TOWNS
no farms; no uncharted wilderness. Every piece of countryside has keepers who have the right to farm it, if it is arable; or the obligation to look after it, if it is wild; and every piece of land is open to the people at large, provided they respect the organic processes which are going on there.
The central conception behind this view of the land is given by Aldo Leopold in his essay, “The Land Ethic” (A Sand County Almanac, New York: Oxford University Press, 1949); Leopold believes that our relationship to the land will provide the framework for the next great ethical transformation in the human community:
This extension of ethics, so far studied only by philosophers, is actually a process in ecological evolution. Its sequences may be described in ecological as well as in philosophical terms. An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-operation. The ecologist calls these symbioses. Politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which the original free-for-all competition has been replaced, in part, by co-operative mechanisms with an ethical content. . . .
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate. . . .
The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. . . .
Within the framework of this ethic, parks and campgrounds conceived as “pieces of nature” for people’s recreation, without regard for the intrinsic value of the land itself, are dead things and immoral. So also are farms conceived as areas “owned” by the farmers for their own exclusive profit. If we continue to treat the land as an instrument for our enjoyment, and as a source of economic profit, our parks and camps will become more artificial, more plastic, more like Disneyland. And our farms will become more and more like factories. The land ethic replaces the idea of public parks and public campgrounds with the concept of a single countryside.
BUILDINGS
eptitude that makes trying- not worth while, increasingly confirms the inactivity of the crowd. It is not then all forms of action that invite the attempt to action: it is the sight of action that is within the possible scope of the spectator that affords a temptation eventually irresistible to him. Short though the time of our experiment has been, this fact has been amply substantiated, as the growth of activities in the Centre demonstrates. (The Peckham Experiment, I. Pearse and L. Crocker, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947, pp. 67—72.)
Therefore:
In any public space which depends for its success on its exposure to the street, open it up, with a fully opening wall which can be thrown wide open, and if it is possible, include some part of the activity on the far side of the pedestrian path, so that it actually straddles the path, and people walk through it as they walk along the path.
There are dozens of ways to build such an opening. For example, a wall can be made very cheaply with a simple plywood hanging shutter sliding on an overhead rail, which can be removed to open up completely, and locked in place at night.
Give the opening a boundary, when it is entirely open, with a low solid wall which people can sit on—-sitting wall (243); and make an outdoor room out of the part of the path which runs past it-PATH SHAPE ( I 21), OUTDOOR ROOM (163) . . . .
| I 66 GALLERY SURROUND* |
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111
. . . we continue to fill out the building edge (160). Assume that arcades have been built wherever they make sense—arcades (119) ; there are still large areas within the building edge where building edce tells you to make something positive—but so far no patterns have explained how this can be done physically. This pattern shows you how you can complete the edge. It complements roof carden (11 8) and arcades (119) and helps to enliven the pedestrian street (ioo).
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If people cannot walk out from the building onto balconies and terraces which look toward the outdoor space around the building, then neither they themselves nor the people outside have any medium which helps them feel the building and the larger public world are intertwined.
We have discussed the importance of the building edge in two other patterns: building edge (160) itself, and arcades (119). In both cases, we explained how the arcades and the edge help to create space which people who are outside the building can use to help them feel more intimately connected with the building. These patterns, in short, look at the problem of connection from the point of view of the people outside the building.
In this pattern we discuss the same problem—but from the point of view of the people inside the building. We believe, simply, that every building needs at least one place, and preferably a whole range of places, where people can be still within the building, but in touch with the people and the scene outside. This problem has also been discussed in private terrace on the street (140). But that pattern deals only with one very important and highly specific occurrence of this need. The present pattern suggests that the need is completely generaclass="underline" very plainly, it is fundamental, an all-embracing necessity which applies to all buildings over and again.
I 66 GALLERY SURROUND
The need has been documented extensively. (See, for example, Anthony Wallace, Housing and Social Structure, Philadelphia Housing Authority, 1952; Federal Housing Authority, The Livability Problem of 1,000 Families, Washington, D. C., 1945.)
Windows on the street, while they have their own virtues, are simply not enough to satisfy this need. They usually occupy a very small part of the wall, and can only be used if a person stands at the edge of the room. The kinds of situations that are needed are far more rich and engrossing. We need places along the upper stories of the building’s edge where we can live comfortably, for hours, in touch with the street—playing cards, bringing work out on the terrace on a hot day, eating, scrambling with children or setting up an electric train, drying and folding the wash, sculpting with clay, paying the bills.
In short, almost all the basic human situations can be enriched by the qualities of the gallery surround. This is why we specify that each building should have as many versions of it as possible along its edge—porches, arcades, balconies, awnings, terraces, and galleries.
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| Four examples of this pattern. |
BUILDINGS
Therefore:
Whenever possible, and at every story, build porches, galleries, arcades, balconies, niches, outdoor seats, awnings, trellised rooms, and the like at the edges of buildings— especially where they open off public spaces and streets, and connect them by doors, directly to the rooms inside.