Flags: The Reality of the Land (2012)

... this thirty-eight page chapter 11 will create an unforgettable and archetypal form in the site, creating the organization of the campus itself. [....]

In system-A, it is always the wholeness of the place that matters. To intensify the wholeness of any place -- whether it consists of existing buildings in a town or or virgin land that is largely unbuilt -- proposed construction and buildings decided, and that means "felt" and though through on the site itself. It is not possible to do it any other way, since the relationship which exists between the buildings and the world around them are complex and subtle.

On a drawing or a plan, one simply does not see enough. [....]

[...] system-A is a real process -- physically and emotionally real. Making the site plan is almost like making the buildings themselves. It is done on the real site, with stakes or blocks or flags. As you do it, you have the situation of building the real place, bit by bit. Emotionally, you feel as though you are literally crating the actual physical school itself. [....] [p. 165]

[...] system-A is a real process -- physically and emotionally real. Mkaing the site plan is almost like making the buildings themselves. It is done on the real site, with stakes or blocks or flags. As you do it, you have the situation of building the real place, bit by bit. Emotionally, you feel as though you are literally crating the actual physical school itself. [....] [p. 165]

[...] system-A is a real process -- physically and emotionally real. Mkaing the site plan is almost like making the buildings themselves. It is done on the real site, with stakes or blocks or flags. As you do it, you have the situation of building the real place, bit by bit. Emotionally, you feel as though you are literally crating the actual physical school itself. [....] [p. 165]

[...] Knowing the overall configuration of the land, we had already been thinking about the way the pattern language might generate a layout on that particular piece of land, given the direction of access, orientation, wind, views, slopes and so on. As the content of the pattern language became clear, we were trying to understand the site, and trying to imagine the global structure of a possible campus layout that would arise naturally from the structure of the land. [p. 167]

<h3<Section 2. Finding the Two Fundamental Systems of Centers</h3>

(1) There is a system of centers which is defined by the pattern language. Pattern-language centers define the major entities which are going to become the building blocks of the new project. In our case, the case of the Eishin project, the language defined the main building blocks or centers from which the new school and university were going to be made. The included, for instance, the entrance gate, the entrance street, the Tanoji Center, the homebase street, the main square, the back streets, Judo Hall, and many others. [p. 168]

(2) Secondly, we had the system of centers which existed in the land. This system was created by the land forms, the slopes and ridges, by the roads, by direction of access, by natural low spots, natural high spots, and by existing trees and existing buildings.

We may see the pattern-language centers in summary form, in a diagram made by one of the teachers, which puts the patterns together, geometrically. The diagram does not indicate any one arrangement on the land.

1. The Entrance Street (2012). 2. The entrance street leads to a big square element which we refer to as the Tanoji Center (2012). 3. This was to be the core of the college, and the center of gravity of the Five College Buildings (2012). 4. Leading out from the Tanoji Center, in some direction, is The Homebase Street (2012), the core of the high shcool. 5. Individual Classroom Buildings (2012) open along the Homebase Street (2012). 6. The Great Hall (2012) and Main Square (2012) next to it. 7. The Library and Research Center, to one side. [p. 170]

2. The entrance street leads to a big square element which we refer to as the Tanoji Center (2012).

3. This was to be the core of the college, and the center of gravity of the Five College Buildings (2012).

4. Leading out from the Tanoji Center, in some direction, is The Homebase Street (2012), the core of the high school.

5. Individual Classroom Buildings (2012) open along the Homebase Street (2012).

6. The Great Hall (2012) and Main Square (2012) next to it.

7. The Library and Research Center (2012), to one side. [p. 170]

These were the dominant and strongest centers which existed as "natural places" in the land.

1. Natural Entrance Position (2012). The most important among these centers was the location of the main approach. This was in the southeast corner, partly because of a bus stop in Nihongi village, and partly because of the feeling of one's natural desire about how best to approach the site.

