Pattern 62: High Places

Alexander suggests;

“These high places have two separate and complementary functions. They give people a place to climb up to, from which they can look down upon their world. And they give people a place which they can see from far away and orient themselves toward, when they are on the ground.”

Summed up in three sentences, Alexander succinctly expressed what he calls “a fundamental human instinct.” These high places are something that American cities are gravely lacking. We have some of the greatest potential for viewing cities from the tops of skyscrapers but that’s all too frequently squandered.

On my sophomore trip to Chicago, I was quite taken by the city but I never got much higher than my hotel room on the fifth floor. It was possible to summit the Willis Tower and John Hancock Center building but both had a line and, if memory serves me, cost money. The year prior, I had wandered through open doors to the roof of the Park Square Theater in St. Paul and despite being familiar, discovered a whole new city with just a slight change in perspective. Last fall, my class visited San Francisco and I discovered a similar problem to Chicago. My most memorable afternoon however was spent climbing Telegraph Hill with a group of friends and then relaxing/catching our breath while admiring the city off in the distance. The climb was an important detail to that memory as Alexander puts it;

“…these visits to the high places will have no freshness or exhilaration if there is a ride to the top in a car or elevator. To get a full sense of the magnificence of the view, it seems necessary to work for it, to leave the car or elevator, and to climb. The act of climbing, even if only for a few steps, clears the mind and prepares the body.”

Everything Alexander suggests holds true to my experience abroad as I recall the heights I reached with friends and family.