of circumstances, trees m c1t1cs
can only grow well, and in a fashion true to their own nature,
when they cooperate with people and help to form spaces which
the people need.
Therefore:

If you are planting trees, plant them according to their

nature, to form enclosures, avenues, squares, groves, and
single spreading trees toward the middle of open spaces.
And shape the nearby buildings in response to trees, so that
the trees themselves, and the trees and buildings togetheF,
form places which people can use.

~\
umbrella grove avenue
❖ ❖ ❖

Make the trees form "rooms" and spaces, avenues, and squares,
and groves, by placing trellises between the trees, and walks, and
seats under the trees themselves-ouTDOOR ROOM ( I 63), TREL-
LISED WALK (174), GARDENSEAT (176), SEATSPOTS(241). One
of the nicest ways to make a place beside a tree is to build a
low wall, which protects the roots and makes a seat-SITTING
WALL (243) ....

800
I 72 GARDEN GROWING WILD**

801
, .. with terracing in place and trees taken care of-TERRACED
SLOPE (169), FRUIT TREES (170), TREE PLACES (171), we
come to the garden itself-to the ground and plants. In short, we
must decide what kind of garden to have, what kind of plants to
grow, what style of gardening is compatible with both artifice and
nature.

❖ ❖ ❖

A garden which grows true to its own laws 1s not a

wilderness, yet not entirely artificial either.

Many gardens are formal and artificial. The flower beds are
trimmed like table cloths or painted designs. The lawns are
clipped like perfect plastic fur. The paths are clean, like new
polished asphalt. The furniture is new and clean, fresh from
the department store.
These gardens have none of the quality which brings a garden
to life-the quality of a wilderness, tamed, still wild, but culti-
vated enough to be in harmony with the buildings which sur-
round it and the people who move in it. This balance of wilder-
ness and cultivation reached a high point in the oldest English
gardens.
In these gardens things are arranged so that the natural
processes which come into being will maintain the condition of
the garden and not degrade it. For example, mosses and grasses
will grow between paving stones. In a sensible and natural gar-
den, the garden is arranged so that this process enhances the
garden and does not threaten it. In an unnatural garden these
kinds of small events have constantly to be "looked after"-the
gardener must constantly try to control and eradicate the processes
of seeding, weeds, the spread of roots, the growth of grass.
In the garden growing wild the plants are chosen, and the
boundaries placed, in such a way that the growth of things regu-
lates itself. It does not need to be regulated by control. But it
does not grow fiercely and undermine the ways in which it is
planted. Natural wild plants, for example, are planted among

802
 172 GARDEN GROWING WILD

flowers and grass, so that there is no room for so-called weeds to

fill the empty spaces and then need weeding. Natural stone edges
form the boundaries of grass so that there is no need to chop
the turf and clip the edge every few weeks. Rocks and stones are
placed where there are changes of level. And there are small rock
plants placed between the stones, so that once again there is no
room for weeds to grow.
A garden growing wild is healthier, more capable of stable
growth, than the more clipped and artificial garden. The garden
can be left alone, it will not go to ruin in one or two seasons.
And for the people too, the garden growing wild creates a
more profound experience. The gardener is in the position of a
good doctor, watching nature take its course, occasionally taking
action, pruning, pulJing out some species, only to give the
garden more room to grow and become itself. By contrast, the
gardens that have to be tended obsessively, enslave a person to
them; you cannot learn from them in quite the same way.
Therefore:

Grow grasses, mosses, bushes, flowers, and trees in a

way which comes close to the way that they occur in
nature: intermingled, without barriers between them, with-
out bare earth, without formal flower beds, and with all
the boundaries and edges made in rough stone and brick
and wood which become a part of the natural growth.
 BUILDINGS

❖ ❖ ❖

Include no formal elements, except where something is spe-

cifically called for by function-like a greenhouse-GREEN-
HOUSE (175), a quiet seat-GARDEN SEAT (176), some water-
STILL WATER( 71), or flowers placed just where people can touch
them and smell them-RAISED FLOWERS(245) ....
173 GARDEN WALL*

805
 rn private houses, both the HALF-HIDDEN GARDEN (III)
and the PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET (140) require walls.
More generally, not only private gardens, but public gardens
too, and even small parks and greens-QUIET BACKS ( 5 9), AC-
CESSIBLEGREEN ( 60), need some kind of enclosure round them,
to make them as beautiful and quiet as possible.

