Our pattern language: Zones

Once upon a time, we spoke of how we narrowed down the 253 patterns in A Pattern Language down to the ~70 that we felt were most relevant to our home. Today we want to go into more detail about those patterns, starting with the "big moves", those patterns that underlie our sense of place.

Our home begins with

House for a small family (76):

• Problem: In a house for a small family, it is the relationship between children and adults which is most critical.
• Therefore: Give the house three distinct parts: a realm for the parents, a realm for the children, and a common area. Conceive these three realms as roughly similar in size, with the commons the largest.^[1]

This overarching pattern leads naturally to three others: Common areas at the heart, Couple's realm, and Children's realm.

Common areas at the heart (129):

• Problem: No social group — whether a family, a work group, or a school group — can survive without constant informal contact among its members.
• Therefore: Create a single common area for every social group. Locate it at the center of gravity of all the spaces the group occupies, and in such a way that the paths which go in and out of the building lie tangent to it.
• In our home: Our open great room acts as the heart of our home. It lies tangent to the main entry (on the right, below) and, less directly, to the back entry (at the bottom of the stairs to the left). We have other shared spaces, but this one is truly the heart of the home.

Common areas at the heart of our main floor

Couple's realm (136):

• Problem: The presence of children in a family often destroys the closeness and the special privacy which a man and wife need together.^[2]
• Therefore: Make a special part of the house distinct from the common areas and all the children's rooms, where the man and woman of the house can be together in private. Give this place a quick path to the children's rooms, but, at all costs, make it a distinctly separate realm.
• In our home: The couple's realm is a distinct space from the rest of the home. It's more than just a bedroom — our realm is meant to be an area where we can comfortably spend time alone together. It is directly across the hall from the children's realm, making that realm distinct but accessible.

Couple's realm and Children's realm upstairs

Children's realm (137):

• Problem: If children do not have space to release a tremendous amount of energy when they need to, they will drive themselves and everybody else in the family up the wall.
• Therefore: Start by placing the small area which will belong entirely to the children — the cluster of their beds. Place it in a separate position toward the back of the house, and in such a way that a continuous play space can made from this cluster to the street, almost like a wide swath inside the house, muddy, toys strewn along the way, touching those family rooms which children need — the bathroom and the kitchen most of all — passing the common area along one side (but leaving quiet sitting areas and the couple's realm entirely separate and inviolate), reaching out to the street, either through its own door or through the entrace room, and ending in an outdoor room, connected to the street, and sheltered, and large enough so that the children can play in it when it rains, yet still be outdoors.
• In our home: This is a detailed pattern. We took what was most important to us. The children's realm is a distinctly separate space. It does have access to the outdoors without cutting through the common space (by the stairs and back door), but, since that path uses the common stair case, the access itself is only weakly part of the children's realm.

These patterns describe the defining zones of our home. In the next post, we'll look at some structures that define the physical layout of our home.

^[1] All of the patterns in have the form: context; problem statement; discussion; conclusion; related patterns. Our pattern posts will have just the problem statement and conclusion; we refer you to the book for the rest

^[2] Yes, this book, published in 1977, is full of heteronormative assumptions. Just try to ignore them.