A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander

I give this book 10 out of 10 acorns. Highly recommended.

I first read Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building" and "A Pattern Language" in the early 1980's. It changed how I looked at the world. I started looking for the patterns that underlie the world of buildings, homes, and communities, since that is what he focuses on. Later I realized that the land, water, air, and agriculture patterns are just as important, if not more, and they interact with the architectural patterns.  At this point, to me, it’s all the same thing. The patterns that underlie our whole world are something we need to understand and make them work into our lives, not let ourselves get sucked into the bad patterns that make life more difficult and unpleasant.

When we were doing our basic designs for the house we are building, I read through  A Pattern Language again, and notated all the patterns we find useful, and mixed them with our patterns for our land, and added some of our own to make it all work together to work for what WE want. That, I believe, is how he meant for this book to be used. His patterns he identified are great, but they are not universally applicable. Example is his “sheltering roofs” it gives a cozy snug feeling to house, but I don’t want cozy and snug, I’d live in a glass dome if I could get away with it, I like light and air and feeling of expansive space.

It’s hard to review a book that let me see things that have become such a part of my mind that I can no longer untangle them from what the world looked like before. This book is quite a bit like Bill Mollison’s Designer’s Manual for the patterns of the earth, in that once you have learned to see the patterns, your mind is changed forever. As such, this is one of the best books I have ever read, and one of the ones I wish I could make everyone understand.

From a post I wrote about The Timeless way of Building:

There is SO much potential for neat, human friendly designs, and it's not common in this culture. I read his comments about what it would look like if it's allowed to continue like it was headed (it was written in the late 1970’s) and then I looked as I drove around, saw soul dead strip malls, suburbs not made for humans... And I cried, for what we COULD have, versus what we do.

Our homes are part of that too, we have miles of soulless homes, that all look like the neighbors, that all have the same things inside, that are designed like hotel rooms, assuming everyone will move on in 5 years and “you have to look at resale value, you know!” instead of having homes that we walk in and feel happy, that everything works the way that matters to us, not to the neighbors, or to someone who might buy it later, homes that are designed for living in, not for coming home after work, microwaving dinner and watching TV until bedtime. There is a place for that kind of house in our culture, but I dislike it that it has become the standard of how houses are designed, rather than have the standard be a happy healthy home, that feeds our bodies, minds and souls. A Pattern Language helped foster this discontent in me, and I will be eternally grateful to Christopher Alexander for that.

The patterns for our house design, we did these FIRST before we started drawing walls. Things with numbers are from A Pattern Language, things that have a + are our own patterns. The qualities we each chose for ourselves are listed at the bottom, and the ones that work for us both. Looking at them makes sense of some of what we consider priority, and what our home patterns are based on.

+ Whole property is “our home”  Interior space is “our house”
Abundance for ALL.
+ Comfortable and engaging for ALL inhabitants: human, animal, plant
........127 – Intimacy gradient
........+ Open space and nests
........108 – Connected buildings
........129 – Common place at the heart
........+ Lack of toxins

+ Outside spaces designed as interior spaces
........127 – Intimacy gradient
........+ Open space and nests
........105 – South facing outdoors
........106 – Positive outdoor space
........108 – Connected buildings
........236 – Windows which open wide (modified pattern)
........119 – Arcades
................160 – Building edge
................167 – Six foot balcony
................234 – Lapped outside walls
........124 – Activity pockets
................252 – Pools of light
................229 – Duct place
................+ Expansion ports
........163 – Outdoor room
................175 – Greenhouse
................161 – Sunny place
................230 – Radiant heat
................+ Animal nests
........168 – Connection to the earth
................111 – Half hidden garden
................172 – Garden growing wild
................+ Animal play spaces
................173 – Garden wall
................161 – Sunny place
................199 – Sunny counter
................230 – Radiant heat
........241 – Seat spots
................171 – Tree places
................176 – Garden seat
................242 – Front door bench
................243 – Sitting wall
................+ Animal nests
........+ Places to walk
................+ Wide walkways
................+ Easy stairs
................120 – Paths and goals
................174 – Trellised walk
................169 – Terraced slope
................170 – Fruit trees
................+ Animal play spaces

