Section of -private terrace and street.
Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington: 1970. Hildebrand gives an interesting account of the way this pattern works in the Cheney house:
As the pedestrian looks toward the house from the sidewalk, the masonry terrace wall is located so that his line of sight over its top falls at the lower edge of the elaborately leaded upper glass zone of the terrace doors. Vision into the living room from the sidewalk thus is carefully controlled. If the occupant within the house is standing near the doors only his head and shoulders are dimly visible through a diffusing surface. If the occupant is sitting he is, of course, completely hidden from the pedestrian’s view.
But whereas the pedestrian cannot effectively intrude on the privacy of the house, the inhabitant on the other hand has a number of options available at will. As he stands or sits on the terrace itself, well above the sidewalk, the effect is of easy participation in the full panorama of the street. From the elevated platform vision is unobstructed. Neighbors and friends can be waved at, greeted, invited in for a chat. Thus the terrace, projecting toward the street, linked— and still links—the Cheney house and its inhabitants to the community life of Oak Park. The configuration is so successful thatj as in the Robie house, there has never been much need for curtains. The parapets and the leaded glass, carefully placed, do it all. Thus out of the decision to face the living room toward the street has come not a sacrifice of privacy, but a much richer range of alternative experiences for the occupant.
We believe that Wright’s use of this pattern was based on accurate intuitions about a fundamental human need. Indeed, there are empirical grounds for believing that the need for a house to be in touch with the street outside is a fundamental psychological necessity: and that its opposite—the tendency some people have to keep their houses away from the street, locked up, barred, and disconnected from the street—-is a symptom of a serious emotional disorder—the autonomy-withdrawal syndrome. See Alexander, “The City as a Mechanism for Sustaining Human Contact,” W. Ewald, ed., Environmxnt for Man, Indiana University Press, 1967, pp. 60-102.
Here is an example of this pattern from Greece. It is clear that
140 PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET
the pattern can be expressed in many ways, so long as the relationship, the balance of privacy and street contact, is maintained.
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| Private terrace on the street. |
Therefore:
Let the common rooms open onto a wide terrace or a porch which looks into the street. Raise the terrace slightly above street level and protect it with a low wall, which you can see over if you sit near it, but which prevents people on the street from looking into the common rooms.
If possible, place the terrace in a position which is also congruent with natural contours—terraced slope (169). The wall, if low enough, can be a sitting wall (243) ; in other cases, where you want more privacy, you can build a full garden wall, with openings in it, almost like windows, which make the connection with the street—garden wall (173), half-open wall (193). In any case, surround the terrace with enough things to give it at least the partial feeling of a room—outdoor room (163). . . .
| 141 A ROOM of one’s own** |
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. . . the intimacy gradient (127) makes it clear that every house needs rooms where individuals can be alone. In any household 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
COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART ( I 29) .
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 another. Only a person who has a well-developed strong personal self, can venture out to participate in communal life.
This notion has been explored by two American sociologists, Foote and Cottrelclass="underline"
There is a critical point beyond which closer contact with another person will no longer lead to an increase in empathy. (A) Up to a certain point, intimate 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 children the utility and satisfaction of withdrawing for private reveries, will show higher average empathic capacity than those who do not. (Foote, N. and L. Cottrell, Identity and Interpersonal 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, 18
(3), P- 374, 19551-
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 (127) ; 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 everywhere, 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.
Children. Very young children experience the need for privacy 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 (143) and bed alcove (188). John Madge has written a good survey of a family’s need for private space (“Privacy and Social Interaction,” Transactions of the Bartlett Society, Vol. 3, 1964-63), and concerning the children he says: