135 tapestry of light
AND DARK*
 |
| 644 |
. . . passages, entrances, stairs are given their rough position by
THE FLOWTHROUGH ROOMS ( I 3 I ) , SHORT PASSAGES (132), STAIRCASE as a stage (I 33), zen vrEvv (134). This pattern helps you fine tune their positions by placing light correctly.
•I* *$•
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 nonuniformities in light, and all of them allowing the 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, 1963), 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 entrance, or any key point in a circulation system, must be systematically lighter than its surroundings—with light (daylight and artificial light) flooded there, so that its intensity becomes a
3 CITY COUNTRY FINGERS
Every city dweller would have access to the countryside; the open country would be a half-hour bicycle ride from downtown. Therefore:
Keep interlocking fingers of farmland and urban land, even at the center of the metropolis. The urban fingers should never be more than i mile wide, while the farmland fingers should never be less than i mile wide.
 | country fingers, at least i mile wide |
| city fingers, at most i mile wide | |
Whenever land is hilly, keep the country fingers in the valleys and the city fingers on the upper slopes of hillsides—agricultural valleys (4). Break the city fingers into hundreds of distinct self-governing subcultures—mosaic of subcultures (8), and run the major roads and railways down the middle of these city fingers—web of public transportation (16), ring roads (17). . . .
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 possible result.
If the flaces where the light falls are not the flaces you are meant to go toward, or if the light is uniform, the environment is giving information which contradicts its own meaning. The environment 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 (180). 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 (25 2). . . .
within the framework of the wings and their internal gradients of space and movementy define the most important areas and rooms. First, for a house;
| 136. | couple’s realm |
| J3 7- | children’s realm |
| 138. | SLEEPING TO THE EAST |
| i39* | FARMHOUSE KITCHEN |
| 140. | PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET |
| 141. | A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN |
| 142. | SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES |
| H3- | BED CLUSTER |
| J44- | BATHING ROOM |
| *45- | BULK STORAGE |
| 136 couple’s realm* |
|---|
 |
648
. . . this pattern helps to complete the family (75), house FOR A SMALL FAMILY (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:
1. 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 adults must walk past children’s bedrooms to reach it.
3. The walls of the master bedroom are usually too thin 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 completely 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 lived through. It is a place not only insulated from the children’s world, but also complete in itself, a
BUILDINGS