Thoughts
“Why should the people of our culture choose to use the word ‘live’… and apply it only to a special portion of our lives”
“Why should we accept a world in which eight hours of the day are ‘dead’”
p. 223
“It is a mark of success in a park, public lobby or a porch, when people can come there and fall asleep…Keep the environment filled with ample benches, comfortable places”
p. 458-459
“To lay out paths, first place goals at natural points of interest. Then connect the goals to one another to form the paths.”
p. 588
“If the room contains no window which is a ‘place,’ a person in the room will be torn between two forces:
1. He wants to sit down and be comfortable.
2. He is drawn toward the light.”
p. 834
“The right sill height for a window place, with a comfortable chair, is very low: 12 to 14 inches.”
p. 836
I love this man so much, will edit with the Thought where I say window sills need to be lower. Those last two quotes were from the chapter on window places, Chapter 222 is called “Low Sill” and is on how you need lower fricking window sills.
“One of a window’s most important functions is to put you in touch with the outdoors. If the still is too high, it cuts you off. The ‘right’ height for a ground floor window sill is astonishingly low. Our experiments show that sills which are 13 or 14 inches from the floor are perfect…when you sit down by [most windows] you cannot see the ground right near the window. This is unusually frustrating—you almost have to stand up to get a complete view…On the other hand, glass all the way down to the floor is undesirable…On upper stories the sill height needs to be slightly higher. The sill still needs to be low to see the ground, but it is unsafe if it is to low. A sill height of about 20 inches allows you to see most of the ground, from a chair nearby, and still feel safe.”
p. 1051
This is *A pattern Language* by Christopher Alexander