Raise the main storey on slender columns so that the ground beneath flows under the building (for circulation, cars, gardens or public space) and the rooms are lifted into light, air and view.
Streets in the air
Give high housing a deck every few floors, wide enough to be a street, on which front doors open and neighbours meet, and join the decks from block to block into a continuous network across the city.
The Smithsons saw the bye-law terraced street as the true social unit of the working-class city and wanted to rebuild it in the sky rather than sweep it away. Their Golden Lane project drew decks at every third floor, threaded through a network of slabs; the deck, not the stair or lift, was to be the place of association.
Related rules
House a whole community in one tall slab: stack duplex flats that run through the block with light on both sides, put shops and services on an interior street half-way up, and give the roof to everyone.
Make the roof flat and use it: a garden and terrace that gives back to the building the ground it covers, drained inward and kept watertight by a continuous membrane.
Where density is needed, build tall blocks widely spaced, so that every dwelling has sun, air and a view, and the ground freed between them becomes green space.
Run the decks the whole length of a continuous, snaking slab and use the fall of the site so that every deck arrives at ground level somewhere: the roofline stays level while the number of storeys rises as the ground drops.
Park Hill: decks 10 ft (3 m) wide every third floor; 4 to 13 storeys under one level roof
In a dense centre, give the ground to vehicles and service, and build a continuous pedestrian level above it (a podium and highwalks joining the buildings) so that people never meet the traffic.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Streets in the air”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/streets-in-the-air. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.