Christopher alexander - A pattern language

conditions under which the human organism evolved, have dappled light which varies continuously from minute to minute, and from place to place.

More serious, it is a fact of human nature that the space we use as social space is in part defined by light. When the light is perfectly even, the social function of the space gets utterly destroyed: it even becomes difficult for people to form natural human groups. If a group is in an area of uniform illumination, there are no light gradients corresponding to the boundary of the group, so the definition, cohesiveness, and “existence” of the group will be weakened. If the group is within a “pool” of light, whose size and boundaries correspond to those of the group, this enchances the definition, cohesiveness, and even the phenomenological existence of the group.

One possible explanation is suggested by the experiments of Hopkinson and Longmore, who showed that small bright light sources distract the attention less than large areas which are less bright. These authors conclude that local lighting over a work table allows the worker to pay more attention to his work than uniform background lighting does. It seems reasonable to infer that the high degree of person to person attention required to maintain the cohesivencss of a social group is more likely to be sustained if the group has local lighting, than if it has uniform background lighting. (See R. G. Hopkinson and J. Longmore, “Attention and Distraction in the Lighting of Workplaces,” Ergonomics , 2, 1959, p. 321 ff. Also reprinted in R. G. Hopkinson, Lighting, London: HMSO, 1963, pp. 261—68.)

On-the-spot observation supports this conjecture. At the International House, University of California, Berkeley, there is a large room which is a general waiting and sitting lounge for guests and residents. There are 42 seats in the room, 12 of them are next to lamps. At the two times of observation we counted a total of 21 people sitting in the room; 13 of them chose to sit next to lamps. These figures show that people prefer sitting near lights (X 211.4, significant at the 0.1% level). Yet the

overall light level in the room was high enough for reading. We conclude that people do seek “pools of light.”

Everyday experience bears out the same observation in hundreds of cases. Every good restaurant keeps each table as a

CONSTRUCTION

separate pool of light, knowing that this contributes to its privai and intimate ambience. In a house a truly comfortable old chnii “yours,” has its own light in dimmer surroundings—so tha you retreat from the bustle of the family to read the paper ir, peace. Again, house dining tables often have a single lamp suspended over the table—the light seems almost to act like glue for all the people sitting round the table. In larger situations the same thing seems to be true. Think of the park bench, under a solitary light, and the privacy of the world which it creates for a pair of lovers. Or, in a trucking depot, the solidarity of the group of men sipping coffee around a brightly lit coffee stand.

One word of caution. This pattern is easy to understand; and perhaps it is easy to agree with. But it is quite a subtle matter to actually create functioning pools of light in the environment. We know of many failures: for example, places where small lights do break down even illumination, but do not correspond in any real way with the places where people tend to gather in the space.

Light fools at odds with social space.

Therefore:

Place the lights low, and apart, to form individual pools of light which encompass chairs and tables like bubbles to reinforce the social character of the spaces which they form. Remember that you can’t have pools of light without the darker places in between.

pools of light

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Color the lampshades and the hangings near the lights to make the light which bounces off them warm in color— warm colors(250). . . .

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253 THINGS from

YOUR LIFE*

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. . . lastly, when you have taken care of everything, and you start living in the places you have made, you may wonder what kinds of things to pin up on the walls.

There are two ways of looking at this simple fact. We may look at it from the point of view of the person who owns the space, and from the point of view of the people who come to it. From the owner’s point of view, it is obvious that the things around you should be the things which mean most to you, which have the power to play a part in the continuous process of selftransformation, which is your life. That much is clear.

But this function has been eroded, gradually, in modern times because people have begun to look outward, to others, and over their shoulders, at the people who are coming to visit them, and have replaced their natural instinctive decorations with the things which they believe will please and impress their visitors. This is the motive behind all the interior design and decor in the women’s magazines. And designers play on these anxieties by making total designs, telling people they have no right to move anything, paint the walls, or add a plant, because they are not party to the mysteries of Good Design.

But the irony is, that the visitors who come into a room don’t want this nonsense any more than the people who live there. It is far more fascinating to come into a room which is the living expression of a person, or a group of people, so that you can see their lives, their histories, their inclinations, displayed in manifest form around the walls, in the furniture, on the shelves. Beside such experience—and it is as ordinary as the grass—the artificial scene-making of “modern decor” is totally bankrupt.

Jung describes the room that was his study, how he filled the stone walls with paintings that he made each day directly on

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13 SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY

very different in style from another one next to it. People will be afraid that the neighboring area is going to “encroach” on their own area, upset their land values, undermine their children, send the “nice” people away, and so forth, and they will do everything they can to make the next door area like their own.

Carl Werthman, Jerry Mandel, and Ted Dienstfrey ( Planning and the Purchase Decision: Why People Buy in Planned Communities , University of California, Berkeley, July 1965) have noticed the same phenomenon even among very similar subcultures. In a study of people living in tract developments, they found that the tension created by adjacencies between dissimilar social groups disappeared when there was enough open land, unused land, freeway, or water between them. In short, a physical barrier between the adjacent subcultures, if big enough, took the heat off.

Obviously, a rich mix of subcultures will not be possible if each subculture is being inhibited by pressure from its neighbors. The subcultures must therefore be separated by land , which is not residential land , and by as much of it as possible.