Patterns from A Pattern Language
105 SOUTH FACING OUTDOORS
People use open space if it is sunny, and do not use it if it isn’t, in all but desert climates.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 514.
This pattern assumes a northern hemisphere location, so inversion is required for southern hemisphere constructions.
We want to reserve the best light of the sun for the outdoors of a building plot by giving it the part of the land upon which the sun beats down during the day. We want to make sitting outside, by the building, a positive experience.
When we allocate the outdoor space to the north side of a structure, the shadows might help protect us from the heat but offer nothing more to us. The sun provides warmth in the colder months, light to see, and the opportunity for plants to grow. An outdoor place that spends much of its time in shadow is less inviting.
Notice that even when the land is north of adjacent structures, it’s still more valuable when on the south side of your building. The shadows from neighbours may fall on part of your grounds, but the seating or land which seems most like it belongs to your building is on the land that gets the light. The connection to your building makes it your south-facing outdoors.
112 ENTRANCE TRANSITION
Buildings, and especially houses, with a graceful transition between the street and the inside, are more tranquil than those which open directly off the street.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 549.
A space separated from another may have a different level of intimacy or another special meaning. In cases where the moods are sufficiently distinct, an intermediate place where a person can be between worlds helps ease the transition. People feel like they shift inside themselves as they enter a new space via an entrance transition. They don’t just shed themselves of their coat, but also the worries of the world outside.
When this pattern is lacking, we find sanctums disturbed by public observation or quiet workspaces made tense by the threat of external interruptions. A house built with a street-facing living room and street door without a transition zone, even a small one, is never as cosy as it could be as the outside world directly touches the intimate space. An open-plan workplace can create a difficult atmosphere where there is no privacy, and quiet contemplation is impossible.
Anywhere humans have different modes of being, they can benefit from a transition zone like this. Where you see a step change in how people behave, ensure there is a space where the attitude change can happen at a comfortable pace.
119 ARCADES
Arcades—covered walkways at the edge of buildings, which are partly inside, partly outside—play a vital role in the way that people interact with buildings.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 581.
Arcades where the line between the shops and streets blur
Supporting the property of both deep interlock and boundaries, arcades connect the indoor spaces of buildings with the outside public world of people. Christopher Alexander used arcades in the Eishin campus project to create some of the covered walkways. The pattern creates outdoor spaces which are innately connected to the buildings.
127 INTIMACY GRADIENT
Unless the spaces in a building are arranged in a sequence which corresponds to their degrees of privateness, the visits made by strangers, friends, guests, clients, family, will always be a little awkward.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 610.
As you enter a house, the first rooms are still somewhat public. As you move from room to room, entering deeper into the home, you find places of deeper family meaning. You find hobby spaces and bedrooms. Children’s caves and hidden nooks.
Without the gradient, a home has rooms which feel awkward. A door on a studio flat opens onto the one room and never feels wholly a home. There is no space separated from the rest; there is no interior to the interior.
A good gradient will mean there are places where guests can feel welcome, and they can naturally gravitate towards places for their particular relationship with the family. Some may find acceptance in the garage, others the kitchen or garden shed with their host. But notice that only the family or very close friends will feel comfortable entering into all the inner family spaces.
159 LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM
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.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 747.
Places with diffuse light allow us to see people more clearly. Having two or more natural light sources helps create rooms where you can see with less glare. We feel better in places like this because we observe the smaller movements on people’s faces and feel more connected to them.
With only one light source, a room will often be darker towards one end, creating shadows on people’s faces. Shadows create ambiguity and tension.
Narrow rooms with light at the end are the worst. Fix them by finding some way to open up light at the other end, or consider collapsing the room altogether. Sometimes, you can be better off with one nice dual-purpose room than two separate rooms of lower quality. A low wall dividing the single room well can make the utility obvious without affecting the quality of the light.
You don’t need to have two windows; just be aware that the deeper a room, the less reflective the walls, and the smaller the windows, the worse the room will feel to be in. Vast halls with huge windows on one side can work well if there are bright walls or other light sources to supplement the natural light. For example, rooms with a large mirror are more inviting as they naturally create a second set of light sources.
202 BUILT-IN SEATS
Built-in seats are great. Everybody loves them. They make a building feel comfortable and luxurious. But most often they do not actually work. They are placed wrong, or too narrow, or the back does not slope, or the view is wrong, or the seat is too hard. This pattern tells you what to do to make a built-in seat that really works.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 925.
