Span the whole depth of the building with the structure so that each floor is a single open plate, adaptable to uses that cannot be foreseen.
Pompidou: 48 m clear span between column lines, 13 bays of 12.8 m
The vertical village
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.
The Unité at Marseille holds about 1,600 people in 337 flats of 23 types. Its flats interlock in pairs around a central corridor (the “interior street”) on every third floor, so that each is two storeys high on one side and one storey on the other, and runs from the east face to the west. A shopping street with a hotel occupies two middle floors; the roof has a gymnasium, a nursery, a running track and an open-air theatre. The whole slab, 137 m long and 56 m high, stands on massive pilotis over a free ground.
Related rules
The outward form of a building should arise from, and express, what the building does and how it is made, as the form of every living thing expresses its life.
Build the house as a standard skeleton of flat concrete slabs, a few columns set back from the slab edges, and a stair; everything else (walls, windows, partitions) is infill that can be placed freely.
3 slabs + 6 columns + 1 stair
With a concrete frame, a house should stand on pilotis, have a free plan and a free façade, be lit by horizontal ribbon windows, and carry a garden on its flat roof.
pilotis · free plan · free façade · ribbon window · roof garden
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.
Since columns carry the floors, partitions can be placed wherever the use requires, independent of the structure and different on every storey.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The vertical village”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/unite-vertical-village. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.