❖ ❖ ❖

Gardens and small public parks don't give enough relief

from noise unless they are well protected.

People need contact with trees and plants and water. In some
way, which is hard to express, people are able to be more whole in
the presence of nature, are able to go deeper into themselves, and
are somehow able to draw sustaining energy from the life of plants
and trees and water.
In a city, gardens and small parks try to solve this problem;
but they are usually so close to traffic, noise, and buildings that
the impact of nature is entirely lost. To be truly useful, in the
deepest psychological sense, they must allow the people in them
to be in touch with nature-and must be shielded from the sight
and sound of passing traffic, city noises, and buildings. This re-
quires walls, substantial high walls, and dense planting all around
the garden.
In those few cases where there are small walled gardens in a
city, open to the public-Alhambra, Copenhagen Royal Library
Garden-these gardens almost always become famous. People
understand and value the peace which they create .

. . . your garden or park wall of brick ... has indeed often an

unkind look on the outside, but there is more modesty in it than un-
kindness. It generally means, not that the builder of it wants to
shut you out from the view of his garden, but from the view of
himself: it is a frank statement that as he needs a certain portion
of time to himself, so he needs a certain portion of ground to
himself, and must not be stared at when he digs there in his shirt-

806
 173 GARDEN WALL

,,_~..;,,• ."+ • •• ~I

r,.,..
,•

Walled gardens-Mughal.

sleeves, or plays at leapfrog with his boys from school, or talks

over old times with his wife, walking up and down in the
evening- sunshine. Besides, the brick wall has good practical service
in it, and shelters you from the east wind, and ripens your
peaches and nectarines, and glows in autumn like a sunny bank.
And, moreover, yom brick wall, if you build it properly, so that
it shall stand long enough, is a beautiful thing when it is old, and
has assumed its grave purple red, touched with mossy green ....
(John Ruskin, T l,e Two Paths, New York: Dutton, 1907, pp. 202-
205 .)

This pattern applies to :ill private gardens and to small parks

in cities. We are not convinced that it applies to all small parks-
but it is hard to differentiate precisely between the places where
a walled garden is desirable and the places where it is not. There
arc definitely situations where a small park, and perhaps even a
small garden that is open to the rush of life around it, is just
right. However, there are far more parks and gardens left open,
that need to be walled, than vice versa, so we emphasize the
walled condition.
Therefore:

Form some kind of enclosure to protect the interior of

a quiet garden from the sights and sounds of passing
traffic. If it is a large garden or a park, the enclosure can
 BUILDINGS

be soft, can include bushes, trees, slopes, and so on. The

smaller the garden, however, the harder and more definite
the enclosure must become. In a very small garden, form
the enclosure with buildings or walls; even hedges and
fences will not be enough to keep out sound.

hedge

1-=
trelli~:
,~
(:,
wall

building

❖ ❖ ❖

Use the garden wall to help form pos1t1ve outdoor space-

Posn1vE OUTDOORSPACE ( 106) ; but pierce it with balustrades
and windows to make connections between garden and street, or
garden and garden-PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET ( 140),
TRELLISED WALK (174), HALF-OPEN WALL (193), and above all,
give it openings to make views into other larger and more distant
spaces-HIERARCHY OF OPEN SPACE( 114), ZEN VIEW ( 134) ....

808
I 74 TRELLISED WALK**
... suppose the main spots of the garden have been defined-
OUTDOORROOM (163), TREE PLACES (171), GREENHOUSE (175),
FRUIT TREES ( I 70). Now, where there is a special need to em-
phasize a path-PATHS AND GOALS( I 20 )-or, even more impor-
tant, where the edges between two parts of a garden need to be
marked without making a wall, an open trellised walk which can
enclose space, is required. Above all, these trellised walks help to
form the POSITIVE OUTDOORSPACES ( ro6) in a garden or a park;
and may perhaps help to form an ENTRANCE TRANSITION(II 2).

