in order to support the rites of passage, and in order to create the sanctity and holiness and feeling of connection to the earth which makes the rites significant.
Of course, it will vary in detail, from culture to culture. Whatever it is exactly that is held to be sacred—whether it is nature, god, a special place, a spirit, holy relics, the earth itself, or an idea—it takes different forms, in different cultures, and requires different physical environments to support it.
However, we do believe that one fundamental characteristic is invariant from culture to culture. In all cultures it seems that whatever it is that is holy will only be felt as holy, if it is hard to reach, if it requires layers of access, waiting, levels of approach, a gradual unpeeling, gradual revelation, passage through a series of gates. There are many examples: the Inner City of Peking; the fact that anyone who has audience with the Pope must wait in each of seven waiting rooms; the Aztec sacrifices took place on stepped pyramids, each step closer to the sacrifice; the Ise shrine, the most famous shrine in Japan, is a nest of precincts, each one inside the other.
 |
| Layers of access. |
Even in an ordinary Christian church, you pass first through the churchyard, then through the nave; then, on special occasions, beyond the altar rail into the chancel and only the priest himself is able to go into the tabernacle. The holy bread is sheltered by five layers of ever more difficult approach.
This layering, or nesting of precincts, seems to correspond to
333
a fundamental aspect of human psychology. We believe that every community, regardless of its particular faith, regardless of whether it even has a faith in any organized sense, needs some place where this feeling of slow, progressive access through gates to a holy center may be experienced. When such a place exists in a community, even if it is not associated with any particular religion, we believe that the feeling of holiness, in some form or other, will gradually come to life there among the people who share in the experience.
Therefore:
In each community and neighborhood, identify some sacred site as consecrated ground, and form a series of nested precincts, each marked by a gateway, each one progressively more private, and more sacred than the last, the innermost a final sanctum that can only be reached by passing through all of the outer ones.
At each threshold between precincts build a gate—main gateways (53) ; at each gate, a place to pause with a new view toward the next most inner place—zen view (134); and at the innermost sanctum, something very quiet and able to inspire—perhaps a view, or no more than a simple tree, or pool—pools and
STREAMS (64) , TREE PLACES (1 7 I ) . . . .
in each house cluster and work community} provide the smaller bits of common landy to provide for local versions of the same needs:
| 67. | COMMON LAND |
| 06V-O | CONNECTED PLAY |
| 69. | PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM |
| 70. | GRAVE SITES |
| 71- | STILL WATER |
| 72. | LOCAL SPORTS |
| 73- | ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND |
| 74- | ANIMALS |
335
CHOOSING A LANGUAGE FOR YOUR SUBJECT
For this reason, of course, the task of choosing a language for your project is fundamental. The pattern language we have given here contains 253 patterns. You can therefore use it to generate an almost unimaginably large number of possible different smaller languages, for all the different projects you may choose to do, simply by picking patterns from it.
We shall now describe a rough procedure by which you can choose a language for your own project, first by taking patterns from this language we have printed here, and then by adding patterns of your own.
1. First of all, make a copy of the master sequence (pages xix-xxxiv) on which you can tick off the patterns which will form the language for your project. If you don’t have access to a copying machine, you can tick off patterns in the list printed in the book, use paper clips to mark pages, write your own list, use paper markers— whatever you like. But just for now, to explain it clearly, we shall assume that you have a copy of the list in front of you.
2. Scan down the list, and find the pattern which best describes the overall scope of the project you have in mind. This is the starting pattern for your project. Tick it. (If there are two or three possible candidates, don’t worry: just pick the one which seems best: the others will fall in place as you move forward.)
3. Turn to the starting pattern itself, in the book, and read it through. Notice that the other patterns mentioned by name at the beginning and at the end, of the pattern you are reading, are also possible candidates for your language. The ones at the beginning will tend to be “larger” than your project. Don’t include them, unless
xxxvm
| 67 COMMON LAND** |
|---|
 |
336
. . . just as there is a need for public land at the neighborhood level—accessible green (60), so also, within the clusters and work communities from which the neighborhoods are made, there is a need for smaller and more private kinds of common land shared by a few work groups or a few families. This common land, in fact, forms the very heart and soul of any cluster. Once it is defined, the individual buildings of the cluster form around
it-HOUSE CLUSTER (37), ROW HOUSES (38), HOUSING HILL
(39), WORK COMMUNITY (41).
Without common land no social system can survive.
In pre-industrial societies, common land between houses and between workshops existed automatically—so it was never necessary to make a point of it. The paths and streets which gave access to buildings were safe, social spaces, and therefore functioned automatically as common land.
But in a society with cars and trucks, the common land which can play an effective social role in knitting people together no longer happens automatically. Those streets which carry cars and trucks at more than crawling speeds, definitely do not function as common land; .and many buildings find themselves entirely isolated from the social fabric because they are not joined to one another by land they hold in common. In such a situation common land must be provided, separately, and with deliberation, as a social necessity, as vital as the streets.
The common land has two specific social functions. First, the land makes it possible for people to feel comfortable outside their buildings and their private territory, and therefore allows them to feel connected to the larger social system—though not necessarily to any specific neighbor. And second, common land acts as a meeting place for people.
The first function is subtle. Certainly one’s immediate neighbors are less important in modern society than in traditional
TOWNS
society. This is because people meet friends at work, at school, at meetings of interest groups and therefore no longer rely exclusively on neighbors for friendship. (See for instance, Melvin Webber, “Order in Diversity: Community Without Propinquity,” Cities and Space, ed. Lowdon Wingo, Baltimore: Resources for the Future, 19633 and Webber, “The Urban Place and the Nonplace Urban Realm,” in Webber et ah, Explorations into Urban Structure, Philadelphia, 1964, pp. 79—153.)
To the extent that this is true, the common land between houses might be less important than it used to be as a meeting ground for friendship. But the common land between buildings may have a deeper psychological function, which remains important, even when people have no relation to their neighbors. In order to portray this function, imagine that your house is separated from the city by a gaping chasm, and that you have to pass across this chasm every time you leave your house, or enter it. The house would be disturbingly isolated; and you, in the house, would be isolated from society, merely by this physical fact. In psychological terms, we believe that a building without common land in front of it is as isolated from society as if it had just such a chasm there.