The pattern is quite clear. Built-in seats are lovely. They give a room character. They may seem inflexible, but the pattern addresses that by asking that they be built with great attention to detail. When a seat is just right, moving it would be as unnecessary as moving a window.
Why do we like them? I think it’s because they feel so much more attached (literally) to the building, but also how they connect us to the outside world. Every building is an inside within an outside. Many patterns address this to make it the best possible combination of the two. Built-in seats are just another tool to do that.
222 LOW SILL
One of a window’s most important functions is to put you in touch with the outdoors. If the sill is too high, it cuts you off.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 1051.
A strange revelation with some research backing it up is that windows should start lower in the wall than we regularly build them. Windows for sitting by should be made so you can connect with the ground outside, which means the regular sills we build are too high as they cut off all but the horizon when regarded from a seated position.
For upper floors, the connection to the ground is overwhelmed by the desire for safety, so as the elevation increases, so does the height of the sill.
A low and deep sill also invites plants or sitting in. Even with a 30-35cm high sill, we don’t lose any of their normal function. Instead, we gain the world.
224 LOW DOORWAY
High doorways are simple and convenient. But a lower door is often more profound.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 1056.
This is a pattern of enforcing a change in the person transitioning a threshold by asking them to stoop. It’s one of a few patterns using doorways to address problems.
Requiring a moment of thought by a physical presence is a recurring theme. I would consider the placement of some actionable religious ornamentation in houses (the Jewish mezuzah comes to mind) or places of worship (the location of a font in a church, for example) as examples of this higher pattern. The low doorway follows this principle. Make a place more profound by ensuring some mental shift takes place. Distract a person into being present.
226 COLUMN PLACE
Thin columns, spindly columns, columns which take their shape from structural arguments alone, will never make a comfortable environment.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 1065.
The smaller supporting columns we typically see these days break up a space but don’t add anything in return. Good-sized columns are places in themselves. We can lean against them, and they can be imprinted with images or otherwise decorated. When they are substantial enough, we can attach memories to them, or even seats.
Without the girth sufficient to support human interaction, they become mere obstacles. Devoid of any value beyond supporting what lies above. The pattern name implies the outside of the column is a place, which is only correct when it provides something for humans as they move through their world.
In a modern setting, large columns are not unwanted. People still want focal points around which they can gather, even inside an office building. Otherwise, we would not have water cooler chats.
229 DUCT SPACE
You never know where pipes and conduits are; they are buried somewhere in the walls; but where exactly are they?
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 1076.
This pattern follows from other patterns, somewhat relying on having followed the form of vaulted ceilings, so is not always applicable. The basic idea is, have a place which makes sense to put all the wiring and piping but also make sure it’s big enough that maintenance is simple and convenient. Rather than putting everything at floor level or in the walls as we do currently, locate them all up in the air above the furniture and out of the way.
To my mind, this pattern makes a lot of sense if you can do it. It’s almost an inversion of the standard way in which you wire up a modern office with a raised floor so you can easily trace wires anywhere without causing an inconvenience. However, even with a raised floor, desks need to be moved to trace new paths. The benefit of locating above the space rather than below is that above is always more readily available.
237 SOLID DOORS WITH GLASS
An opaque door makes sense in a vast house or palace, where every room is large enough to be a world unto itself; but in a small building, with small rooms, the opaque door is only very rarely useful.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 1103.
When a sequence of rooms do not each have their own light, a glass panel in a substantial door provides a way to exclude the outer while maintaining a connection to it. A room with a closed door always seems bounded and enclosed. This is why we have large panes of glass in patio doors leading onto gardens. It is so we can remain separate while connected.
Using interior doors with glass does the same for the house’s sense of
connectedness. We allow rooms to be closed, but still part of the activity. The
light transfer helps equalise the feeling while also increasing the literal
level of light, helping achieve
251 DIFFERENT CHAIRS
People are different sizes; they sit in different ways. And yet there is a tendency in modern times to make all chairs alike.
— Christopher Alexander,
A Pattern Language , p. 1158.
It seems obvious when you think about it. We have office chairs, designed specifically to address this issue. They are expensive because they meet two opposing needs: uniformity and conformity. An office chair is expensive because making something look like everything else while behaving in a custom manner is a difficult tension to relieve.
So, the solution is to stop trying to make everything look the same. Accept that differences are normal and that on average no-one is average.