Gate Separating Two Districts

In Pattern 15, Neighborhood Boundary, Christopher Alexander sets forth the reasons that neighborhoods should have identifiable boundaries. Among other demarcations, walls can serve this purpose, and such a wall calls for a gate where a street passes from one neighborhood to another.

In Fes-al-Bali, Morocco, this arrangement is universally applied, with some sort of gate always delineating the transition from one neighborhood to another. Some of these gates are nothing more than a large balk of timber across the street. Usually, however, these gates are in the form of a Moorish arch, and some of them are exquisite.

We consider here a variety of gates which serve to separate one neighborhood from another. (Most gates actually serve several functions, of course.)

E-mail
Carfree.com
Text ©2001-2002 J.Crawford