+ Mind shift areas at doors
........127 – Intimacy gradient
........105 – South facing outdoors
........108 – Connected buildings
........163 – Outdoor room
................236 – Windows which open wide (modified pattern)
................119 – Arcades
................167 – Six foot balcony
................160 – Building edge
................234 – Lapped outside walls
................252 – Pools of light
........110 – Main entrance
........112 – Entrance transition
................242 – Front door bench
................243 – Sitting wall
................+ Mud room
................+ Shoe place
................233 – Floor surface
........+ Left hand doors

+ High sunlight/natural light
........105 – South facing outdoors
........+ North coolness
........163 – Outdoor room
................175 – Greenhouse
................174 – Trellised walk
........128 – Indoor sunlight
................236 – Windows which open wide (modified pattern)
................161 – Sunny place
................180 – Window place
................199 – Sunny counter
........182 – Eating atmosphere
........181 – The fire
........230 – Radiant heat
........194 – Interior windows
........+ Variable light levels
................238 – Filtered light
................252 – Pools of light
................+ Shutters

+ Open space and nests
........+ Wide walkways
........124 – Activity pockets
................+ Sliding doors
................198 – Closets between rooms
................+ Built in furniture and partitions
................+ Movable furniture and partitions
................240 – Half inch trim
................200 – Open shelves
........129 – Common place at the heart
................161 – Sunny place
................180 – Window place
................238 – Filtered light (tracery?)
................252 – Pools of light
................182 – Eating atmosphere
................181 – The fire
................230 – Radiant heat
................+ Animal nests

+ Ease of maintenance – plan for expansion – ease of modification
........108 – Connected buildings
........+ Expansion ports
........230 – Radiant heat
........229 – Duct place
................+ Four inch ledges
................+ Expansion ports
................+ Plumbing wall
................+ Redundant systems
................+ Repairable tech
........242 – Front door bench
................+ Mud room
................+ Shoe place
........+ Places to walk
................+ Wide walkways
................169 – Terraced slope
................170 – Fruit trees
................173 – Garden wall
................175 – Greenhouse
........198 – Closets between rooms
................+ Built in furniture and partitions
................+ Movable furniture and partitions
................200 – Open shelves
................240 – Half inch trim
................194 – Interior windows
........+ Sliding doors

+ Energy efficient – temperature controllable spaces in all conditions
........108 – Connected buildings
........234 – Lapped outside walls
........+ Expansion ports
........+ Redundant systems
........230 – Radiant heat
................181 – The fire
................105 – South facing outdoors
................175 – Greenhouse
........229 – Duct place-
................+ Expansion ports
................+ Double ducts
................+ Repairable tech
........+ Variable light levels
................236 – Windows which open wide (modified pattern)
................+ Shutters
........+ Pools of heat/cool
................+ Mud room
................+ Sliding doors
................+ North coolness
................233 – Floor surface

+ Work areas designed for our actual needs/use – Accessible with health/height realities – efficient and effective

........+ Tools within reach
........+ Lack of toxins
........108 – Connected buildings
........113 – Car connection
........169 – Terraced slope
........163 – Outdoor room
................175 – Greenhouse
........+ Places to walk
................+ Wide walkways
........233 – Floor surface
........241 – Seat spots
................+ Mud room
................242 – Front door bench
................243 – Sitting wall
........124 – Activity pockets
................198 – Closets between rooms
................+ Built in furniture
................+ Movable furniture
................+ Sliding doors
................200 – Open shelves
........129 – Common place at the heart
........182 – Eating atmosphere
........184 – Cooking layout
................+ Variable counter heights
................+ Four inch ledges
................199 – Sunny counter
................252 – Pools of light
........230 – Radiant heat
........229 – Duct place
................+ Four inch ledges
................+ Double ducts
................+ Expansion ports
................+ Repairable tech
................+ Outlets at different levels
........+ Left hand doors
........+ Easy stairs


Qualities we want in a house:
Pearl:........................Mom:........................Both:
Airy..........................Airy...........................Airy
Thought filled............Calm
Things in reach..........Things hidden
Cleanable..................Cleanable...................Cleanable
Natural light...............Natural light...............Natural light
Variable light..............Variable light..............Variable light
Variable temp.............Variable temp............Variable temp
Warm........................Cool
Small spaces..............Open spaces

*** Tools within reach*** A primary Pearl pattern!!

Another book that follows up on buildings that are alive and real is "How Buildings Learn, what happens after they're built" by Stewart Brand. I give this book 9 apples.

