CONSTRUCTION
Yet at the same time, they are also more abstract. The particular concrete formulation which we have given for each pattern, can also be interpreted, and remade in a thousand ways. Thus, it is also possible to take the general idea of the pattern, the idea that the foundation functions like a tree root, in the way that it anchors the building in the ground—and invent a dozen entirely different physical systems, which all work in this fundamental way. In this sense, these patterns are more abstract than any others in the book, since they have a wider range of possible interpretations.
To illustrate the fact that a great variety of actual building systems can be developed, based on these patterns, we present three versions that we have developed, in response to different contexts.
In Mexico: Concrete block foundations with re-bar connectors; hollow self-aligning molded earth blocks reinforced with bamboo for walls and columns; burlap formed concrete beams; steep barrel vaults with earth and asphalt covering—everything whitewashed.
In Peru: Slab floors poured integrally with wall foundations j finished with soft baked tiles j hard wood (diablo fuerte) columns and beams ; plaster on bamboo lath acting as shear walls between columns j diagonal wood plank ceiling/floors; bamboo lattice partitions.
In Berkeley: Concrete slab finished with colored wax; walls of exterior skin of i x boards and interior skin of gypboard filled with light weight concrete; box columns made of i x boards, filled with lightweight concrete j 2-inch concrete ceiling/floor vaults formed with wood lattice and burlap forms.
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CONSTRUCTION
As you can see from these examples, we have formulated these patterns with very careful attention to cost. We have tried to give examples of these patterns which use the cheapest, and most easily available, materials $ we have designed them in such a way that such buildings can be built by lay people (who can therefore avoid the cost of labor altogether); and we have designed it so that the cost of labor, if done professionally, is also low.
Of the three parts of the language, this third part is the least developed. Both the part on Towns and the part on Buildings have been tested, one partially, the other very thoroughly, in practice. This third part has so far only been tested in a small number of relatively minor buildings. That means, obviously, that this material needs a good deal of improvement.
However, we intend, as soon as possible, to test all these patterns thoroughly in various different buildings •—houses, public buildings, details, and additions. Once again, as soon as we have enough examples to make it worth reporting on them, we shall publish another volume which describes them, and our findings.
In many ways, rough though it is, this is the most exciting part of the language, because it is here, in these few patterns, that we can most vividly see a building literally grow before our eyes, under the impact of the patterns.
The actual process of construction, in which the sequence of their patterns creates a building, is described in chapter 23 of The Timeless Way.
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Before you lay out construction details, establish a fhilosofhy of structure which will let the structure grow directly from your flans and your conceftion °f the buildings.
205. STRUCTURE FOLLOWS SOCIAL SPACES
206. EFFICIENT STRUCTURE
207. GOOD MATERIALS
208. GRADUAL STIFFENING
205 STRUCTURE FOLLOWS SOCIAL SPACES**
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. . . if you have used the- earlier patterns in the language, your plans are based on subtle arrangements of social spaces. But the beauty and subtlety of all these social spaces will be destroyed, when you start building, unless you find a way of building which is able to follow the social spaces without distorting or rearranging them for engineering reasons.
This pattern gives you the beginning of such a way of building. It is the first of the 49 patterns which deal specifically with structure and construction; it is the bottleneck through which all languages pass from the larger patterns for rooms and building layout to the smaller ones which specify the process of construction. It not only has its own intrinsic arguments about the relation between social spaces and load-bearing structure—it also contains, at the end, a list of all the connections which you need for patterns on structure, columns, walls, floors, roofs, and all the details of construction.
v v •:*
No building ever feels right to the people in it unless the physical spaces (defined by columns, walls, and ceilings) are congruent with the social spaces (defined by activities and human groups).
And yet this congruence is hardly ever present in modern construction. Most often the physical and social spaces are incon-gruent. Modern construction—that is, the form of construction most commonly practiced in the mid-twentieth century— usually forces social spaces into the framework of a building whose shape is given by engineering considerations.
There are two different versions of this incongruence.
On the one hand, there are those buildings whose structural form is very demanding indeed and actually forces the social space to follow the shape of the construction—Buckminster Fuller domes, hyperbolic paraboloids, tension structures are examples.
On the other hand, there are those buildings in which there are very few structural elements—a few giant columns and no
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| Geodesic dome. Steel and glass. |
more. In these buildings the social spaces are defined by lightweight nonstructural partitions floating free within the “neutral” physical structure given by the engineering. The buildings of Mies van der Rohe and Skidmore Owings and Merrill are examples.
We shall now argue that both these kinds of incongruence do fundamental damage—for entirely different reasons.
In the first case the structure does damage simply because it constrains the social space and makes it different from what it naturally wants to be. To be specific: we know from our experiments that people are able to use this pattern language to design buildings for themselves; and that the plans they create, unhampered by other considerations, have an astonishing range of free arrangements, always finely tuned to the details of their lives and habits.
Any form of construction which makes it impossible to implement these plans and forces them into the strait jacket of an alien geometry, simply for structural reasons, is doing social damage.
Of course, it could be argued that the structural needs of a building are as much a part of its nature as the social and psychological needs of its inhabitants. This argument might perhaps, perhaps, hold water if there were indeed no way of building buildings which conform more exactly to the loose plans based on activities alone.
But the next fete 'patterns in this hook make it very clear that there do exist ways of building which are structurally sound and yet perfectly congruent with social space, without any compromise whatever. I't is therefore clear that we may legitimately reject any form of construction which cannot adapt itself perfectly to the forms of space required by social action.
What of the second kind of incongruence between social space and building form—the kind where the structure creates huge areas of almost uninterrupted “flexible” space, punctuated by occasional columns, and the social spaces are created inside this framework by nonstructural partitions.