Concerning small dimensions that modern urban planning decided to abolish, the facade of this store at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in Provence, demonstrate how much can happen in the half-a-meter space between the vertical wall and the horizontal street. 

This relatively small territory is appropriated and personalized through color, plants, signs, merchandise, a small carpet.
​Is the in-between half-a-meter space private or public?  Both? Neither? A mediator?
​
The ambiguous borders between private and public seem to have been delightfully blurred. 

​

After we mentioned the meaning of a meter-and-a-half in urban planning, and the impact of half-a-meter in urban environments, this facade makes clear the impact that even smaller dimensions can make on the urban space.
​
I think took this picture in Aix-les-Bains or in Paris, long ago.

The rilievo doesn't stick more than five to ten centimetres out of the wall, and yet is capable of telling a meaningful story and link the otherwise flat wall to tradition and history. Outlawed in modern architecture, ornament and splendor are in fact basic human needs.
​

Vernacular architectural languages and dialects  were created by millions of people over thousands of years. 
​
Just like the verbal languages, architectural languages combined everyday insights and lifetime wisdom  in traditional architectural patterns that evolved though time. Can we a posteriori rationalize the patterns we find? Can we fully recognize those patterns?  Colors, vertical openings, juxtaposition of buildings, textures, immediacy to water? 

Is it a sort of architectural Tao that can not be named, explained or expressed in words? Apparently it has to be lived unintentionally.