It discusses how a building grows and changes over time. It is mostly aimed at architects, trying to make them think past submitting their plans, but it's very educational for the rest of us too.

What I got out of it was thoughts of making sure that what I build will be able to change easily, to grow and adapt. We are designing this house for me and my mom, 2 adults. What if the next people who live here have 4 kids? I'm making sure I leave things so it is easy to partition off rooms, so it's easy to build an addition off the side, so the plumbing can be run to another bathroom easily. It's kind of like learning to look at a garden, and see it in 15 years, when the trees have grown, and are you still going to want them where they are? or do you want to plant them in a different spot now, so when they grow, they are where you want them to be. It's thinking ahead, and making sure anything that is easy to do during construction gets done, because a lot of things are difficult to retrofit.

It goes with A Pattern Language to me, not only because it involves construction, but because it involves real life, not just bare drawings on a blueprint, but what it takes to make a building live, learn, and grow along with us. Because they either do, and thrive, or they don't and they die, and get bulldozed. And I'd like to think of my home being around after I'm gone, pleasing others with the care I have put into the design.

I had to ILL this from one of our State Universities. I got a tiny print 1977 edition--will buy my own soon.

It's the kind of book I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to wrap my mind around.

I joke with my husband that I am the kind of person who is always looking for the Official Rule Book of Life to help me figure out what to do. It looks like this may be one of the closest things I have ever seen to such a volume.

These books are not only an aide to understanding, they're beautiful.

I loved the anecdote about the beetle infestation in university library's roof support beams.

Donn Cave wrote:
I loved the anecdote about the beetle infestation in university library's roof support beams.

That one was in How Buildings Learn, and I think I recall seeing it first in Gregory Bateson's books (also excellent reading!!)

It's an awesome story, a variant of it off the net is here: Oxford's Oak Beams, and Other Tales of Humans and Trees in Long-Term Partnership

It's well  worth reading a better version, but my super short version is the roof beams had beetles, but the college foresters had planted trees hundreds of years before, knowing the beams would get beetles and need to be replaced and that trees good for beams would be hard to find.  Planning for the future!

And yes, THAT is how the world wants to be designed!! I love the ideas that story bubbles up in my head. Thank you for reminding me of it!

I read this book decades ago, when I had to borrow it for 3 days at a time from the public library reference section. I was ticked enough to eventually get brave and ask the librarian why, in a regional library system, couldn't they have at least one copy in regular circulation. I recall that the short answer was the cost. Interesting, that after about 50 years, it's still considered valuable!

Yes, I look at the house we bought because we had 1 week to find and buy a house, and there are absolutely things they did OK, and things they did *very* badly. Do people who have read it recently, remember if he wrote about how outside steps should be wider and lower rise than indoor steps? I know I read about that concept somewhere, and our current house didn't follow that concept and our front steps can be downright dangerous in rain and snow.

I would so love a return to the concept of houses as welcoming people and embracing them, rather than a commodity to improve a person's net worth.

A fun anecdote from 35 years ago before I married Hubby. His friend Beulah asked him what my house was like. He replied, "I have a house, Jay has a home."

Beulah's response was, "no, you have a cave!"

We all put our priorities in different places, but I see far too many "houses" being built, and not near enough "homes".

I can look it up, in the book after dinner, but I know I consider steps outside to be safe if they are 6 x 12, not 7 x 11, which is normal inside houses. that means 6 or 7 inch rise (the amount you step up) and 12 or 11 inches run (the foot space on the top of the step.)
12 inch gives you more room for feet in boots. and 6 inch rise means you don't have to push off so hard to get up them, making them safer in adverse conditions.

