Problem
Arriving in a building, or leaving it, you need a room to pass through, both inside the building and outside it. This is the entrance room.
Solution
At the main entrance to a building, make a light-filled room which marks the entrance and straddles the boundary between indoors and outdoors, covering some space outdoors and some space indoors. The outside part may be like an old-fashioned porch; the inside like a hall or sitting room.
Related Patterns
… the position and overall shape of entrances is given by Family of Entrances (102), Main Entrance (110) and Entrance Transition (112). This pattern gives the entrances their detailed shape, their shape and body and three dimensions, and helps complete the form begun by Car Connection (113), and the Private Terrace on the Street (140).
Give that part of the entrance which sticks out into the street or garden a physical character which, as far as possible, make it one of the family of entrances along the street - Family of Entrances (102); where it is appropriate, make it a porch - Gallery Surround (166); and include a bench or seat, where people can watch the world go by or wait for someone - Front Door Bench (242). As for the indoor part of the entrance room, above all, make sure that it is filled with light from two or even three sides, so that the first impression of the building is of light - Tapestry of Light and Dark (135), Light on Two Sides of Every Room (159). Put windows in the door itself - Solid Doors with Glass (237). Put in Built-in Seats (202) and make the room part of the Sequence of Sitting Spaces (142); provide a Waist-High Shelf (201) for packages. And finally, for the overall shape of the entrance room and its construction, begin with The Shape of Indoor Space (191).
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 622.