We keep a garbage can full of peat moss in the privy, and dump in about a quart of the moss after each use. The privy is fairly odorless. Whenever there gets to be a smell I add lime, dirt and an extra layer of peat moss. That takes care of it. I figure that we will use three or four bales of peat moss a year—for a family of four plus a large number of guests.
My privy is of the kind familiarly known as a two-holer, which seems necessary for my composting system.
We use only one hole at a time. We use A until there is an accumulation 18 inches deep. We then shift to B and use it until the accumulation there is as great as that of A. Then the heap at A is shoveled to C, and so on. When all four positions are filled, C and D are shoveled into a heap on the ground outside, where I mean to let it stay for at least several weeks before use. (Organic Gardening and Farming, Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press, February 1972.)
Therefore:
Arrange all toilets over a dry composting chamber. Lead
825
. . . the most basic structure of a city is given by the relation of urban land to open country—city country fingers (3). Within the swaths of urban land the most important structure must come from the great variety of human groups and subcultures which can co-exist there.
•£*
The homogeneous and undifferentiated character of modern cities kills all variety of life styles and arrests the growth of individual character.
Compare three possible alternative ways in which people may be distributed throughout the city:
1. In the heterogeneous city, people are mixed together, irrespective of their life style or culture. This seems rich. Actually it dampens all significant variety, arrests most of the possibilities for differentiation, and encourages conformity. It tends to reduce all life styles to a common denominator. What appears heterogeneous turns out to be homogeneous and dull.
The heterogeneous city.
2. In a city made up of ghettos, people have the support of the most basic and banal forms of differentiation—race or economic status. The ghettos are still homogeneous internally, and
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| City of ghettos. |
organic garbage chutes to the same chamber, and use the combined products for fertilizer.
grouped toilets
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| V* *J* V |
Add to the effect of dry composting by re-using waste water; run all water drains into the garden to irrigate the soil; use organic soap—bathing room (144). . . .
go back to the inside of the building and attach the necessary minor rooms and alcoves to comflete the main rooms;
| 179. | ALCOVES |
| k—4CO0 | WINDOW PLACE |
| 181. | THE FIRE |
| 182. | EATING ATMOSPHERE |
| 183. | WORKSPACE ENCLOSURE |
| >—1 CO | COOKING LAYOUT |
| I—<00L/l | SITTING CIRCLE |
| 186. | COMMUNAL SLEEPING |
| 00 | MARRIAGE BED |
| COCO | BED ALCOVE |
| 189. | DRESSING ROOM |
827
| 179 alcoves** |
|---|
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828
. . . many large rooms are not complete unless they have smaller rooms and alcoves opening off them. This pattern, and several which follow it, define the form of minor rooms and alcoves which help to complete common areas at the heart (129),
FARMHOUSE KICHEN ( I 3 9) > SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES (142), FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE (146), A PLACE TO WAIT (150), SMALL
meeting rooms (I 5 1), and many others.
4. .♦.
No homogeneous room, of homogeneous height, can serve a group of people well. To give a group a chance to be together, as a group, a room must also give them the chance to be alone, in one’s and two’s in the same space.
This problem is felt most acutely in the common rooms of a house—the kitchen, the family room, the living room. In fact, it is so critical there, that the house can drive the family apart when it remains unsolved. Therefore, while we believe that the pattern applies equally to workplaces and shops and schools—in fact, to all common rooms wherever they are—we shall focus our discussion on the house, and the use of alcoves around the family common rooms.
In modern life, the main function of the family is emotional; it is a source of security and love. But these qualities will only come into existence if the members of the house are 'physically able to be together as a family.
This is often difficult. The various members of the family come and go at different times of day; even when they are in the house, each has his own private interests: sewing, reading, homework, carpentry, model-building, games. In many houses, these interests force people to go off to their own rooms, away from the family. This happens for two reasons. First, in a normal family room, one person can easily be disturbed by what the others are doing: the person who wants to read, is disturbed by the fact that the others are watching TV. Second, the family room does not usually have any space where people can leave
BUILDINGS
things and not have them disturbed. Books left on the dining table get cleared away at meal times; a half-finished game cannot be left standing. Naturally, people get into the habit of doing these things somewhere else—away from the family.
To solve the problem, there must be some way in which the members of the family can be together, even when they are doing different things. This means that the family room needs a number of small spaces where people can do different things. The spaces need to be far enough away from the main room, so that any clutter that develops in them does not encroach on the communal uses of the main room. The spaces need to be connected, so that people are still “together” when they are in them: this means they need to be open to each other. At the same time they need to be secluded, so a person in one of them is not disturbed by the others. In short, the family room must be surrounded by small alcoves. The alcoves should be large enough for one or two people at a time: about six feet wide, and between three and six feet deep. To make it clear that they arc separate from the main room, so they do not clutter it up, and so that people in them are secluded, they should be narrower than the family room walls, and have lower ceilings than the main room.
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| Family room alcoves. |
Since this pattern is so fundamental, we now present several quotes from various writers to underscore the fact that many people have made roughly similar observations:
From Psychosocial Interior of the Family, Gerald Handel, ed., Chicago, 111.: Aldine Publishing Company, i 967, p. 13.
This fundamental duality of family life is of considerable significance, for the individual’s efforts to take his own kind of interest
in the world, to become his own kind of person, proceed apace with his efforts to find gratifying- connection to the other members. At the same time, the other members are engaged in taking their kinds of interest in him, and in themselves. This is the matrix of interaction in which a family develops its life. The family tries to cast itself in a form that satisfies the ways in which its members want to be together and apart. . . .