❖ ❖ ❖

Trellised walks have their own special beauty. They are

so unique, so different from other ways of shaping a path,
that they are almost archetypal.

In PATH SHAPE ( I 2 I), we have described the need for outdoor

paths to have a shape, like rooms. In POSITIVE OUTDOORSPACE
( I 06), we have explained the need for larger outdoor areas to
have positive shape. A trellised walk does both. It makes it possi-
ble to implement both these patterns at the same time-simply
and elegantly. But it does it in such a fundamental way that we
have decided to treat it as a separate pattern; and we shall try
to define the places where a trellised structure over a path is
appropriate.
1. Use it to emphasize the path it covers, and to set off one
part of the path as a special section of a longer path in order to
make it an especially nice and inviting place to walk.

A trellis gives shape to an outdoor area.

810
 I 74 TRELLISED WALK

2. Since the trellised path creates enclosure around the spaces

which it bounds, use it to create a virtual wall to define an out-
door space. For example, a trellised walk can form an enormous
outdoor room by surrounding, or partially surrounding, a garden.
Therefore:

Where paths need special protection or where they need

some intimacy, build a trellis over the path and plant it
with climbing Rowers. Use the trellis to help shape the
outdoor spaces on either side of it.

❖ ❖ ❖

Think about the columns that support the trellis as them-

selves capable of creating places-seats, bird feeders-COLUMN
PLACES (226). Pave the path with loosely set stones-PAVING
WITH CRACKSBETWEEN THE STONES( 24 7). Use climbing plants
and a fine trellis work to create the special quality of soft, filtered
light underneath the trellis-FILTERED LIGHT (238), CLIMBING
PLANTS( 246) ... ,

8I I
I 75 GREENHOUSE

8I 2
... to keep a garden alive, it is almost essential that there be a
"workshop"-a kind of halfway house between the garden and
the house itself, where seedlings grow, and where, in temperate
climates, plants can grow in spite of cold. In a HOUSE CLUSTER
(37) or a WORK COMMUNITY (41), this workshop makes an essen-
tial contribution to the COMMON LAND (67).

Many efforts are being made to harness solar energy by

converting it into hot water or electric power. And yet the
easiest way to harness solar energy is the most obvious and
the oldest: namely, to trap the heat inside a greenhouse
and use it for growing flowers and vegetables.

Imagine a simple greenhouse, attached to a living room, turned

to the winter sun, and .filled with shelves for flowers and vege-
tables. It has an entrance from the house-so you can go into it
and use it in the winter without going outdoors. And it has an
entrance from the garden-so you can use it as a workshop while
you are out in the garden and not have to walk through the
house.
This greenhouse then becomes a wonderful place: a source of
life, a place where flowers can be grown as part of the life of the
house. The classic conservatory was a natural part of countless
houses in the temperate climates.
For someone who has not experienced a greenhouse as an ex-
tension of the house, it may be hard to recognize how funda-
mental it becomes. It is a world unto itself, as definite and won-
derful as fire or water, and it provides an experience which can
hardly be matched by any other pattern. Hewitt Ryan, the
psychiatrist for whom we built the clinic in Modesto with the
help of this pattern language, thought greenhouses so essential
that he included one as a basic part of the clinic: a place beside
the common area, where people could reintegrate themselves by
growing seedlings that would be gradually transplanted to form
gardens for the clinic.

