A Pattern Language, part 1

From A Pattern Language:
A. Household Mix

1. Corresponding areas of singles, couples, small families
2. Lack of diverse contact with different stages of life.
3. "Encourage growth towards a mix of household types in every neighbourhood, and every cluster so that one-person households, couples, families with children, and group houses are side-by-side.
4. OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

B. Degrees of Publicness

1. Public, halfway, isolated
2. Row Houses

•  "...Typical row houses are dark inside, stamped form a n identical mould." (205)
• Windows only along the short side

           - The long, thin house

C. The Family

1. "The nuclear family is not by itself a viable social form." (377)
2. Balance of privacy and communality
3. Large family room-farmhouse kitchen (in the MIDDLE)

D. House for a Small Family

1. Common area, couple's realm, children's realm

E. House for a Couple

1. Ample opportunity for solitude/privacy
2. Room for Growth/change

F. House for One Person

1. "Once a household for one person is part of some larger group, the most critical problem which arises is the need for simplicity." (390)
2. Self-sufficiency/economy
3. Bare-bones necessity
4. "Nothing that is not needed, everything that is."
5. "Small size does not preclude richness of form."
6. "When it is well-done, a small house feels wonderfully continuous--cooking a bowl of soup fills the house; there is no rattling around." (391)

G. Your Own Home

1. "People cannot be genuinely comfortable and healthy in a house which is not theirs.  All forms of rental...work against the natural processes which allow people to form stable, self-healing communities." (393)
2. "People will only be able to feel comfortable in their houses, if they can change their houses to suit themselves...rearrange [the house] as they like it." (393)

• Not every house must be owned!
• CONTROL

H. Intimacy Gradient

1. Degrees of inticimacy-->hierarchy 
2. Front to back

I. Indoor Sunlight

1. Most important rooms are oriented to the SOUTH
2. E-W axis
3. Open up indoor sunny rooms to the outdoors
4. BDRMs get EAST exposure

J. Common Areas at the Heart

1. "No social group...can survive without constant informal contact among its members." (618)
2. At a tangent to the path of circulation
3. Kitchen/eating/sitting