I am damaged, my knees work badly, I like 6 x 12 inside too. I have seen them in a lot of public buildings, as they are safer, and in places where people carry boxes up and down the steps a lot. They are just safer. They take up a bit more floor space (a couple of feet,) which is why people tend to want 7 x 11 inside, but, as I told a builder "If I can't get up and down the steps, it doesn't matter how much floor space is in the basement."

Dinner is done. I don't see the part about steps in the Pattern Language book.

The 6 x 12 steps are what I learned from what architects do, and by measuring a lot of stairs that I liked or disliked. I was surprised that the outdoor steps in the paths on campus and the stairs used by the box carrying guys at Menards were the same size. It makes sense, much shorter and wider and they don't stride well, much higher and narrower they get more dangerous.

Pearl Sutton wrote:...12 inch gives you more room for feet in boots. and 6 inch rise means you don't have to push off so hard to get up them, making them safer in adverse conditions.

I am damaged, my knees work badly, I like 6 x 12 inside too. I have seen them in a lot of public buildings, as they are safer, and in places where people carry boxes up and down the steps a lot. They are just safer...

I agree - inside is important too. The basement steps in my mother's 1950's era house were dangerous, and she had to carry a laundry basket down them. She learned to go down backwards with the basket resting on the step rather than in her arms when she was older and had leg issues. Not fixable due to the house design.

For the record, my front steps are 8" rise by 10 3/4" run - yeah, not safe. They're cast concrete, so fixing the problem is major. Fixing it would, as Pearl noted above, take more "floor space", but what that really means is that from the top to the bottom they travel a further distance south, which means in my case, the whole front walkway (also cast concrete) and the garden bed past it, would all have to be adjusted for new stairs. My guess would be that the stairs would stick out an extra 3 ft. I decided to do the math. We would need 8 instead of 6 steps, and the existing 6 steps would need an extra 1 1/4" of width each, plus the two new steps would need 12 inches, and yes, that comes out to 31 1/2" extra, so not as far as I guessed, but the current walkway is only about that wide!

Sorry to take this side shoot, but it's worth it, as safety is important, and if people aren't aware of an issue, they won't watch out for it, or plan for it.

Actually, fixing them would be easy if you were willing to use wood. Just put a run right over them. The concrete ones will be there still, the wooden ones will clear all the way down. It's like how they put wheelchair ramps on places with stairs, they don't remove them, they go over.

And yes, I'd avoid your stairs. I'd have to crawl up them most days, no way I'd manage them. I've had to use steps like that, and I go up them on my hands and knees. And go down backwards, facing the steps.

And, incidentally, if I had basement steps like that and had to get laundry down them I'd either A) move the washer upstairs or B) put a pulley or chute system. No way I'd do steps like that with a basket.

Pearl Sutton wrote:
When we were doing our basic designs for the house we are building, I read through  A Pattern Language again, and notated all the patterns we find useful, and mixed them with our patterns for our land, and added some of our own to make it all work together to work for what WE want. That, I believe, is how he meant for this book to be used. His patterns he identified are great, but they are not universally applicable.

I'm sure you're right about that, but ... how?  I mean, for all that it has been a seminal work, the process hasn't seen much actual genuine use, because (am I right?) it reads like it would be easy, but it isn't.  You still need the mental skills of an architect to integrate all that information, but you have to do it yourself, as well as hire an architect to make sure it will stand up and meet building codes.  I'm sure he hoped others would develop patterns of their own, but they aren't really going to be available to anyone else as long as each practitioner is getting them from that same book.

I mention this because it occurs to me that we may be near some point where our advanced technology could be put to use.

Do all the patterns have to come from that old book?  How about an online library?

Average person confounded by the mass of information in all these patterns?  How about an AI, that can interact with you and that pattern library, and supply the architect with usable design specifications?  Like ... try not to let your horror get the better of you, but with a VR headset.

Part of the issue could be building technology itself, where I think he wanted materials that were more easily DIY and more flexible of application, but maybe there's a technological alternative there too.  Like rock walls?  Imagine an AI building a rock wall the way we used to 200 years ago.

I agree with Donn that it can be difficult to figure out just what to do with all of the Patterns - how to actually put them into practice.  Pearl's examples helped me to at least understand one way of putting Alexander's brilliance to use.  As an architect, Alexander was a master of making new buildings appear to have always been there - in fact, difficult to imagine what the landscape looked like without them, prior to the buildings going up.

