If you are in any doubt about the objective character of the light in the room and you don’t have a spectrometer, all you need to do is to try to use color film. If the light is warm and the film is properly exposed, white walls will come out slightly pink. If the light is cold, white walls will come out slightly blue.
So, in order to make a room comfortable, you must use a collection of colors which together with the sources of light and the reflecting surfaces outside the room, combine to make the reflected light which exists in the middle of the room warm, that is, toward the yellow-red. Yellow and red colors will always do it. Blues and greens and whites will only do it in the proper places, balanced with other colors, and when the light sources are helping.
To complete the discussion we now make the concept of warm light precise in terms of chromaticity. Consider the light falling on any given surface in the middle of the room. This light contains a variety of different wavelengths. Its character is specified, exactly, by some distribution of spectral energies p(A.), which gives the relative proportions of different wavelengths present in this light.
We know that any light whatsoever—in short, any p(A.)—can be plotted as a single point on the color triangle—more formally known as the two-dimensional chromaticity diagram—by means of the standard color matching functions given in Gunter Wyszecki
1154 250 WARM COLORS
and W, S. Stiles, Color Science, New York, 1967, pp. 228-317. The coordinates of a plot in this color triangle define the chroma-ticity of an/ given energ/ distribution.
 |
| Chromaticity diagram. |
We may now identify a region on the chromaticity diagram which we shall call the warm region. It is shown hatched on the drawing.
This hatched area is based on a number of empirical results. For example, we know that people have a clear subjective impression of the relative warmth, or coldness, of different spaces. See, for instance, Committee on Colorimetry of the Optical Society of America, The Science of Color, New York, 1953, p. 168. One study which attempts to identify the objective correlates of perceived “warmth” is S. M. Newhall, “Warmth and Coolness of Colors,” Psychological Record, 4, 1941, pp. 198-212. This study revealed a maximum for “warmest” judgments at dominant wave-length 610 millimicrons, which is in the middle of the orange range. And individual observer stability in such judgments is high. Thus, one study gives reliability coefficients of 0.95 for warmth and 0.82 for coolness—N. Collins, “The Appropriateness of Certain Color Combinations in Advertising,” M. A. thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1924.
Finally, it is vital to remember that this pattern requires only that the light—the total light in the middle of a room, coming from sunlight, artificial lights, reflections from walls, reflections from outside, from carpets—the total light, lies in that part of the color triangle we call “warm.” It does not require that any individual color surfaces in the room should be red or orange or
A PATTERN LANGUAGE
The patterns are ordered, beginning with the very largest, for regions and towns, then working down through neighborhoods, clusters of buildings, buildings, rooms and alcoves, ending finally with details of construction.
This order, which is presented as a straight linear sequence, is essential to the way the language works. It is presented, and explained more fully, in the next section. What is most important about this sequence, is that it is based on the connections between the patterns. Each pattern is connected to certain “larger” patterns which come above it in the language 5 and to certain “smaller” patterns which come below it in the language. The pattern helps to complete those larger patterns which are “above” it, and is itself completed by those smaller patterns which are “below” it.
Thus, for example, you will find that the pattern accessible green (60), is connected first to certain larger patterns: subculture boundary (13), identifiable
NEIGHBORHOOD ( 14), WORK COMMUNITY (41), and
quiet backs (59). These appear on its first page. And it is also connected to certain smaller patterns: positive
OUTDOOR SPACE (1O7), TREE PLACES (171), and GARDEN
wall (173). These appear on its last page.
What this means, is that identifiable neighborhood, subculture boundary, work community, and quiet backs are incomplete, unless they contain an accessible green j and that an accessible green is itself incomplete, unless it contains positive outdoor space, tree places, and a garden wall.
And what it means in practical terms is that, if you
. . . the mosaic of subcultures (8) and its individual subcultures, whether they are communities of 7000 (12) or identifiable neighborhoods (14), need to be completed by boundaries. In fact, the mere creation of the boundary areas, according to this pattern, will begin to give life to the subcultures between the boundaries, by giving them a chance to be themselves.
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The mosaic of subcultures requires that hundreds of different cultures live, in their own way, at full intensity, next door to one another. But subcultures have their own ecology. They can only live at full intensity, unhampered by their neighbors, if they are physically separated by physical boundaries.
In mosaic of subcultures (8) we have argued that a great variety of subcultures in a city is not a racist pattern which forms ghettos, but a pattern of opportunity which allows a city to contain a multitude of different ways of life with the greatest possible intensity.
But this mosaic will only come into being if the various subcultures are insulated from one another, at least enough so that no one of them can oppress, or subdue, the life style of its neighbors, nor, in return, feel oppressed or subdued. As we shall see, this requires that adjacent subcultures are separated by swaths of open land, workplaces, public buildings, water, parks, or other natural boundaries.
The argument hinges on the following fact. Wherever there is an area of homogeneous housing in a city, its inhabitants will exert strong pressure on the areas adjacent to it to make them conform to their values and style. For example, the “straight” people who lived near the “hippie” Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco in 1967 were afraid that the Haight would send their land values down, so they put pressure on City Hall to get the Haight “cleaned up”—that is, to make the Haight more like their own area. This seems to happen whenever one subculture is
CONSTRUCTION
yellow—only that the combined effect of all the surfaces and lights together, creates light in the middle of the room which lies in the warm part of the color triangle.
Therefore:
Choose surface colors which, together with the color of the natural light, reflected light, and artificial lights, create a warm light in the rooms.
| warm light | |
|---|---|
 | yellowsreds |
| /V | |
oranges
and browns
•S* -h v
This means that yellows, reds, and oranges will often be needed to pick out trim and lampshades and occasional details— HALF-INCH TRIM (240), ORNAMENT (249), POOLS OF LIGHT (252). Colored canvas roofs (244) and soft tile and brick (248) also help to make warm colored light. Blues and greens and greys are much harder to use 5 especially on the north side where the light is cold and grey, but they can always be used for ornament, where they help to set off the warmer colors—ornament (249)....