Once again, many important patterns cannot be incorporated into the design—fight on two sides of every room (159), for example simply cannot be included in a giant rectangle. But in this type of building, there is an additional kind of incongruence between social space and engineering structure which comes from the fact that the two are virtually independent of each other. The engineering follows its own laws, the social space follows its laws—and they do not match.
This mismatch is perceived and felt not merely as a mismatch, but as a fundamental and disturbing incoherence in the fabric of the building, which makes people feel uneasy and unsure of themselves and their relation to the world. We offer four possible explanations.
First: the spaces called for by the patterns dealing with social and psychological needs are critical. If the spaces are not right, the needs are not met and problems are not solved. Since these spaces are so critical, it stands to reason that they must be felt as real spaces, not flimsily or haphazardly partitioned spaces, which
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only pay lip-service to the needs people experience. For instance, if an entrance room is created with flimsy partitions, it will not take hold; people won’t take it seriously. Only when the most solid elements of the building form the spaces will the spaces be fully felt and the needs which call for the space then fully be satisfied.
Second: a building will also seem alien unless it gives to its users a direct and intuitive sense of its structure—how it is put together. Buildings where the structure is hidden leave yet another gap in people’s understanding of the environment around them. We know this is important to children and suspect it must be important to adults too.
Third: when the social space has, as its own surrounding, the fabric of the load-bearing structure which supports that space, then the forces of gravity are integrated with the social forces, and one feels the resolution of all the forces which are acting in this one space. The experience of being in a place where the forces are resolved together at once is completely restful and whole. It is like sitting under an oak tree: things in nature resolve all the forces acting on them together: they are, in this sense, whole and balanced.
Fourth: it is a psychological fact that a space is defined by its corners. Just as four dots define a rectangle to your eye, so four posts (or more) define an imaginary space between them.
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Four foints make a rectangle.
This is the most fundamental way in which solids define space. Unless the actual solids which make up the building lie at the corners of its social spaces, they must, instead, be creating other virtual spaces at odds with the intended ones. The building will only be at rest psychologically if the corners of its rooms are clearly marked and coincide, at least in the majority of cases, with its most solid elements.
205 STRUCTURE FOLLOWS SOCIAL SPACES There fore:
A first principle of construction: on no account allow the engineering to dictate the building’s form. Place the load bearing elements—the columns and the walls and floors—according to the social spaces of the building; never modify the social spaces to conform to the engineering structure of the building.
You will be able to guarantee that structure follows social spaces by placing columns at the corner of every social space— columns at the corners (212); and by building a distinct and separate vault over each room and social space—floorceiling vaults (219).
For the principles of structure which will make it possible to build your building according to this pattern, begin with efficient structure (206) ; for the class of compatible materials, see good materials (207) ; for the fundamentals of the process of construction, see gradual stiffening (208). . . .
industrial giants. (See Raymond Vernon, Metrofolis 1985, Chapter 7: External Economics.)
To understand these facts, we must first realize that the city itself is a vast centralized workspace and that all the benefits of this centralization are potentially available to every work group that is a part of the city’s vast work community. In effect, the urban region as a whole acts to produce economies of scale by bringing thousands of work groups within range of each other. If this kind of “centralization” is properly developed, it can support an endless number of combinations between small, scattered workgroups; and it can lend great flexibility to the modes of production. “Once we understand that modern industry does not necessarily bring with it financial and physical concentration, the growth of smaller centers and a more widespread distribution of genuine benefits of technology will, I think, take place” (Lewis Mumford, Sticks and Slones, New York, 1924, p. 216).
Remember that even such projects as complicated and seemingly centralized as the building of a bridge or a moon rocket, can be organized this way. Contracting and subcontracting procedures make it possible to produce complicated industrial goods and services by combining the efforts of hundreds of small firms. The Apollo project drew together more than 30,000 independent firms to produce the complicated spaceships to the moon.
Furthermore, there is evidence that the agencies which set up such multiple contracts look for small, semi-autonomous firms. They know instinctively that the smaller, more self-governing the group, the better the product and the service (Small Sellers and Large Buyers in American Industry, Business Research Center, College of Business Administration, Syracuse University, New York, 1961).
Let us emphasize: we are not suggesting that the decentralization of work should take precedence over a sophisticated technology. We believe that the two are compatible: it is possible to fuse the human requirements for interesting and creative work with the exquisite technology of modern times. It is possible to make television sets, xerox machines and IBM typewriters, automobiles, stereo sets and washing machines under human working conditions. We mention in particular the xerox and IBM typewriters because they have played a vital role for us, the authors of
| 206 efficient structure* |
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. . . this pattern complements the pattern structure follows social spaces (205). Where that pattern defines the relationship between the social spaces and the structure, this pattern lays down the kind of structure which is dictated by pure engineering. As you will see, it is compatible with structure follows social spaces, and will help to create it.
V
Some buildings have column and beam structures; others have load-bearing walls with slab floors; others are vaulted structures, or domes, or tents. But which of these, or what mixture of them, is actually the most efficient? What is the best way to distribute materials throughout a building, so as to enclose the space, strongly and well, with the least amount of material?
Engineers usually say that there is no answer to this question. According to current engineering practice it is first necessary to make an arbitrary choice among the basic possible systems—and only then possible to use theory and calculation to fix the size of members within the chosen system. But, the basic choice itself— at least according to prevailing dogma—cannot be made by theory.
To anyone with an enquiring mind, this seems quite unlikely. That such a fundamental choice, as the choice between column and beams systems and load-bearing wall systems and vaulted systems, should lie purely in the realm of whim—and that the possible myriad of mixed systems, which lie between these archetypes, cannot even be considered—all this has more to do with the status of available theory than with any fundamental insight.