Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment. — Eliel Saarinen
Again, the scale of our homes should be determined by the true needs of their occupant(s). Few of us would go into a restaurant and seek out a table in the large, open space at the center of the dining room. Most of us prefer the comfort and security of the corner booth. Ideally, every room in our homes will offer the same sense of enclosure without confinement.
To be sure that a minimized space does not feel confining, its designer has to consider ergonomics and any pertinent anthropometric data. Understanding exactly how much space we occupy when we sit, stand or lie down is absolutely essential to the subtractive process. To know how much can be excised from our homes, we must first understand how much is needed. An extensive list of recommended dimensions is provided on pages 117 — 122. When a home’s designer is also to be its sole inhabitant, a more personalized list can be made. Every measurement within a house, from the size of its doorways to the height of its kitchen counter, should ideally be determined by what feels good to the occupant. Designing one’s own little house is more like tailoring a suit than what is normally thought of as architecture.
The overall scale of our homes does not need to accommodate every possible activity under the sun. With little exception, home is the place we go to sit and to lie around at the end of each day. There will also most likely be some cooking, eating, hygiene, working and playing going on, but none of these activities needs to occupy a palace. Remember, "half a mat to stand, one mat to sleep.”
Gestalt psychologists have shown that compositions with long, continuous lines make more sense to us than those with a lot of little broken ones. Continuity allows us to read a composition as a whole. The principle of alignment is just one part of what some psychologists have termed the "simplicity” concept. This states that simple patterns are easier for us to comprehend than complex ones. This will come as no surprise to vernacular architects, who have been putting the concept to work for quite some time now. Common sense has always been the folk designer’s greatest asset.
Alignment entails arranging the elements of a design along a single axis or arc whenever possible. When a group of columns is required, a savvy designer will not just put one over here and arbitrarily plop the next two down wherever chance or ego dictates. The designer will line them up in a row. The geometry of alignment may contain some real lines, like the kind produced by a solid wall, and it may have some implied ones, like the axis that runs through a row of well-ordered columns.
