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PATTERN LANGUAGE · 26 March 2007, 08:40 by Walt Jarsky

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander

I just finished reading the more than five hundred pages of his first book TIMELESS WAY OF BUILDING and I want to reflect on some of it with you. First off let me say that he really labours some of his points. Nevertheless, I’ve been wanting to engage with people about the process of design and that is what this book is all about.

The book is divided by five sections and twenty-seven chapters.
SECTION I: THE TIMELESS WAY
“A building or a town will only be alive to the extent that it is governed by the timeless way. It is a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it.”

SECTION II: THE QUALITY
“To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name. There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.”

SECTION III: THE GATE
“To reach the quality without a name we must then build a living pattern language as a gate. This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the seed. The people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done for centuries, by using languages which I call pattern languages. A pattern language gives each person who uses it the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences.”

SECTION IV: THE WAY
“Once we have built the gate, we can pass through it to the practice of the timeless way. … Once we have a common pattern language in our town, we shall all have the power to make our streets and buildings live, through our most ordinary acts.”
“Finally, within the framework of a common language, millions of individual acts of building will together generate a town which is alive, and whole, and unpredictable, without control. This is the slow emergence of the quality without a name, as if from nothing.”

SECTION V: THE KERNEL OF THE WAY
“And yet the timeless way is not complete, and will not fully generate the quality without a name, until we leave the gate [the pattern language] behind.” (pp. ix-xv)
“So paradoxically you learn that you can only make a building live when you are free enough to reject even the very patterns which are helping you.” (p. 542)

REFLECTION:
What a great contribution he makes for even trying to identify the patterns of design that are part of our daily life. And then to reflect deeply on the dynamics of those patterns is icing on the cake. His valuing of patterns that are known and shared widely in a society reminds me of Giambattista Vico, who lived in Naples 1668-1744, and mourned the loss of common language among many cultures since the fate of the fall of the tower of Babel fell upon us. Writing at a time hugely influenced by Descartes’ (1596-1650) confidence in reason and systematic doubt, and Aquinas’ (1225-1274) confidence that reason can be integral to faith, Vico’s allegorical interpretation of the Tower of Babel meant that people’s ego and overconfidence in reasoning and categorization led to the loss of common meanings, and the loss of an appreciation of the aurality (linguisticality?) of knowledge. (“We believe, and have explained in The Timeless Way of Building, that the languages which people have today are so brutal, and so fragmented, that most people no longer have any language to speak at all—-and what they do have is not based on human, or natural considerations.” A Pattern Language, p.xvi. )

Alexander also reminds me of another philosopher of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). A Viennese young man going to England to study aeronautical engineering before WWI, became preoccupied with the basics of life, and like Alexander, sees language as a way to get at those basics. Instead of seeing his enquiry as a “gate”, however, Wittgenstein saw his work as a “ladder” that the practitioner could kick away once he had access to what he was striving for. (He wrote his first important book while in a prisoner of war camp in Italy during WWI. During WWII he worked in England helping soldiers with mental problems. Between the wars he designed and had built a house for his sister in Vienna, even designing the hardware for the doors. You might by now, be getting the idea that his family had a bit of change. In the house he grew up in, they had five grand pianos. He went to the same elementary school as Hitler.)
Alexander also reminds me of Sakuteiki (Notes on Garden Design) by Tachibana no Toshitsuna (1028-1094): “Think of the finest natural landscapes you have seen, select those that you find most inspiring and adapt them to your plan, copying their overall features and making them blend in with your chosen site.” “When you are making up your mind how many stones to use and where to place them be guided by the lie of the land as well as your own passing mood.” What these thinkers have in common with Alexander is an initial preoccupation with categories, and then a radical rejection of them in favour of a more “cultured” and intuitive approach. Alexander’s final thoughts in this book apply to my experience of trying to enhance the land around a house I once designed and built. He writes about how you have to lose your ego to find the timeless way of building. That certainly is a component of my encounter with the land around the house:”What atmosphere or spirit inhabits the place? How do I enhance it?”
So, where is the design experience in your life these days? Do you see how it is a reflexive process; it is not just about something out there, but it is constantly asking something about yourself.

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