Pedestrian ways

II. The forecourt Category: Semi-Public Space Subcategory: Courts The varieties of semi-public spaces must be differentiated from the family of wholly public spaces that includes the square (in its various sub-species), the plaza, and the green. Two of these semi-public spaces, the quadrangle (formed by individual buildings) and the courtyard (formed by a continuous perimeter range) occur at all scales, but most commonly at the scale of the entire block. A third type, the forecourt, also occurs at different scales, but usually associated only with a single building. The forecourt is a circulation space like the pedestrian passage — discussed in the last Technical Page — but with wider proportions and greater functional possibilities. The passage begins and ends in public spaces, while the forecourt begins in the public space of the street and ends at the private interior space of an entrance or lobby. It thus has responsibilities both to the public realm of the street and the private realm of its associated building. At the larger scale, the forecourt of a high-activity building type such as a school or a hotel can provide useful, protected space for vehicular waiting and drop-offs. Stepping back the main body of the building also lets its facade be more comprehensible than it would be if directly on the street. The forecourt flank structures (usually more utilitarian than the entry face) still receive and deliver the frontage line of the street from and to the adjacent buildings. The interior space is thereby more protected, even as its image (whatever that may be) is better projected, and the public street still respected. The forecourt serves in both directions. Many a Modernist or Neo-modernist building, placed behind a deep setback plaza, in effect uses adjacent buildings to form an involuntary, and usually ineffective, forecourt. Whatever the interest or quality of its specific architectural forms, such behavior is condescending — its neighbors are told to stand in the position usually occupied by servant spaces — and rude — since they are often given no chance to refuse the role. A true forecourt — that is, one that a building makes for itself — can be a pleasant, useful transition to the entrance of a building of almost any size, including the single-family house. Variations occur across the Transect, with the general trend that the wider, shallower forecourt of the edge zone evolves to the narrower, deeper one as street frontage becomes more valuable towards the core. Edwin Lutyens' design for a country house, Tigbourne Court, Surrey, has a wide, shallow forecourt; McKim, Mead & White's for the 1884 Villard Houses (now a forecourt for the Helmsley Palace Hotel), in midtown Manhattan, is almost square; the pre-Revolutionary Parisian city house, called an hotel, had a long, narrow forecourt behind a narrow street front. Caption: This series of images documents the transition from the public realm of the street, through the semi-public forecourt, and the arrival in the private space of the lobby interior. The forecourt, like most traditional urbanistic devices, both helps define, and is dependent upon the coherence of the street space. The buildings flanking the forecourt are its key; they hold the street line, and often (especially when on corners) have considerable prominence.