On the Architecture of a City Built for Several Definitions of a Person

There are few better places to observe the practical consequences of racial anatomy than Veyrholm, although I doubt its architects intended to contribute to the literature.

The city has been continuously occupied for so long that its streets constitute a reasonably legible history of conquest. The oldest surviving district dates to the Aesir Empire and was built according to Aesir proportions. The Dwarves inherited the site centuries later, expanded it enormously during the Great Empire, and adapted much of the older construction to their own requirements. Humans subsequently inherited both and, upon achieving independent rule, industrialised the city with the admirable confidence of a people who assumed that whatever had survived the previous two thousand years could surely accommodate a railway. It now holds substantial populations of Humans, Dwarves, Aesir, Elves, and Gremlins, with the consequence that the apparently simple question How large is a doorway? has at least three historical answers and five contemporary ones.

The oldest Aesir structures are immediately recognisable even when their inscriptions have been removed. Doorways are enormous and ceilings soar. Stair treads run broad and deep. Windows begin inconveniently high above the ground, and the stone benches appear to have been built for people expecting to share them with horses. Human visitors commonly describe these buildings as monumental, apparently preferring to believe that ancient Aesir architects were expressing imperial grandeur rather than constructing rooms in which their heads did not strike the ceiling.

This misunderstanding has persisted for centuries because the buildings genuinely are impressive. One enters an Aesir imperial hall and instinctively assumes that the scale was intended to humble the visitor. Perhaps occasionally it was. More often the architect was accommodating officials eight feet tall.

The modern use of these spaces produces peculiar adaptations. Human administrative offices erected within former Aesir halls frequently contain a second architectural layer built inside the first, with lower doors framed within ancient entrances and intermediate floors suspended halfway up rooms originally designed as single stories. Desks occupy platforms beneath windows which otherwise provide an excellent view of the upper atmosphere. In one ministry I found an Aesir doorway containing a Human doorway which had subsequently been fitted with a smaller side entrance principally used by Dwarven clerks and Gremlin messengers, the whole resembling a set of nested boxes. The Aesir employees used the original opening; everyone else used whichever hole required the least unnecessary movement. This is architecture functioning as comparative anatomy.

The Dwarven Imperial districts present almost the opposite problem. They were not built absurdly small, as popular caricature suggests, since Dwarves have never shown any particular enthusiasm for crawling through their own cities. Corridors are generally broad, public halls spacious, and major imperial roads magnificent in scale. What differs is vertical proportion.

Dwarven door handles, counters, and windows all sit low, and stair risers are short. Balustrades designed according to old imperial standards may reach only slightly above the knee of a large Aesir, which has required modification wherever Aesir residents are common, since a railing that prevents a Dwarf from falling from a balcony may function for an Aesir principally as something to trip over immediately before falling from the balcony. Modern safety codes therefore specify minimum heights according to anticipated users rather than original architectural style. This seems obvious. It took three fatal accidents and eleven years of committee debate to establish.

More interesting are the places where no official modification has occurred and residents have solved the problem themselves. A Dwarven-built market hall near the old eastern gate contains counters approximately suited to its original merchants. Human vendors have added raised work surfaces behind them, and Aesir vendors often conduct business seated. Gremlins simply climb onto the counter when necessary, a practice technically forbidden by municipal sanitation regulations and universally ignored.

I spent an hour observing one stall operated jointly by a Dwarf and an Aesir. The Dwarf stood behind the original counter while the Aesir sat upon a reinforced stool beside him, which brought their heads almost level. Neither seemed to regard this as noteworthy. Only the tourists did.

The Human industrial districts introduced a third standard which now dominates new construction: dimensions suited reasonably well to Humans and Elves, tolerably well to Dwarves, poorly to Aesir, and almost comically to Gremlins. This has produced the mistaken impression that Human proportions constitute some natural architectural middle ground. They do not. Humans simply built most recently.

An Aesir entering a Human railway carriage must stoop through the door, turn slightly in narrow corridors, and hope that the company has provided reinforced seating. A Dwarf fits comfortably but may find luggage racks inconveniently high. An Elf generally experiences no difficulty at all, which has contributed to the irritating Elven habit of regarding the entire matter as somebody else’s problem.