2. The Ridge (2012), running along the south of the project site. A beautiful spot, with breeze, sunshine, view ... and a very delightful feeling. This was the high point in the site, and it was on this very point that we sat and looked and sat and talked, until we began to see what was really there to be seen. 3. The Swamp (2012), where vegetables used to be grown, the low point in the terrain -- a kind of swamp -- that later became a lake. 4. A Natural Place for Large Buildings (2012), a zone in the middle, running the way contours ran, from north to south. 5. Minor Entrance Position (2012), the northwest corner -- a natural high spot, from which to view the site, also a natural point for a secondary entrance. 6&7. East and West Ends fo the Ridge (2012), the two ends of the ridge, which formed natural high points, and at each end, the feeling of a terminus, along the two ends of the ridge. [p. 171] Thes seven centers in the land could only be discovered by observation, intensive walking about on the land itself, looking, looking, and seeing. The diagram shows how we identified their rough positions in the landscape. Repeated visits to the site, by different members of our team, consistently confirmed the reality of the centers and their positions.

What has to be done in creating a site plan for a community of an institution, is to bring these two systems of centers together. We have to hunt for a single configuration which springs from both centers, and integrates the qualities of both. We must find a way in which the system of centers defined by the pattern language can be placed, so that it enhances, preserves, and extends, the system of centers which is already in the land. It is a kind of healing process, which uses the new centers given by the pattern language, to heal the configuration of the old centers -- those that exist in the land.

In some case this is very hard to do because the two systems of centers may not coincide on all points. That is why it takes serious intellectual and emotional effort. In many architectural projects, this is the single most difficult phase of the work. The Eishin Campus was no exception. Including the time taken during the work on the pattern language, it took from May 1982 to January 1983, about nine months of continuous effort, to get the site plan right. When it was finally done, the site plan was a <i>discovery</i>, a real achievement, which came from constant study and experience of the site itself. [....] [p. 173]

In order to make it possible to think about the problem of the overall plan form, while away from Japan, we made a series of accurate topographic models of the site. We have a large one in our office in Japan, at the metric scale of 1:100. And we had two in our Berkeley offices in California -- one made at a scale of 1:200, the other was made at 1:500. The last was very small, and therefore very helpful, because it allowed us to judge the configuration <i>as a whole</i>. Larger models show details very nicely, but you lose the drift of the gestalt, as it sits on the land, and reflects the land. [p. 176]

In order to use these models, we recorded on them the seven most important facts about the land, which we had identified during our many visits to the site. The seven were these:

1. One experienced a natural desire to enter the site on the southeast corner, and to walk towards the northwest.

2. The natural position of the lake was given by the swampy low-lying area in the middle of the site, and we therefore knew its position, just from the contours.

3. There was a natural spot, somewhere near the low point and the lake-to-be, where the main square might be.

4. There was also a natural walk, from this low point to the ridge -- a walk from north to south, slightly uphill, and slightly curving. This was also inherent in the site, and could be felt by everyone.

5. The ridge along the south edge of the site was the most beautiful spot -- it was the spot where everyone went to most often and loved most, because of the view of the distant hills (even including Fujiyama, Mount Fuji, far away in the distance) and the coolness of the breeze in the summer. One felt an inspiring freedom there.

6&7. The two ends of the ridge also seemed to be natural centers, or more colloquially "good places".

These facts seemed irreconcilable with the key patterns because there seemed to be no natural way of arranging the college precinct <i>and</i> the homebase street (as we had them in the pattern language) in the fashion consistent with these seven "facts" about the land. Finally, though, after all our efforts in Japan and in Berkeley, and after all the work on the site by everyone, and so many months of frustration, the problem did get solved.

[...] a new point emerged. The fact that the homebase street would be more powerful as an <i>approach</i> to the Tanoji Center, than as something <i>hanging off</i> it. This was hard to see, at first, because it implied reversing the main sequence of the pattern language. But when we tried it, it was clear that the sequence almost instantaneously "jelled" with the land configuration. After playing with it more, we confirmed that it was indeed much better. The sequence of the pattern-language elements which we had taken as fixed, was suddenly reversed.

The reorganization seems almost minor. but it dramatically affected the situation. [p. 178]