A Pattern Language : Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977)

One of the most useful books I have ever owned. Wish it were required reading for all architects and developers as well as home buyers and town planners ( )

I have never read a book anything like A Pattern Language, and it is very unlikely I shall ever read its likes again.

It’s not often that one comes across a work so fresh, so singular, so perspective-shattering, so powerful in its ability to shape the very way one engages a significant facet of one’s world.

It’s a very simple book to summarize. Alexander and his co-authors prepared a list of 253 elements of human living, ranging from the broadest geographical layout of an entire country, down to the positions of doors, windows and potted plants in individual rooms in a family home, and including almost every aspect of cities, neighborhoods and buildings in between. For each of these patterns, they isolate characteristics they believe are common across cultures and times, and which make that pattern comfortable, usable, and beautiful. Photographs and line drawing are included frequently for illustration.

There is very little other explanatory material in this book, other than occasional brief introductory sections. So reading A Pattern Language is a bit strange; since the patterns seem independent, reading about them on by one seems initially like working through a reference book. But I found that before too long a narrative of line and form and light and shape emerged; I found myself anticipating, almost intuitively, what upcoming patterns would look like, and it became easier and easier to progress through the book.

As I approached the book’s end, I could see the overall pattern behind Alexander’s vision coalescing and clarifying, telling a profound story about living a beautiful life, at least in terms of how and where one’s body resides.

This book is a potent antidote to the poison soulless modernist architecture has injected into the very bones of the industrialized world. I realize it’s now an aging work – it’s over 30 years old – but I hope as more and more people become aware of the vague but increasingly toxic effects of ugly buildings and the dis-ease of living in them, Alexander’s time in the sun will come.

One final note: A Pattern Language may appear to the casual observer to be a book about architecture, and that's true. But the scale of Alexander's project is far, far broader. Within the descriptions of the patterns are embedded repeated and often remarkable insights into how people really live, think and feel. Occasionally there's a bit of a Utopian tinge that reminds you Alexander couldn't wholly escape the 70s zeitgeist in which he's writing, but on the whole there is more good sense about human nature between these two covers than you will find in whole programs of study in anthropology or sociology in most contemporary universities.

Highly, highly recommended. ( )

Profound book - fantastic. ( )

I balk a little at the pretentiousness of the title. Why not just Patterns for Building? That is what the book is, a series of 253 patterns for building that in the view of the authors have proved their worth over the centuries. My doubt about the title aside, I join with countless other builders in admiring the book. I have read it and re-read A Pattern Language regularly for 20 years and it greatly informed the decisions I made in designing the house chronicled in my own book, Crafting the Considerate House. It is a profoundly humane work, rooted in anthropology, sociology, and progressive social thought as much as in a love for the sensory pleasures provided by well-wrought buildings. Illustrated with the simplest of pencil sketches and black and white photos, it is concerned not with producing art-trophy houses for the wealthy and privileged but with enriching everyday experiences for us all. ( )

This is an amazing book to help you in designing a house that you will be happy to live in, and will address many needs that you may not even know that you have. ( )