Therefore:
Adjust the walls, openings, and windows in each indoor space until you reach the right balance between open, flowing space and closed cell-like space. Do not take it for granted that each space is a room; nor, on the other hand, that all spaces must flow into each other. The right balance will always lie between these extremes: no one room entirely enclosed; and no space totally connected to another. Use combinations of columns, half-open walls, porches, indoor windows, sliding doors, low sills, french doors, sitting walls, and so on, to hit the right balance.
| 50 per cent opening |
|---|
 |
| 50 per cent solid |
Therefore:
Do everything possible to enrich the cultures and subcultures of the city, by breaking the city, as far as possible, into a vast mosaic of small and different subcultures, each with its own spatial territory, and each with the power to create its own distinct life style. Make sure that the subcultures are small enough, so that each person has access to the full variety of life styles in the subcultures near his own.
| hundreds of different subcultures |
|---|
 |
We imagine that the smallest subcultures will be no bigger than 150 feet across; the largest perhaps as much as a quarter of a mile -COMMUNITY OF 7OOO (l2), IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD
(14), house cluster (37). To ensure that the life styles of each subculture can develop freely, uninhibited by those which are adjacent, it is essential to create substantial boundaries of nonresidential land between adjacent subcultures—subculture
BOUNDARY (13). . . .
50
BUILDINGS
Wherever a small space is in a larger space, yet slightly separate from it, make the wall between the two about half-open and half-solid—alcoves (179), workspace enclosure (183). Concentrate the solids and the openings, so that there are essentially a large number of smallish openings, each framed by thick columns, waist high shelves, deep soffits, and arches or braces in the corners, with ornament where solids and openings meet—interior windows (194), COLUMNS AT THE CORNERS (212), COLUMN PLACE (226), COLUMN CONNECTIONS (227), SMALL PANES (239), ORNAMENT (249)....
| 194 interior windows |
|---|
 |
897
. . . at various places in the building, there are walls between rooms where windows would help the rooms to be more alive by creating more views of people and by letting extra light into the darkest corners. For instance, between passages and rooms or between adjacent living rooms, or between adjacent work rooms
-BUILDING THOROUGHFARE (lOl), ENTRANCE ROOM ( I 30),
THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS ( I 3 I), SHORT PASSAGES (132), TAPESTRY OF LIGHT AND DARK ( I 3 5) , SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES (l42), HALF-OPEN WALL ( I 93 ) .
Windows are most often used to create connections between the indoor and the outdoors. But there are many cases when an indoor space needs a connecting window to another indoor space.
This is most often true for corridors and passages. These places can easily seem deserted. People feel more connected to one another by interior windows, and the passages in the building become less deserted.
The same may hold for certain rooms, especially small rooms. Three bare walls and a window can seem like a prison. Windows placed between rooms, or between a passage and a room, will help to solve these problems and will make both the passages and the rooms more lively.
Furthermore, when rooms and passages are visibly connected to one another, it is possible to grasp the overall arrangement of a building far more clearly than in a building with blank walls between all the rooms.
It is enough if these windows allow people to see through them; they do not need to be open nor the kind which can be opened. Ordinary, cheap, fixed glazing will do all that is required.
Therefore:
Put in fully glazed fixed windows between rooms which
194 interior windows
tend to be dead because they have too little action in them or where inside rooms are unusually dark.
Make the windows the same as any other windows, with small panes of glass—small panes (239). In some case it may be right to build interior windows in the doors—solid doors with glass
(237)- • • •
195 STAIRCASE VOLUME*
 |
| rK)'J £ to vole* |
900
. . . STAIRCASE AS A STAGE ( I 3 3) and OPEN STAIRS ( I 5 8) will tell you roughly where to place the various stairs, both indoors and outdoors. This pattern gives each stair exact dimensions and treats it like a room so that it becomes realistic in the plan.
•I- v v
We are putting this pattern in the language because our experiments have shown us that lay people often make mistakes about the volume which a staircase needs and therefore make their plans unbuildable.
 |
| Staircase froblems—too short |
 |
| ... no ufstairs volume. |
Here are some examples of the stairs which people who arc not used to building, draw, or think of, when they try to lay out houses for themselves.
Obviously, these stairs will not work; and the misunderstandings of the nature of the stair are so basic, that it is hard to correct
901
BUILDINGS
these plans without destroying them. In order to put in a realistic stair, it would be necessary to rethink the plan entirely. To avoid this kind of mental backtracking, it is essential that stairs be more or less realistic from the very start.
The simplest way to understand a stair is this. Every staircase occupies a volume, two stories high. If this volume is the right shape, and large enough to give the stair its rise, then it will be possible to fill it later, with a stair which works.
 |
| Two-story space. |
There are several possible layouts for this volume: any one of them will work, provided that the length of run is long enough for the slope of the stair, and the floor to floor height. We urge you to be as free as possible when you decide the slope of the stair. Unfortunately, the search for perfect safety in housing laws, insurance standards, and bank policies, has exaggerated the
 |
| 902 |
195 STAIRCASE VOLUME
standardisation of slopes. For example, Federal Housing Authority regulations specify that stairs should be between 30 and 35 degrees in slope. But in some cases—a very small house, a stair to the roof—such a shallow stair is a waste of space; a steep stair is far more appropriate. And in other cases—a main stair in a public building, or an outdoor stair—a much shallower stair is more generous, and more appropriate.
Therefore:
Make a two story volume to contain the stairs. It may be straight, L-shaped, U-shaped, or C-shaped. The stair may be 2 feet wide (for a very steep stair) or 5 feet wide for a generous shallow stair. But, in all cases, the entire stairwell must form one complete structural bay, two stories high.