To me, A Pattern Language is kind of like getting a new Erector (Meccano) set, or one of the old Lego Technics sets, where they gave instructions for building a couple of projects, but you just had to tinker with things and figure out what bits went together, in which ways, and what stuff could you misuse from its intended purpose.

Except, doing that with actual buildings is pricey and time consuming.  This can be somewhat mitigated by an agile imagination with a facility for spatial reasoning.  Drawing things to scale, or building scale models can help (architecture students do this sort of thing quite a lot, I think).  Computer modeling, if available, is another way (Sketchup, perhaps, or some other tool).  But, it is still difficult for me to figure out just what to do with Alecxander's Patterns (synthesis, rather than analysis).

I understand that some of Alexander's more recent work focused on sub-dividing and defining space as an approach to design, though I haven't read any of it, just about it.  I really should check to see if my local University library has any of his newer stuff.  I can imagine that approach might be helpful to me.

Donn Cave wrote:

Pearl Sutton wrote:
When we were doing our basic designs for the house we are building, I read through  A Pattern Language again, and notated all the patterns we find useful, and mixed them with our patterns for our land, and added some of our own to make it all work together to work for what WE want.

I'm sure you're right about that, but ... how?  I mean, for all that it has been a seminal work, the process hasn't seen much actual genuine use, because (am I right?) it reads like it would be easy, but it isn't.  You still need the mental skills of an architect to integrate all that information, but you have to do it yourself, as well as hire an architect to make sure it will stand up and meet building codes.  I'm sure he hoped others would develop patterns of their own, but they aren't really going to be available to anyone else as long as each practitioner is getting them from that same book.

I mention this because it occurs to me that we may be near some point where our advanced technology could be put to use.

Do all the patterns have to come from that old book?  How about an online library?

Average person confounded by the mass of information in all these patterns?  How about an AI, that can interact with you and that pattern library, and supply the architect with usable design specifications?  Like ... try not to let your horror get the better of you, but with a VR headset.

Kevin Olsen wrote: This can be somewhat mitigated by an agile imagination with a facility for spatial reasoning.  Drawing things to scale, or building scale models can help (architecture students do this sort of thing quite a lot, I think).  Computer modeling, if available, is another way (Sketchup, perhaps, or some other tool).  

Apologies for not noticing this post when it was made. Yes, I think that would be an excellent use for advanced tech.

When my health slammed through the floor and I had to close my business, in 1998 I went back to school for architectural drafting, both hand and Computer Aided Drafting. What I wanted to do, and this was long before this was a idea that tech could do easily, was something like work with architects and get pictures of the huge china cabinet you got from your great aunt, and not only make it so you could see what your house plan would look like, but see it with your cabinet in it. I realize not everyone can see things like that, I can, I wanted to monetize that skill. Unfortunately, the schooling itself was too hard on my health, and I had to drop out, despite loving what I was learning and learning it easily. By the time I could cope again, the tech had caught up, and there were ways to make that happen.

The patterns could easily be online, if people add too many others, I think it might turn into a mess, as I have noticed people don't grasp the difference between a pattern and an idea for something cool. There is an interior pattern I'm using (one of mine, not on the list above) "Things in drawers" which is not "Hey look at all the cool places you can use drawers, and we could put this kind of hardware on them and here's a link to my site where I talk about it!" which is what I think would be added to his list if it could be added to online. it would have to be carefully curated.

The patterns I added for our house (marked with a + on the list in the above post) were added because they filled needs I have that are not the needs he fills with his. I do not have children, I do not live in a city with close neighbors, I do have multiple vehicles, equipment and gardens. I have animals in my life, indoors and out, they need to be part of the base design, not just a cat door cut into the door and call it animal friendly, but things like a chicken coop that can be accessed from the house, ledges cats cat walk on to hang out by the high windows, and a place for a dog that is indoors for weather but they can go outdoors as desired without freezing out the rest of the house. The pattern there is "Animal nests" the details are downstream of that. I also have health issues, and there are things that matter very much to me that he didn't mention, like 'easy stairs', 'variable counter heights', 'outlets at different levels', and 'sliding doors'. And things he didn't think of that I consider important like 'repairable tech', 'mud room' (designed to stop ticks and chiggers from coming in too), and 'expansion ports' so things like solar can be added easily when I can do them.

