STREET (100), HALF-HIDDEN GARDEN (ill), HIERARCHY OF OPEN SPACE ( I I4), PATH SHAPE (l2l), ACTIVITY POCKETS (124), PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET (140), OUTDOOR ROOM (163), OPENING TO THE STREET (165), GALLERY SURROUND (166), garden growing wild (172). With this pattern, you can help these natural boundaries take on their proper character, by building walls, just low enough to sit on, and high enough to mark the boundaries.
If you have also marked the places where it makes sense to build seats—seat spots (241}, front door bench (242)—you can kill two birds with one stone by using the walls as seats which help enclose the outdoor space wherever its positive character is weakest.
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In many places walls and fences between outdoor spaces are too high; but no boundary at all does injustice to the subtlety of the divisions between the spaces.
Consider, for example, a garden on a quiet street. At least somewhere along the edge between the two there is a need for a seam, a place which unites the two, but does so without breaking down the fact that they are separate places. If there is a high wall or a hedge, then the people in the garden have no way of being connected to the street; the people in the street have no way of being connected to the garden. But if there is no barrier at all—then the division between the two is hard to maintain. Stray dogs can wander in and out at will; it is even uncomfortable to sit in the garden, because it is essentially like sitting in the street.
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12 COMMUNITY OF 7000
branches of government are decentralized in function, they are often still centralized in space, hidden in vast municipal city-county buildings out of the realm of everyday life. These places are intimidating and alienating. What is needed is for every person to feel at home in the place of his local government with his ideas and complaints. A person must feel that it is a forum, that it is his directly, that he can call and talk to the person in charge of such and such, and see him personally within a day or two.
For this purpose, local forums must be situated in highly visible and accessible places. They could, for instance, be located in the most active marketplace of each community of 5000 to 7000. We discuss this possibility more fully under local town hall (44), but we emphasize it here, since the provision of a political “heart,” a political center of gravity, is an essential part of a political community.
*
 |
| Community jneeting of several thousand,. |
Therefore:
Decentralize city governments in a way that gives local control to communities of 5,000 to 10,000 persons. As nearly as possible, use natural geographic and historical boundaries to mark these communities. Give each community the power to initiate, decide, and execute the affairs that con-
The 'problem can only be solved by a kind of barrier zuhich functions as a barrier which separates, and as a seam which joins, at the same time.
A low wall or balustrade, just at the right height for sitting, is perfect. It creates a barrier which separates. But because it invites people to sit on it—invites them to sit first with their legs on one side, then with their legs on top, then to swivel round still further to the other side, or to sit astride it—it also functions as a seam, which makes a positive connection between the two places.
Examples: A low wall with the children’s sandbox on one side, circulation path on the other; low wall at the front of the garden, connecting the house to the public path; a sitting wall that is a retaining wall, with plants on one side, where people can sit close to the flowers and eat their lunch.
Ruskin describes a sitting wall he experienced:
Last summer I was lodging for a little while in a cottage in the country, and in front of my low window there were, first, some beds of daisies, then a row of gooseberry and currant bushes, and then a low wall about three feet above the ground, covered with stone-cress. Outside, a corn-field, with its green ears glistening in the sun, and a field path through it, just past the garden gate. From my window I could see every peasant of the village who passed that way, with basket on arm for market, or spade on shoulder for field. When I was inclined for society, I could lean over my wall, and talk to anybody; when I was inclined for science, I could botanize all along the top of my wall—there were four species of stone-cress alone growing on it; and when I was inclined for exercise, I could jump over my wall, backwards and forwards. That’s the sort of fence to have in a Christian country; not a thing which you can’t walk inside of without making yourself look like a wild beast, nor look at out of your window in the morning without expecting to see somebody impaled upon it in the night. (John Ruskin, The Two Paths, New York: Everyman’s Library, 1907, p. 203.)
Therefore:
Surround any natural outdoor area, and make minor boundaries between outdoor areas with low walls, about 16 inches high, and wide enough to sit on, at least 12 inches wide.
11 26
SITTING WALL
| wide top |  | seat height |
Place the walls to coincide with natural seat spots, so that extra benches are not necessary—seat spots (241); make them of brick or tile, if possible—soft tile and brick (248) ; if they separate two areas of slightly different height, pierce them with holes to make them balustrades—ornament (249). Where they are in the sun, and can be large enough, plant flowers in them or against them—raised flowers (245). . . .
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| 244 CANVAS ROOFS* |
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H28
. . . around every building there are roof gardens ( i i 8),
ARCADES ( I 19) , PRIVATE TERRACES ON THE STREET ( 140), OUTDOOR ROOMS (163), GALLERY SURROUNDS (166), TRELLISED
walks (174), and window places (180), even small parking lots (103), which all become more subtle and more beautiful with canvas roofs and awnings. And the awnings always help to create filtered light (238).
There is a very special beauty about tents and canvas awnings. The canvas has a softness, a suppleness, which is in harmony with wind and light and sun. A house or any building built with some canvas will touch all the elements more nearly than it can when it is made only with hard conventional materials.
In conventional building, it is easy to think that walls and roofs must either be solid, or missing altogether. But cloth and canvas lie just exactly halfway in between. They are translucent, let a little breeze pass through, and they are very cheap, and easy to roll up and easy to pull down.
We can identify three kinds of places that need these properties:
1. Awnings—sunshades over windows, retractable, and used to filter very bright hot sunlight.
2. Curtains—moveable, half-open walls on outdoor rooms, balconies, and galleries—places that are occupied mainly during the day, but might benefit from extra wind protection.
3. Tent-like roofs on outdoor rooms—a tent which can hold off a drizzle and make outdoor rooms, or trellises, or courtyards habitable in the spring and autumn and at night.
Here is Frank Lloyd Wright describing his use of the canvas roof in the very early structures at Taliesin West: