Why is it that these caps are so important and have such a powerful effect on the building as a whole?
Here are some possible reasons.
1. They crown the roof. They give the roof the status that it deserves. The roof is important, and the caps emphasize this fact.
2. They add detail. They make the roof less homogeneous, and
build up these larger city patterns from the grass roots) through action essentially controlled by two levels of self-governing communities} which exist as physically identifiable places;
12. COMMUNITY OF 7OOO
13. SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY
14. IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD
15. NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY
CONSTRUCTION
they relieve the roof from being a single uninterrupted thing. The walls get this relief from windows, doors, balconies, which add scale and character; when a roof has many dormers, it seems to need the caps less.
3. The caps provide a connection to the sky, in a way that might have had religious overtones at one time. Just as the building needs a sense of connection to the earth—see connection to the earth (168)—perhaps the roof needs a connection to the sky.
In the building system we propose, the roof caps are weights we use at the ridge of the roof to make the slight curve in the pitched sides of the roof. They happen at regular intervals, at the ridges of the scallops. They need not be large—a small bag of sand or a stone will do, plastered with concrete and shaped so the bulge is obvious. It may be nice to paint them a different color from the roof.
Of course, there are hundreds of other possible kinds of roof caps. They can be brick chimneys, statues, vents, structural details, the pinnacles on a gothic buttress, weather vanes, or even windmills.
Therefore:
Choose a natural way to cap the roof—some way which is in keeping with the kind of construction, and the meaning of the building. The caps may be structural; but their main function is decorative—they mark the top—they mark the place where the roof penetrates the sky.
connection to the sky
A
Finish the roof caps any way you want, but don’t forget them—ornament (249). . . .
fut in the surfaces and the indoor details;
233. FLOOR SURFACE
234. LAPPED OUTSIDE WALLS
235. SOFT INSIDE WALLS
236. WINDOWS WHICH OPEN WIDE
237. SOLID DOORS WITH GLASS
238. FILTERED LIGHT
239. SMALL PANES
240. HALF-INCH TRIM
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| 233 FLOOR surface** |
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. . . this pattern tells you how to put the surface on the floors, to finish the ground floor slab (215) and floor-ceiling vaults (219). When properly made, the floor surfaces will also help intensify the gradient of intimacy in the building—
INTIMACY GRADIENT (127).
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We want the floor to be comfortable, warm to the touch, inviting. But we also want it to be hard enough to resist wear, and easy to clean.
When we think of floors, we think of wood floors. We hope, if we can afford it, to have a wooden floor. Even in hot countries, where tiles are beautiful, many people want hardwood floors whenever they can afford them. But the wood floor, though it seems so beautiful, does little to solve the fundamental problem of floors. The fact is that a room in which there is a bare wood floor, seems rather barren, forbidding, makes the room sound hollow and unfurnished. To make the wooden floor nice, we put down carpets. But then it is not really a wood floor at all. This confusion makes it clear that the fundamental problem of “the floor” has not been properly stated.
When we look at the problem honestly, we realize that the wooden floor, and the wooden floor with a carpet on it, are both rather uneven compromises. The bare wooden floor is too bare, too hard to be comfortable; but not in fact hard enough to resist wear particularly well if it is left uncovered—it scratches and dents and splinters. And when the floor is covered with a carpet, the whole point of the beauty of the wood is lost. You cannot see it any more, except round the edges of the carpet; and the carpet on the floor is certainly not hard enough to resist any substantial wear. Furthermore, the most beautiful carpets, handmade rugs and tapestries, are so delicate that they cannot take very rough wear. The practice of walking on a Persian rug with outdoor shoes on is a barbarian habit, never practiced by the people who make those rugs, and know how to treat them—they always take their shoes off. But the modern nylon and acrylic rugs, machine-made for hard wear, lose all the sumptuousness and
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pleasure of the carpet: they are, as it were, soft kinds of concrete.
The problem cannot be solved. The conflict is fundamental. The problem can only be avoided by making a clear distinction in the house between those areas which have heavy traffic and so need hard wearing surfaces which are easy to clean, and those other areas which have only very light traffic, where people can take off their shoes, and where lush, soft, beautiful rugs, pillows, and tapestries can easily be spread.
Traditional Japanese houses and Russian houses solve the problem in exactly this way: they divide the floor into two zones— serviceable and comfortable. They use very clean, and often precious materials in the comfortable zone, and often make the serviceable zone an extension of the street—that is, dirt, paving, and so on. People take their shoes off, or put them on, when they pass from one zone to the other.
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| The threshold between hard and soft. |
We are not sure whether taking shoes off and on could become a natural habit in our culture. But it still makes sense to zone tire house so that the floor material changes as one gets deeper into the house. The pattern intimacy gradient (127) calls for a gradient of public, semi-public, and private rooms. It follows that one wants the floor to get softer as one goes deeper into the house—that is, the entrance and the kitchen are better floored with a hard, serviceable surface, while the dining, family room, and children’s playrooms need a serviceable floor but with comfortable spots, and the bedrooms, studies, rooms of one’s own need soft comfortable floors, on which people can sit, lie, and walk barefoot.
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233 FLOOR SURFACE
What should the materials be? Of the hard and soft materials, the hard is more of a problem. Since children are close to these floors, as well as the soft ones, they must be warm to the touch, —and at the same time they must be easy to clean. For these hard floors, a “soft” concrete might work. It can be made serviceable and pleasant at the same time if it is finished off with a lightweight textured floor finish, which is relatively porous. It can be made to wear and repel water by making the color integral with the mix and by waxing and polishing after it is set. It is fairly cheap and makes sense if the floor is a concrete floor anyway. Other materials which would work as hard floors are earth, rubber or cork tile, soft unbaked tile known as pastelleros in Peru—see soft tile and brick (248)—and wood planks, but these materials are more expensive.