474 9 6 NUMBER OF STORIES
site itself, then you are exceeding this limit. In this case, we advise that you cut back your program; build less space; perhaps build some of your project on another site.
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| Breaking the rule of thumb. |
Rule y Do not let the height of your building(s) vary too much from the 'predominant height of surrounding buildings. A rule of thumb: do not let your buildings deviate more than one story from surrounding buildings. On the whole, adjacent buildings should be roughly the same height.
I live in a small one-story garden cottage at the back of a large house in Berkeley. All around the cottage there are two-story houses, some as close as thirty feet. I thought when I moved in, that a garden cottage would be secluded and I would have some private outdoor space. But instead I feel that I’m living in a goldfish bowl— every one of the second-story windows around me looks right down into my living room, or into my garden. The garden outside is useless, and I don’t sit near the window.
Therefore:
First, decide how many square feet of built space you need, and divide by the area of the site to get the floor area ratio. Then choose the height of your buildings according to the floor area ratio and the height of the surrounding buildings from the following table. In no case build on more than 50 per cent of the land.
♦
BUILDINGS
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| height of surrounding buildings |
Once you have the number of stories and the area of each part clear, decide which building or which part of the building will be the main building (99). Vary the number of floors within the building—cascade of roofs (116). Place the buildings on the site, with special reverence for the land, and trees, and sun—site repair (104), south facing outdoors (105), tree places (171). In your calculations, remember that the effective area of the top story will be no more than three-quarters of the area of lower floors if it is in the roof, according to SHELTERING ROOF ( I I 7) .
If the density is so high all around, that it is quite impossible to leave 50 per cent of the site open (as might be true in central London or New York), then cover the ground floor completely, but devote at least 50 per cent of the upper floors to open gardens—roof garden ( i 18).
Give each story a different ceiling height—bottom story biggest, top story smallest—and vary the column spacings accordingly— final column distribution (21 3). The same building system applies, whether there are I, 2, 3 or 4 stories—structure follows social spaces (205). . , .
97 SHIELDED PARKING*
. . . many patterns we have given discourage dependence on the use of cars; we hope that these patterns will gradually get rid, altogether, of the need for large parking lots and parking structures—local transport areas (ii), nine per cent parking (22). However, in certain cases, unfortunately, large areas of parking are still necessary. Whenever this is so, this parking must be placed very early, to be sure that it does not destroy the buildinc complex (95) altogether.
❖ *
Large parking structures full of cars are inhuman and dead buildings—no one wants to see them or walk by them. At the same time, if you are driving, the entrance to a parking structure is essentially the main entrance to the building—and it needs to be visible.
In nine per cent parking (22), we have already defined an upper limit on the total amount of parking in a neighborhood. In small parking lots (103) we give the best size and the distribution of the lots when they are on the ground. But in certain cases it is still necessary to build larger parking lots or parking structures. The environment can tolerate these larger lots and structures, provided that they are built so that they do not pollute the land around them.
This is a simple biological principle. In the human body, for example, there are waste products; the waste products are part of the way the body works, and obviously they must have a place. But the stomach and colon are built in such a way as to shield the other internal organs from the poisons carried by the wastes.
The same is true in a city. At this moment in history the city requires a certain limited amount of parking; and for the time being there is no getting away from that. But the parking must be built in such a way that it is shielded—by shops, houses, hills of
BUILDINGS
grassy earth, walls, or any other buildings of any kind—anything, so long as the interior of the parking structure and the cars are not visible from the surrounding land. On ground level, the shield is especially critical. Shops are useful since they generate their own pedestrian scale immediately. And since the need for parking often goes hand in hand with commercial development, shops are often very feasible economically.
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| A shielded farking structure. |
And of course, the houses themselves can serve the same function. In Paris, many of the most charming and beautiful apartment houses are arranged around courtyards, which permit parking inside, away from the street. There are few enough cars, so that they don’t destroy the courtyard, for the houses; and the street is left free of parked cars entirely.
Along with the need to shield parking structures there is the equally pressing need on the part of a driver to be able to spot the parking structure quickly—and see how it is connected to the building he is headed for. One of the most frequent complaints about the parking near a building is not that it is too far away, but that you don’t know where you can go to find a parking spot and still be sure of how to get back into the building.
This means that
1. Parking, which is specifically for the use of visitors, must be clearly marked from the directions of approach, even though the structure as a whole is shielded. The person who is coming by car will be looking for the building, not the parking lot. The entrance to parking must be marked as an important entrance—a gate —so that you can see it automatically, in the process of looking for the building. And it must be placed so that you find it about the same time that you see the building’s main entrance.
2. While you are parking your car you must be able to see the exit from the parking area which will lead you into the building. This will let you search for the closest spots, and will mean that you don’t have to walk around searching for the exit.
Therefore.
Put all large parking lots, or parking garages, behind some kind of natural wall, so that the cars and parking structures cannot be seen from outside. The wall which surrounds the cars may be a building, connected houses, or housing hills, earth berms, or shops.
Make the entrance to the parking lot a natural gateway to the buildings which it serves, and place it so that you can easily see the main entrance to the building from the entrance to the parking.
| shield |  |
For shields see housing hill (39), housinc in between
(48), INDIVIDUALLY OWNED SHOPS (87), OPEN STAIRS (I 5 8),
gallery surround (166). One of the cheapest ways of all to shield a parking lot is with canvas awnings—the canvas can be many colors: underneath, the light is beautiful—canvas roofs (244). Make certain that the major entrances of buildings are quite clearly visible from the place where you drive into parking lots, and from the places where you leave the parking lots on