Touching the City: Thoughts on Urban Scale - AD Primer

4On Scale and Grain

‘At the present tempo of building, there is not time for the slow adjustment of form to small, individualized forces. Therefore we must depend far more than formerly on conscious design: the deliberate manipulation of the world for sensuous ends.’

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, 1960¹

Grain of growthThe long grain of timber indicates its direction of growth, the end grain denotes its age.

The grain of a piece of wood represents both its age and its direction of growth. The same is true of sedimentary stones; they build up in layers over time. If we look at a cut tree trunk, each ring marks out a year: winter to spring, spring to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter and round again. Faster-growing trees have a coarser grain because the rings are further apart. Slower-growing trees have a finer grain. The laws of construction dictate that a timber column will be cut on the long grain. This is the direction of the tree as it grows up towards sunlight and forms its line of strength in bending. The rings of the tree are concentric cylinders and the end grain is revealed where the timber is cut. The differences between long grain and end grain, fine grain and coarse grain, as well as the fact that trees take time to grow, are analogous with the fabric and nature of cities.

Lexington Street, Soho, LondonA collage of vertical and horizontal grain. ...