813
 BUILDINGS

Several recent "energy-systems" inspired by the ecology move-

ment ha\·e sought to make grcenh.onses a fundamental part of
human settlements. For example, Grahame Gaines' self-contained
eco-house includes a large greenhouse as a source of heat and
food. (See Lonrlon Observer, October I 9i2,) And Chahroudi's
Grow Hole-a glazed sunken pit for growing vegetables in
winter-is another kind of greenhonse (Progressive Architecture,
July I9iO, p. 85).
Therefore:

In temperate climates, build a greenhouse as part of

your house or office, so that it is both a "room" of the
house which can be reached directly without going out-
doors and a part of the garden which can be reached
directly from the garden .

connected greenhouse
.4"
RB-
--··--

Place the greenhonse so that it has easy access to the VEGE-

TABLE GARDEN (Iii) and the COMPOST ( I i8). Arrange its in-
terior so that it is surrounded with WAIST-HIGH SHELVES (201)
and plenty of storage space-BULK STORAGE( r 4 5) ; perhaps give
it a special seat, where it is possible to sit comfortably-GARDEN
SEAT ( I 76), WINDOWPLACE ( I 80) ....
I 76 GARDEN SEAT

8I 5
... with the character of the garden fixed-GARDEN GROWING
WILD ( I 7 2), we consider the special corners which make the
garden valuable and somewhat secret. Of these, the most impor-
tant is the SUNNY PLACE ( I 6 I), which has already been de-
scribed, because it is so fundamental to the building. Now we
add to this another seat, more private, where a person can go to
sit and think and dream.

Somewhere in every garden, there must be at least one

spot, a quiet garden seat, in which a person-or two
people-can reach into themselves and be in touch with
nothing else but nature.

Throughout the patterns in this pattern language we have said,

over and again, how very essential it is to give ourselves environ-
ments in which we can be in touch with the nature we have
sprung from-see especially CITY COUNTRY FINGERS (3) and
QUIET BACKS(59). But among all the various statements of this
fact there is not one so far which puts this need right in our own
houses, as close to us as fire and food.
Wordsworth built his entire politics, as a poet, around the
fact that tranquility in nature was a basic right to which every-
one was entitled. He wanted to integrate the need for solitude-
in-nature with city living. He imagined people literally stepping
off busy streets and renewing themselves in private gardens-
every day. And now many of us have come to learn that without
such a place life in a city is impossible. There is so much activ:ty,
days are so easily filled with jobs, family, friends, things to do-
that time alone is rare. And the more we live without the habit of
stillness, the more we tie ourselves to this active life, the stranger
and more disquieting the experience of stillness and solitude
becomes: city people are notoriously busy-busy, and cannot be
alone, without "input," for a moment.
It is in this context that we propose the isolated garden seat:
a place hidden in the garden where one or two people can sit
alone, undisturbed, near growing things. It may be on a roof
 176 GARDEN SEAT

top, on the ground, perhaps even half-sunken in an embankment.

There are literally hundreds of old books about gardens which
testify to this pattern. One is Hildegarde Hawthorne's The Lure
of the Garden, New York: The Century Co., 191 I. We quote
from a passage describing the special kind of small talk that is
drawn out of people by quiet garden seats:
Perhaps, of all the various forms of gossip overheard by the
garden, the loveliest is that between a young and an old person who
are friends. Real friendship between the generations is rare, but
when it exists it is of the finest. That youth is fortunate who can
pour his perplexities into the ear of an older man or woman, and
who knows a comradeship and an understanding exceeding in beauty
the facile friendships created by like interests and common pur-
suits; and fortunate too the girl who is able to impart the emotions
and ideas aroused in her by her early meetings with the world and
life to some one old in experience but comprehendingly young in
heart. Both of them will remember those hours long after the garden
gate has closed behind their friend forever; as long, indeed, as they
remember anything that went to the making of the best in them.
Therefore:

Make a quiet place in the garden-a private enclosure

with a comfortable seat, thick planting, sun. Pick the place
for the seat carefully; pick the place that will give you the
most intense kind of solitude.

quiet place

❖ ❖ ❖

Place the garden seat, like other outdoor seats, where it com-
mands a view, is in the sun, is sheltered from the wind-SEAT
SPOTS( 24 I) ; perhaps under bushes and trees where light is soft
and dappled-FILTERED LIGHT (238),
I 85 SITTING CIRCLE*
... according to the SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES (142), there
will be a vHiety of different kinds of sitting space throughout an
oflice bL1ilding or a house or workshop-some formal, some in-
formal, some large, some small, laid ant in part according to
the INTIMACY GRADIENT ( 127). This pattern deals with the
actual physical layout of any one of these sitting spaces. And of
course, it can be used to help create the sequence of sitting spaces,
piecemeal, one space at a time.

