This is a summary of the 112th pattern from the “A Patter Language” book by Christopher Alexander and his team.
Buildings, and especially houses, with a graceful transition between the streets and the inside, are more tranquil than those which open directly off the street.
The experience of entering a building influences the way you feel inside the building. If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival, and the inside of the building fails to be an inner sanctum.
While people are on the street, they adopt a style of “street behavior.” When they come into a house they naturally want to get rid of this street behavior and settle down completely into the more intimate spirit appropriate to a home. But it seems likely that they cannot do this unless there is a transition from one to the other which helps them to lose the street behavior. The transition must, in effect, destroy the momentum of the closedness, tension and “distance” which are appropriate to street behavior, before people can relax completely.
It is possible to make the transition itself in many different physical ways. It may be just inside the front door – a kind of entry court, leading to another door or opening that is more definitely inside. In another case, the transition may be formed by a bend in the path that takes you through a gate and brushes past the roses on the way to the door. Or again, you might create a transition by changing the texture of the path, so that you step off the sidewalk onto a gravel path and then up a step or two under a trellis.
Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.
sadhana.farm 