Gremlins face difficulties of another kind. Their small stature makes ordinary stairs tedious, counters inaccessible, ticket windows absurdly high, and public lavatories designed with apparently no expectation that anyone under four feet might possess biological needs. They compensate with extraordinary efficiency, because a Gremlin does not regard architecture as immutable. This is important. Where a Human sees a wall, a Dwarf sees masonry, an Aesir sees an obstacle, and an Elf sees something which ought perhaps not have been built there, a Gremlin frequently sees several possible routes through it.

This behavioural distinction has practical consequences. Older buildings inhabited by Gremlins acquire secondary circulatory systems: narrow passages behind cabinets, small steps attached beneath conventional stairs, handholds fixed to walls, improvised platforms beneath sinks, access routes through service ducts, and openings between rooms which nobody remembers authorising. Municipal inspectors dislike this. Gremlins regard inspectors as people who arrive periodically to discover useful improvements.

One residence I examined contained what appeared to be a small door beside the principal kitchen entrance, and I assumed it had been installed specifically for a Gremlin tenant. The tenant corrected me. It had originally been a coal hatch, to which he had added hinges. I asked whether the landlord approved. He replied, “He uses it now.” This was true.

The sharpest adaptations occur at the boundaries, where one historical scale meets another. The old Aesir district stands several feet higher than adjacent Dwarven construction in places because successive road surfaces were laid at different grades, and Dwarven engineers responded with shallow stepped ramps intended for carts and pedestrians. Human industrial planners later laid tram tracks across several of these transitions, producing intersections in which the pavement rises, descends, divides, and resumes according to three incompatible assumptions about the length of a comfortable stride.

A Human notices irregular pavement, and a Dwarf barely notices anything. The constant short steps irritate an Aesir. A Gremlin treats the entire intersection as recreational terrain. I observed three Gremlin children racing one another along a Dwarven drainage ledge while their Human guardian shouted at them from the roadway, and they were unquestionably safer on the ledge than she was among the carriages.

The city’s public transport provides perhaps the clearest demonstration of the difficulty. Early horse omnibuses were built largely to Human dimensions, to which Dwarves and Elves adapted readily. Gremlins climbed. Aesir frequently did not fit.

The modern tram authority has attempted to correct this by introducing mixed-height cars. Certain compartments contain ordinary Human seating; others include lower Dwarven benches, reinforced Aesir seats with greater leg clearance, and raised Gremlin platforms allowing smaller passengers to see through the windows rather than spend an entire journey contemplating the lower halves of strangers. This arrangement is frequently mocked as unnecessarily complicated, and those doing the mocking are usually Humans seated in the portion designed for Humans. One should always be suspicious of a man who declares an accommodation unnecessary while using it.

Even domestic etiquette has adapted to the city’s architectural history. An Aesir invited into a Dwarven home expects to sit on the floor, on reinforced furniture, or on something brought specifically for him, and a Dwarf visiting an Aesir residence may be offered a footstool without insult. Human hosts with mixed social circles often maintain chairs of several heights, although one elderly Human hostess informed me that she had solved the problem more simply by purchasing exceptionally sturdy benches and allowing everyone to “arrange themselves.” Her drawing room was among the most comfortable I visited.

There is a broader lesson here which architects, legislators, and occasionally natural philosophers would benefit from remembering. The built environment is not neutral. Every staircase contains an assumption about legs, every handle an assumption about reach, and every chair an assumption about hips, knees, weight, and the approximate location of the floor.

When one race builds almost exclusively for itself, these assumptions become invisible. They appear natural because nearly everyone using the building possesses the body for which it was designed. Veyrholm has never enjoyed this luxury. Its Aesir foundations, Dwarven streets, Human factories, Elven residents, and Gremlin alterations have produced a city in which no single anatomy can convincingly pretend to be the default. This makes the city inconvenient. It also makes it unusually civilised.

A building in Veyrholm which has remained in public use for five hundred years generally contains evidence that several different kinds of people have argued with it. There are shortened steps and lengthened ones, raised floors and lowered counters, enormous doors with smaller doors cut through them, stools beneath windows, benches replacing chairs, handrails at two heights, and occasional mysterious openings whose purpose can usually be determined by waiting until a Gremlin passes through one.

Architectural purists complain that such modifications destroy historical integrity. Perhaps, but a city is not a museum specimen. If one wishes to preserve a building exactly as it was when only one sort of person was expected to use it, the simplest method is to keep everyone else out. Veyrholm has attempted that periodically, and its architecture suggests that it eventually knew better.