Row houses solve these problems. But row houses, in their conventional form, have problems of their own. Conventional row houses all conform, approximately, to the following diagram. The houses have a short frontage and a long depth, and share the party wall along their long side.
| r | P | |||||
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Typical raw house pattern.
Because of the long party walls, many of the rooms are poorly lit. The houses lack privacy—there is nowhere in th'e houses or their yards that is very far from a party wall. The small yards are made even worse by the fact that they are at the short ends of the house, so that only a small part of the indoor space can be
205
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 landy in three dimensions. These are the patterns which can be “designed” or “built”—the patterns which define the individual buildings and the space between buildings; where we are dealing 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 complex;
95. BUILDING COMPLEX
96. NUMBER OF STORIES
97. SHIELDED PARKING
98. CIRCULATION REALMS
99. MAIN BUILDING
100. PEDESTRIAN STREET
101. BUILDING THOROUGHFARE
102. FAMILY OF ENTRANCES
103. SMALL PARKING LOTS
XXV
adjacent to the garden. And there is almost no scope for individual variation in the houses, with the result that terraces of row houses are often rather sterile.
These four problems of row houses can easily be solved by making the houses long and thin, along the paths, like cottages. In this case, there is plenty of room for subtle variations from house to house—each plan can be quite different; and it is easy to arrange the plan to let the light in.
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Houses long and thin along the falh.
This kind of house has 30 per cent of its perimeter fixed and 70 per cent free for individual variations. A house in a conventional terrace of row houses has 70 per cent of its perimeter fixed and only 30 per cent open to individual variations. So the house can take on a variety of shapes, with a guarantee of a reasonable amount of privacy for its garden and for most of the house, an increase in the amount of light into the house, and an increase in the amount of indoor space that can be next to outdoor areas.
These advantages of the long thin row house are so obvious, it is natural to wonder why they aren’t used more often. The reason is, of course, that roads do not permit it. So long as houses front directly onto roads, i.t is imperative that they have
38 ROW HOUSES
the shortest frontage possible, so as to save the cost of roads and services—the cost of roads is a large part of any housing budget. But in the pattern we propose, we have been able to avoid this difficulty altogether, by making the houses front only onto paths —which don’t cost much—and it is then these paths which connect to the roads, at right angles, in the way prescribed by
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NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52).
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Roads away from houses.
Finally, a word on density. As we see from the sketch below, it is possible to build a two-story house of 1200 square feet on an area 30 x 20, using a total area (path, house, garden) of about 1300 square feet, and it is even possible to manage with an absolute minimum of 1000 square feet.
| 2& Y. |  |
1
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I
1300 square feet of land -per house.
It is therefore possible to build row houses at a density of 30 per net acre. Without parking, or with less parking, this figure could conceivably be even higher.
Therefore:
TOWNS
For row houses, place houses along pedestrian paths that run at right angles to local roads and parking lots, and give each house a long frontage and a shallow depth.
❖
Make the individual houses and cottages as long and thin along the paths as possible—long thin house (109)} vary the houses according to the different household types—the family (75), HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY (76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77), house for one person (78); build roads across the paths, at right angles to them—parallel roads (23), network of paths and cars (52), with small parking lots off the roads—small parking lots (103). In other respects build row houses in clusters—house cluster (37), building complex (95). . . .
208
| 39 HOUSING HILL |
|---|
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209
. . . at the still higher densities required in the inner ring of the community’s density rings (29), and wherever densities rise above 30 houses per acre or are four stories high—four-story limit (21), the house clusters become like hills.
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Every town has places in it which are so central and desirable that at least 30-50 households per acre will be living there. But the apartment houses which reach this density are almost all impersonal.
In the pattern your own home (79), we discuss the fact that every family needs its own home with land to build on, land where they can grow things, and a house which is unique and clearly marked as theirs. A typical apartment house, with flat walls and identical windows, cannot provide these qualities.
The form of the housing hill comes essentially from three requirements. First, people need to maintain contact with the ground and with their neighbors, far more contact than high-rise living permits. Second, people want an outdoor garden or yard. This is among the most common reasons for their rejecting apartment living. And third, people crave for variation and uniqueness in their homes, and this desire is almost always constrained by high-rise construction, with its regular facades and identical units.
1. Connection to the ground and to neighbors. The strongest evidence comes from D. M. Fanning (“Families in Flats,” British Medical Journal, November 1967, pp. 382-86). Fanning shows a direct correlation between incidence of mental disorder and high-rise living. These findings are presented in detail in four-story limit (21). High-rise ljving, it appears, has a terrible tendency to leave people alone, stranded, in their apartments. Home life is split away from casual street life by elevators, hallways, and long stairs. The decision to go out for some public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task which brings people out in the world, the tendency is to stay home, alone.
39 HOUSING HILL
Farming also found a striking lack of communication between families in the high-rise flats he studied. Women and children were especially isolated. The women felt they had little reason to take the trip from their apartment to the ground, except to go shopping. They and their children were effectively imprisoned in their apartments, cut off from the ground and from their neighbors.