Use buildings, their wings, fences, walls, and plant material to create positive outdoor spaces around buildings as illustrated in the following diagrams. We do this because people tend to use exterior space when it is enclosed in a positive fashion like a room with regular shapes and proportions, but not when it is leftover corridor-like spaces around buildings. Positive space is that which is generally convex in shape. Negative space is concave in shape, eaten into by buildings or other elements and bleeding out around the edges. T2 & T3: Enclose outdoor space with plant material, fences, arbors, and occasionally buildings. Allow positive outdoor space to look out into larger outdoor spaces. People will use grass courtyards, cultivated gardens, and even parking courts, as long as the space is positively enclosed. T4: Enclose outdoor space with buildings, garden walls, porches, arbors, fences, and occasionally plant material. Specific character of the space does not matter, because people will use grass courtyards, cultivated gardens, paved courtyards, and even parking courts, as long as the space is positively enclosed. T5 & T6: Enclose outdoor space with buildings, galleries, porches and garden walls. Size of space doesn't matter. In T5 and T6, positive outdoor space is so precious that people will enjoy tiny bits of it. Once you have created positive outdoor space, divide it into a series of garden rooms, each with its own distinct character, notably different from adjacent garden rooms, and never longer than 2:1. We do this because positive outdoor space must be treated in a conscious, intentional, and thoughtful manner in order to entice people to enjoy it. This means that the garden rooms should be well-proportioned rooms of specific shapes, each with a markedly different character from the adjacent garden room. In other words, they should be treated with every bit as much design care as a room indoors. Garden rooms should be properly proportioned. Common room proportions are 1:1, 2:1, 3:2, 4:3 (above), the Golden Mean and the square root of 2 (not illustrated.) The proportion you begin with doesn't matter. If you're dealing with an ill-proportioned space between buildings, use hedge-like plant material to fill in and create a proper proportion. Because of this, it's easier to properly proportion outdoor rooms. Surface types include hard surfaces (pavers or concrete), grass, sand or gravel, and ground cover. Each garden room should usually have a different surface material from adjacent garden rooms. Specific surface materials can vary widely within the range of materials that make sense in your region. Because most garden rooms are not visible from the street, the neighbors won't care what you use. A garden room should be a room, not just leftover space. If not a rectangle or square, make it an ellipse, circle, regular polygon, or some combination thereof. The specific shape isn't important, just as long as it is a specific shape. Just don't let it become a leftover outdoor space.