A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

Filled with a rare wisdom - the wisdom of how to make places that will make us happy to be in them, because they fill the deepest needs we have as humans. These needs are not transcendental abstractions but supremely concrete: things like companionship, equitable social relations, physical activity, imagination and play, A Pattern Language seems almost utopian in a society where these become some of the most difficult things to obtain in life, instead of the simplest. And yet it is enormously practical - brilliant.

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 show more 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. show less

You may enjoy this quite technical manual if you are an architect, planner, builder, or otherwise want our private buildings to be improved. Otherwise it is a long and highly detailed manifesto of what a more deliberate take on building could be, and I can't guarantee that laypeople would enjoy it.

When I first started graduate studies in urban planning, the challenges of daylighting, shadows, and sun glare felt easy to handle. Best practices were well laid out and it seemed like a straightforward set of challenges. Of course, I quickly learned that the context of every site changed these considerations, and it was important to proceed with caution to work through them. This is a book that gives mostly timeless advice on these fronts show more and it was helpful for that purpose.

The downsides are a handful of claims that border on superstitions, chiefly the supposed negative mental health aspects of living in high-rise buildings. I don't know how ubiquitous this thought was at the time of publication, but it stands out as an odd idea within more solid recommendations. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Quite simply, one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read. It's an 1100 page tome (dangerous to read in bed) laying out a kind of method for designing and building, well, virtually anything that has to do with the lived environment. The patterns described begin at the scope of how to organize populations in large metropolitan areas, pass through such topics as how to lay out roads, walkways, public squares, beerhalls and anything else one needs for living, and finally ends with discussion of a few matters as how to organize filtered light inside the interiors of houses, and how to make your own clay tiles for outdoor spaces. I bought this book, at considerable expense, because I hoped it might contain a nugget or two of wisdom I show more could relate to my own thinking on how to connect inside and outside spaces. I never intended to read the whole book, but found the pattern of the patterns, so to speak, to be utterly mesmerizing. Each principle is laid out in a consistent fashion, beginning with a premise or observation, leading through a mixed bag of 'evidence' that can range from scientific studies to intuition based on experience, and then a statement of principle. Some of the ideas can be incorporated quickly and easily into existing buildings with good effect (I've already made one or two small changes to simple things like the arrangement of furniture that have worked nicely) and others are much more radical and would be adopted by very few(don't waste space on bedrooms in houses -- have one common sleeping area with offset alcoves for some measure of privacy; don't bother constructing paved roads on residential streets -- just a pair of tracks for wheels along with lots of grass will do). There is enough material in this book to busy anyone who is interested in how the built environment influences our behaviour, social life, mood, economy, or really anything else for many years. I'll go back to this book a lot. show less

A singular multidisciplinary text that offers models for something like urban planning components of different scales and scope. Really an extremely interesting model of metadesign guidelines that are driven by humanist outcomes.

Anyone dealing with complex nultiscale systems and design should at least review the approach taken with this text.

Problems with the specifix approach are:
- overly culturally “western”
- many big decisions are made without detailed evidence
- there is an assumption of shared values that are not a given
- the book leaves open contextual problems that can emerge from bad application of these patterns

Extremely interesting text..

There's something alarmingly Maoist about this book... but if you ignore its more despotic tendencies, you'll benefit a great deal. Its recommendations are (for the most part) (except when they contradict each other) worth implementing, and would be quite interesting to see in fictional societies as well as real-world ones.