And my realizing that 'tools within reach' is a primary pattern for me that overrides a LOT of others changes a lot of how patterns will manifest for me. No matter WHAT my world looks like, I end up surrounded with a U shape of whatever I use to do it with that I want to stay RIGHT THERE, not cleaned up, not in the garage or the kitchen, RIGHT HERE. And it WILL happen regardless of how  much I may try not to. It's how my brain works. That HAS to be taken into account. As does my health, and my animals, and where the tractor is parked.

I wish I could teach how to visualize like this, I can't, so yes, VR would be useful for other people. And maybe if they could see it, they might realize what THEY need that is not part of his list. Thinking more about it, maybe lists of patterns could be made to be considered "homestead pack" "disability pack" "animals underfoot pack" "kids who do sports" "musician" "older lady alone" "home business" "crafting" etc.  
hmm...
Now I'm thinking all of that.....   :D

Pearl -

Thanks for the reply.  For me, figuring out what to do with Alexander's Patterns will be a long term project.  I first read it several years ago (I'd guess nearing a decade, now).  It still bubbles up in my memory from time to time (somewhat like D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's "On Growth and Form" - it's hard to un-see things once you have viewed them from a certain vantage).  Someone else recently came out with a book on community planning which was somewhat reminiscent to me of Alexander's notions of neighborhood planning.  If I dig around in my YouTube comments, I can probably find the reference.  I haven't read it, but caught a podcast on YT discussing it, and immediately thought "that sounds a lot like Christopher Alexander!".  I'm sure it comes as a shock to you, but I tend to post lengthy (windy?) comments to YT videos, many of which go unacknowledged.  I think the YT comments algorithm encourages snappy repartee, provocative statements  and vicious wit, none of which are my long suite.  I'm more of an "esprit d'escalier" kind of guy, most of the time, which is kind of boring, I suppose.  Very hard to sell ad revenues on that kind of thing.

Mostly, I was reading your review of "A Pattern Language" to acquire something of a mental template for what is expected of a book review on these forums.  But, per usual, I could hardly leave well enough alone!

I have bought/found a few books in the last couple of years which might be of general interest to the larger community, and I feel like I've now spent enough time with my nose and head in them that I might be able to do a creditable job of providing a review for public consumption.  Or, at least stir some interest in them and provoke discussion about them.

Thanks again.

Kevin

P.S. On edit: I first came across references to "A Pattern Language" in books on writing software.  I'm not much of a coder, but I've had to do all manner of things in my somewhat checkered past, among them writing and/or adapting computer code in a bunch of common languages.  I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I have mostly muddled through.  In the course of trying to get my sea legs, I read several books on software development.  Hardly a one didn't mention "A Pattern Language" as a seminal work in computing, despite the fact that it's about something else entirely.  Because it kept showing up, I thought I'd better pay attention, and tracked down a copy in my local University's library.  For a while, I had a "courtesy card", which meant as a member of the local community, I could borrow some number of books (3? 4?) for a couple of weeks at a time, and renew once for the same period of time.  I also had a courtesy card to another local college's library, and they had some amazing resources on fiber arts and ceramics, but that college has unfortunately since closed due to financial mismanagement.

I first saw Pattern Language in the early 80's at the library, checked it out, took a ton of notes. Years later I put work into finding it again. Didn't have the author notated, only remembered how the pages looked, and my notes.
I've learned to make better notes :D

I just noticed that for the next two days, A Pattern Language is on sale at Audible for $7.10 (which is 87% off). If you do audiobooks, this is a cheap way to get started. It might not be the best book for this format (depending on you of course) because it's pretty cerebral -- listen with the pause button handy. Anyway, I have hundreds of Audible books and usually buy them with credits, but when something is less than the $12.50 I pay for a credit, I pony up the cash. And now I have another 29 hours of listening in my queue. (A Timeless Way of Building is also on sale but not so steep.)