❖ ❖ ❖

A group of chairs, a sofa and a chair, a pile of cushions

-these are the most obvious things in everybody's life-
and yet to make them work, so people become animated
and alive in them, is a very subtle business. Most seating
arrangements are sterile, people avoid them, nothing ever
happens there. Others seem somehow to gather life around
them, to concentrate and liberate energy. What is the
difference between the two?

Most important of all, perhaps, is their pos1t10n. A s1tt1ng

circle needs essentially the same position as a COMMON AREA AT
THE HEART (129), but in miniature: a well defined area, with
paths rnnning past it, not cutting through it, and placed so that
people naturally pass by it, stop and talk, lean on the backs of
chairs, gradually sit down, move position, get up again. These
characteristics are vital. The reasons are exactly the same as those
given in COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART ( 129); only the scale is
different.
Second, the rough shape of a circle. When people sit down to
talk together they try to arrange themselves roughly in a circle.
Empirical evidence for this has been presented by Margaret Mead
("Conference Behavior," Columbia University Forum, Summer,
I 967, pp. 20-2 5). Perhaps one reason for the circle, as opposed
to other forms, is the fact that people like to sit at an angle to
one another, not side by side (Robert Sommer, "Studies in
Personal Space," Sociometry, 22 September 1959, pp. 247-60.)
 I 85 SITTING CIRCLE

In a circle, even neighbors are at a slight angle to one another.

This, together with the first point, suggests that a rough circle is
best.
But it is not enough for the chairs to be in a circle. The chairs
themselves will only hold this position if the actual architecture-
the columns, walls, fire, windows-subtly suggest a partly con-
tained, defined area, which i~ roughly a circle. The fire especially
helps to anchor a sitting circle. Other things can do it almost as
well.
Third, we have observed that the seating arrangement needs to
be slightly loose-not too formal. Relatively loose arrangements,
where there are many different sofas, cushions, and chairs, all
free to move, work to bring a sitting circle to life. The chairs can
be adjusted slightly, they can be turned at slight angles; and if
there are one or two too many, all the better: this seems to animate
the group. People get up and walk around, then sometimes sit
back down in a new chair.
Therefore:

Place each sitting space in a position which is protected,

not cut by paths or movement, roughly circular, made so
that the room itself helps to suggest the circle-not too
strongly-with paths and activities around it, so that people
naturally gravitate toward the chairs when they get into
the mood to sit. Place the chairs and cushions loosely in
the circle, and have a few too many.

away from traffic

/....
extra chairs

rough circle

loose overcrowded arrangement

 BUILDINGS

Use a fire, and columns, and half-open walls to form the shape
of the circle-THE FIRE ( 181), THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE
(191), HALF-OPEN WALL (193); but do not make it too formal
or too enclosed-COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART ( I 29)) SE-
QUENCE OF SITTING SPACES ( I 42). Use DIFFERENT CHAIRS ( 2 5 I))
big ones, small ones, cushions, and a few too many, so that they
are never too perfectly arranged, but always in a bit of a jumble.
Make a POOL OF LIGHT (252) to mark the sitting circle, and
perhaps a WINDOW PLACE ( I 80) ....

860
I 86 COMMUNAL SLEEPING

... by this time the sleeping areas have been defined-coUPLE's

REALM (136), CHILDREN'S REALM (137), SLEEPING TO THE EAST
( I 3 8), BED CLUSTER ( I 43). It remains only to build in the actual
detailed space which forms the beds themselves-MARRIAGE BED
( I 87), BED ALCOVE ( I 8 8). 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 neces-
sary 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

861
 BUILDINGS

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 de-
cline, 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 oc-
casions when we do see our friends who live far away.
But the environment must invite it, or we shall never over-
come our reluctance. People are uneasy about spending the night
because it usually means having to make up a guest bed, or sleep-
ing 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 com-
mons.
From a practical point of view, there are two alternative posi-
tions for the alcoves:
I. 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 Jong 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 mnst 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 sp;ice for guest's beds must be made so that
it is not dead when it is not used for sleeping. It needs a com-

862
 I 86 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( I 89),
This pattern may seem strange at fi.rst, 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 itl / 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 alterna-
tive 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 MARRIAGEBED (187) and the

BED ALCOVES (188) and DRESSING ROOMS (189) accordingly.
The children have this pattern for themselves already-if bed al-
coves are placed in a cluster-BED CLUSTER ( I 43).

