LEGP Blog #22

Matysiak Family Pattern Language Lists and Maps, Part 5 - 8

#5 Homestead

Only fertile land in a social system can survive.

The makeup is that 75% of the land is a homestead. 50% free of buildings, roads and other structures. 25% for farming and ranching , and leave 25% for wild habitat and biodiversity preservation. Be very wary of the automobile and other machines: keep them under very strict limits.

#6 Family

The nuclear family is not by itself a viable social form.

Set up processes which encourage groups of 8-12 people to come together and establish communal households. Morphologically, the important things are:

· Private realms for the groups and individuals that make up the extended family: couple’s realms, private rooms, sub-households for small families.

· Common space for shared functions: cooking, working, gardening, child care.

· At the important crossroads of the site, a place where the entire group can meet and sit together.

#7 Master and Apprentice

The fundamental learning situation is one in which a person learns by helping someone who really knows what they are doing.

Arrange the work in every workgroup, industry, and office, in such a way that work and learning go forward hand in hand. Treat every piece of work as an opportunity for learning. To this end, organize work around a tradition of masters and apprentices: and support this form of social organization with a division of the workspace into spatial clusters – one for each master (mentor) and their apprentices – where they can work and meet together.

#8 Building Complex

A building cannot be a human building unless it is a complex of still smaller buildings or smaller parts which manifest its own internal social facts. Never build large monolithic buildings. Whenever possible translate your building program into a building complex, whose parts manifest the actual social facts of the situation. At low densities, a building complex may take the form of a collection of small buildings connected by arcades, paths, bridges, shared gardens and walls.

At higher densities, a single building can be treated as a building complex, if its important parts are picked out and made identifiable while still part of one 3-dimensional fabric. Even a smaller building, a house, for example, can be conceived as a “building complex” , perhaps part of it is higher than the rest, with wings and an adjoining cottage.