109. Long thin House

The shape of a building has a great effect on the relative degrees of privacy and overcrowding in it, and in turn has a critical effect on peoples comfort and well being. There is widespread evidence to show that overcrowding in small dwellings causes psychological and social damage. The feeling of over-crowding is largely created by the mean of point-to-point distances inside a building. In small buildings, don't cluster all the rooms together; instead string out the rooms one after the other, so the distance between rooms is as great as it can be. Use the long thin plan to help shape outdoor space on the site. (Alexander 1977)