863
I 87 MARRIAGE BED
... the pattern COUPLE'S REALM ( I 36) gives emphasis to the
importance of the couple's private life together within a house-
hold. Within that couple's realm, the placing and nature of the
bed is naturally the most important thing.

❖ ❖ ❖

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 bed-
rooms are not often made in ways which intensify their
meaning, and these experiencescannot 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.
I. The space around the bed is shaped 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 ( 18 8).
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 un-
likely 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 e)\"ample, 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:

865
 BUILDINGS

"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 h~ 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 I Who has moved my bed?
That would be a difficult job for the best workman, unless God
himself should coine 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 I 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 I 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 im-
pulse; 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

866
 I 87 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:

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.

enclosure
window

decoration
double bed

❖ ❖ ❖

Make two separate dressing rooms or alcoves near the bed-

DRESSINGROOMS( 189); for more details on the space around the
bed, see BED ALCOVE ( I 8 8) ; lower the ceiling over the bed-
CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY ( I 90)) 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 OF
INDOORSPACE ( I 91) ....
203 CHILD CAVES
... the places specially devoted to children's play-ADVENTURE
PLAYGROUND(73), CHILDREN'SHOME (86), CHILDREN'SREALM
(137)-and THICK WALLS (197)-can be embellished with a
special detail.

❖ ❖ ❖

Children love to be in tiny, cave-like places.

In the course of their play, young children seek out cave-like

spaces to get into and under-old crates, under tables, in tents,
etc. (For evidence see L. E. White, "The Outdoor Play of
Children Living in Flats," Living in Towns, Leo Kuper, ed.,
London, 1953, pp. 235-64.)

ft
They try to make special places for themselves and for their
friends-most of the world about them is "adult space" and
they are trying to carve out a place that is kid size.
When children are playing in such a "cave"-each child takes
up about 5 square feet; furthermore, children like to do this in
groups, so the caves should be large enough to accommodate this:
these sorts of groups range in size from three to five-so I 5 to
2 5 square feet, plus about I 5 square feet for games and circula-
tion, gives a rough maximum size for caves.
Therefore:
 20J CHILD CAVES

Wherever children play, around the house, in the neigh-

borhood, in schools, make small "caves" for them. Tuck
these caves away in natural left over spaces, under stairs,
under kitchen counters. Keep the ceiling heights low-2
feet 6 inches to 4 feet-and the entrance tiny.

3 to 4 foot ceiling

~
'
~

Build the caves right into the fabric of the walls-TlllCKENING

THE OUTER WALLS ( 2 I I). Make the doors very tiny to match
the caves-an extreme version of Low DOORWAY (224) ....
 204 SECRET PLACE

... and here is a finishing touch to the thick walls, perhaps

even to the low ceilings-THICK WALLS (197), CEILING HEIGHT
VARIETY( l 90),

❖ ❖ ❖

Where can the need for concealment be expressed; the

need to hide; the need for something precious to be lost,
and then revealed?

We believe that there is a need in people to live with a secret

place in their homes: a place that is used in special ways, and
revealed only at very special moments.
To live in a home where there is such a place alters your
experience. It invites you to put something precious there, to
conceal, to let only some in on the secret and not others. It
allows you to keep something that is precious in an entirely per-
sonal way, so that no one may ever find it, until the moment you
say to your friend, "Now I am going to show you something
special"-and tell the story behind it.
There is strong support for the reality of this need in Gaston
Bachelard's The Poetics of Space (New York: The Omen Press,
1964). We quote from Chapter 3:

With the theme of drawers, chests, locks and wardrobes, we shall

resume contact with the unfathomable store of daydreams of inti-
macy.
Wardrobes with their shelves, desks with their drawers, and chests
with their false bottoms are veritable organs of the secret psycho-
logical life. Indeed, without these "objects" and a few others in
equally high favor, om intimate life would lack a model of inti-
macy. They are hybrid objects, subject objects. Like us, through
us and for us, they have a quality of intimacy ....
If we give objects the friendship they should have, we do not
open a wardrobe without a slight start. Beneath its russet wood,
a wardrobe is a very white almond. To open it, is to experience
an event of whiteness.

