“For instance, in order for the pattern of events ‘watching the world go by’ to happen, it is essential that the porch should be a little raised above the level of the street; it is essential that the porch be deep enough, to let a group of people sit there comfortably; and it is essential, of course, that the front of the porch be open, pierced with openings, and that the roof is therefore supported on columns.”
Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building

They say that ‘time is money.’ This line encapsulates a view that has become common; it is in the air we breath. It seems to make perfect sense.

And it is pernicious.

Time is the context given to us in which to live life. It is, in a sense, all that we have. To see money as the fundamental lens through which to evaluate time is a serious mistake.

It would have us think, for instance, that ‘watching the world go by’ is a bad use of time, or in any case a lesser use to be tolerated. Alexander, on the other hand, suggests that such watching is a basic pattern of human life, and that we should have a space designed to accommodate it.

This ‘watching’ is normally done together with others, and as such is a way of being-together. To be a spectator of the hurly burly, or of the simple activities of living, can foster an understanding that we humans cannot be reduced to our work, or to our particular roles in this temporal drama. Somehow by this watching we stand outside, and are not engulfed by the day to day.

In his essay ‘The Hind Tit’ in I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, Andrew Lytle cites the account of a man named Olmstead who visited the rural south in the 1850’s. The northerner was amazed how some farm hands from whom he asked directions seemed perfectly willing to stand and shoot the breeze for some time. The visitor concluded that these country folk were lazy, and that they didn’t know how to value time.

Lytle begs to differ:
“This will be the most difficult task industrialism has undertaken, and on this rock its effort to urbanize the farm will probably split—to convince the farmer that it is time, not space, which has value. It will be difficult because the farmer knows that he cannot control time, whereas he can wrestle with space, or at least with that particular part which is his orbit. He can stop, set [i.e., sit], chaw, and talk, for, unable to subdue nature, it is no great matter whether he gets a little more or a little less that year from her limitless store. He has the choice of pleasant conversation, the excitement of hunting, fishing, hearing the hounds run, or of the possibility of accumulating greater spoils. Olmstead’s young ploughmen did well to stop and talk with the ‘quair strangy’; ask ‘whare he’s bin’; ‘whare he’s aimin’ to go’; and ‘air he bin to see his kin in Texas?’ for by so doing they exchanged an uncertain physical satisfaction for a certain mental pleasure.”

These ploughmen, in other words, implicitly recognize that while their lives are primarily taken up with labor, there is always time for simple human pleasures. While such pleasures have no monetary value, they are anything but a waste.

We might bemoan the fact that it took industrialism only a couple of generations to suppress this view of the old farmers. Now time is money, and by the way we act it seems there is never enough of either.

I’m inclined to think that the sharecroppers in the photo above knew the true value of time, and of money; and that they didn’t conflate the two. Ironically, they probably also lived as though they had enough, of both. In any case, on their porch they had a place to watch the world go by, and we can let our imagination run wild about the rich times they had there.

~ ~ ~

A final practical point from Alexander:
“Balconies and porches are often made small to save money; but when they are too small, they might just as well not be there. Whenever you build a balcony, a porch, a gallery, or a terrace always make it at least six feet deep.” A Pattern Language, pp. 782-84

Restoring Home Life Room Mini-Series

This is the sixth in a series taking a thoughtful tour through a house, room by room, based on the writings of Christopher Alexander.

I. Restoring Home Life: Room by Room

II. A Room for the Family

III. The Kitchen: The Last Stand of the Home

IV: A Space for Children in the Home

V: The Marriage Bed: Can It Really Work?

VI: A Place to Watch the World Go By

VII: The Living Room: A Place for Formality

VIII: The Bathroom: Remembering Differences

IX:  Does Your Home Have a Physical Center?

 

Christopher Alexander (1936–) was born in Austria and is currently an emeritus professor of architecture at the University of California, where he taught for almost forty years. He has been widely influential through his theories of architecture, and is especially known for his 1977 book A Pattern Language.

Image: photo by by Russell Lee, the great photo-journalist of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930’s. Featured here are sharecroppers in Missouri during the Depression.

Pin It on Pinterest