930
 204 SECRET PLACE

An anthology devoted to small boxes, such as chests and caskets,

would constitute an important chapter in psychology. These complex
pieces that a craftsman creates are very evident witnesses of the need
for secrecy, of an intuitive sense of hiding places. It is not merely a
matter of keeping a possession well guarded. The lock doesn't exist
that could resist absolute violence, and all locks are an invitation to
thieves. A lock is a psychological threshold.
Therefore:

Make a place in the house, perhaps only a few feet

square, which is kept locked and secret; a place which
is virtually impossible to discover-until you have been
shown where it is; a place where the archives of the house,
or other more potent secrets, might be kept.

secret place

life history precious objects

of family

his;ory of the house

❖ ❖ ❖

Classic types of secret places are the panel that slides back,
revealing the cavity in the wall, the loose board beneath the
rug, the trap door-CLOSETS BETWEEN ROOMS ( 198), THICKEN-
ING THE OUTER WALLS (2I I), FLOOR-CEILING VAULTS
(219) ....

93 1
22 I NATURAL DOORS
AND WINDOWS**
... imagine that you are now standing in the built-up frame of
a partly constructed building, with the columns and beams in
place-BOX COLUMNS (216), PERIMETER BEAMS (217). You
know roughly where you want doors and windows from ZEN
VIEW (134), STREET WINDOWS(164), WINDOWPLACE (180),
WINDOWSOVERLOOKING LIFE (192), CORNERDOORS(196). Now
you can settle on the exact positions of the frames.

Finding the right position for a window or a door is a

subtle matter. But there are very few ways of building
which take this into consideration.

In our current ways of building, the delicacy of placing a

window or a door has nearly vanished. But it is just this refine-
ment, down to the last foot, even to the last inch or two, which
makes an immense difference. Windows and doors which are
just right are always like this. Find a beautiful window. Study it.
See how different it would be if its dimensions varied a few
inches in either direction.
Now look at the windows and doors in most buildings made
during the last 20 years. Assume that these openings are in
roughly the right place, but notice how they could be improved
if they were free to shift around, a few inches here and there,
each one taking advantage of its own special circumstances-the
space immediately inside and the view outside.
It is almost always a rigid construction system, combined with
a formal aesthetic, which holds these windows in such a death
grip. There is nothing else to this regularity, for it is possible
to relax the regularity without losing structural integrity.
It is also important to realize that this final placing of windows
and doors can only be done on site, with the rough frame of the
building in position. It is impossible to do it on paper. But on
the site it is quite straightforward and natural: mock up the
openings with scraps of lumber or string and move them around
until they feel right; pay careful attention to the organization of
the view and the kind of space that is created inside.

1047
 CONSTRUCTION

Getting it just right.

As we shall see in a later pattern-SMALL PANES (239), it is

not necessary to make the windows any special dimensions, or to
try and make them multiples of any standard pane size. Whatever
dimensions this pattern gives each window, it will then be possi-
ble to divide it up, to form small panes, which will be different in
their exact shape and size, according to the window they are in.
However, although there is no constraint on the exact dimen-
sion of the windows, there is a general rule of thumb, which will
make window sizes vary: Windows, as a rule, should become
smaller as you get higher up in the building.
I. The area of windows needed for light and ventilation de-
pends on the size of rooms, and rooms are generally smaller on
upper stories of the building-the communal rooms are generally
on the ground floor and more private rooms upstairs.
2. The amount of daylight coming through a window depends
on the area of open sky visible through the window. The higher
the window, the more open sky is visible (because nearby trees
and buildings obscure less)-so less window area is needed to get
sufficient daylight in.
3. To feel safe on the upper stories of a building, one wants
more enclosure, smaller windows, higher sills-and the higher off
the ground one is, the more one needs these psychological protec-
tions.
Therefore:

On no account use standard doors or windows. Make

each window a different size, according to its place.
Do not fix the exact position or size of the door and win-
 22 I NATURAL DOORS AND WINDOWS

<low frames until the rough framing of the room has ac-
tually been built, and you can really stand inside the room
and judge, by eye, exactly where you want to put them, and
how big you want them. When you decide, mark the
openings with strings.
Make the windows smaller and smaller, as you go
higher in the building .

., variation in window size

Q l1fl•/.l.
m aB !i
D 1.Bft1
the position of the doors and windows "felt"

Fine tune the exact position of each edge, and mullion, and
sill, according to your comfort in the room, and the view that the
window looks onto--Low SILL (222), DEEP REVEALS(223). As
a result, each window will have a different size and shape, accord-
ing to its position in the building. This means that it is obviously
impossible to use standard windows and even impossible to irake
each window a simple multiple of standard panes. But it will
still be possible to glaze each window, since the procedure for
building the panes makes them divisions of the whole, instead of
making up the whole as a multiple of standard panes-SMALL
PANES(239) ....

!049
253 THINGS FROM
YOUR LIFE*
... lastly, when you have taken care of everything, and you
start living in the places you have made, you may wonder what
kinds of things to pin up on the walls.

"Decor" and the conception of "interior design" have

spread so widely, that very often people forget their instinct
for the things they really want to keep around them.

There are two ways of looking at this simple fact. We may

look at it from the point of view of the person who owns the
space, and from the point of view of the people who come to it.
From the owner's point of view, it is obvious that the things
around you should be the things which mean most to you, which
have the power to play a part in the continuous process of self-
transformation, which is your life. That much is clear.
But this function has been eroded, gradually, in modern times
because people have begun to look outward, to others, and over
their shoulders, at the people who are coming to visit them, and
have replaced their natural instinctive decorations with the things
which they believe will please and impress their visitors. This
is the motive behind all the interior design and decor in the
women's magazines. And designers play on these anxieties by
making total designs, telling people they have no right to move
anything, paint the walls, or add a plant, because they are not
party to the mysteries of Good Design.
But the irony is, that the visitors who come into a room don't
want this nonsense any more than the people who live there. It
is far more fascinating to come into a room which is the living
expression of a person, or a group of people, so that you can see
their lives, their histories, their inclinations, displayed in manifest
form around the walls, in the furniture, on the shelves. Beside
such experience-and it is as ordinary as the grass-the artificial
scene-making of "modern decor" is totally bankrupt.
Jung describes the room that was his study, how he filled the
stone walls with paintings that he made each day directly on

1165
 CONSTRUCTION

the stones-mandalas, dream images, preoccupations-and he

tells us that the room came gradually to be a living thing to
him-the outward counterpart to his unconscious.
Examples we know: A motel run by a Frenchman, mementos
of the Resistance all around the lounge, the letter from Charles
de Gaulle. An outdoor market on the highway, where the
proprietor has mounted his collection of old bottles all over the
walls; hundreds of bottles, all shapes and colors; some of them
are down for cleaning; there is an especially beautiful one up at
the counter by the cash register. An anarchist runs the hot dog
stand, he plasters the walls with literature, proclamations, mani-
festoes against the State.
A hunting glove, a blind man's cane, the collar of a favorite
dog, a panel of pressed flowers from the time when we were
children, oval pictures of grandma, a candlestick, the dust from a
volcano carefully kept in a bottle, a picture from the news of
prison convicts at Attica in charge of the prison, not knowing
that they were about to die, an old photo, the wind blowing in
the grass and a church steeple in the distance, spiked sea shells
with the hum of the sea still in them.
Therefore:

Do not be tricked into believing that modern decor must

be slick or psychedelic, or "natural" or "modern art," or
"plants" or anything else that current taste-makers claim.
It is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life
-the things you care for, the things that tell your story.

family pictures
collections

old adventures

I 166