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A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)
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After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language.
At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people.
At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment.
"Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.
- ISBN-100195019199
- ISBN-13978-0195019193
- PublisherOxford University Press
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1977
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions2 x 5.7 x 7.9 inches
- Print length1171 pages
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"A wise old owl of a book, one to curl up with in an inglenook on a rainy day. Alexander may be the closest thing home design has to a Zen master."The New York Times
"A classic. A must read. "T. Colbert, University of Houston
"The design student's bible for relativistic environmental design. "Melinda La Garce, Southern Illinois University
"Brilliant, Here's how to design or redesign any space you're living or working infrom metropolis to room. Consider what you want to happen in the space, and then page through this book. Its radically conservative observations will spark, enhance, organize your best ideas, and a wondrous home, workplace, town will result."San Francisco Chronicle
"The most important book in architecture and planning for many decades, a landmark whose clarity and humanity give hope that our private and public spaces can yet be made gracefully habitable."The Next Whole Earth Catalog.
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- Publisher : Oxford University Press (January 1, 1977)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 1171 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0195019199
- ISBN-13 : 978-0195019193
- Item Weight : 2.07 pounds
- Dimensions : 2 x 5.7 x 7.9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #36,968 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
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For nearly 50+ years Christopher Alexander has challenged the architectural establishment, sometimes uncomfortably, to pay more attention to the human beings at the center of design. To do so he has combined top-flight scientific training, award-winning architectural research, patient observation and testing throughout his building projects, and a radical but profoundly influential set of ideas that have extended far beyond the realm of architecture.
In the process Alexander has authored a series of groundbreaking works, including A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction and The Timeless Way of Building. His most recent publication continues that ground-breaking work, the four-volume book set, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, incorporates more than 30 years of research, study, teaching and building. It was described by Laura Miller of the New York Times “the kind of book every serious reader should wrestle with once in a while: [a] fat, challenging, grandiose tract that encourages you to take apart the way you think and put it back together again.”
Alexander was born in Vienna, Austria and raised in Oxford and Chichester, England. He was awarded the top open scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1954, in chemistry and physics, and went on to read mathematics at Cambridge. He took his doctorate in architecture at Harvard (the first Ph.D. in architecture ever awarded at Harvard), and was elected to the society of Fellows at Harvard University in 1961. During the same period he worked at MIT in transportation theory and in computer science, and at Harvard in cognitive science. His pioneering ideas from that time were known to be highly influential in those fields.
Alexander became Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley in 1963, and taught there continuously for 38 years, becoming Professor Emeritus in 2001. He founded the Center for Environmental Structure in 1967, published hundreds of papers and several dozen books, and built more than 200 buildings around the world.
Alexander is widely recognized as the father of the pattern language movement in computer science, which has led to important innovations such as Wiki, and new kinds of Object-Oriented Programming. He is the recipient of the first medal for research ever given by the American Institute of Architects, and he has been honoured repeatedly for his buildings in many parts of the world. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 for his contributions to architecture, including his groundbreaking work on how the built environment affects the lives of people.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Max Jacobson (1941 - currently alive and well) was born in Houston, raised in Denver, and received his first degrees in engineering from Boulder and Berkeley. After a couple of years working as an engineer, he returned to Berkeley to study architecture, receiving a PhD in architecture in 1975. During this period he contributed as a co-author to the book "A Pattern Language", 1977.
A licensed architect in California, he co-founded the Berkeley architectural firm JSWD in 1975 (jswdarch.com), and with his partners wrote "The Good House" (1990), and "Patterns of Home" (2005). His most recent book is "Invitation to Architecture", available in April, 2014, co-written with Shelley Brock.
Married to Helen Degenhardt, practicing architecture for 35 years with his partners, co-authoring all his publications, learning from his architecture students in community college, he really does nothing on his own!
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down and come back later to pick up where you left off, because it is broken into many very short chapters,
each of which contain a key idea. It's hard to describe this book, because it is so unique in its approach
to telling the reader "how things ought to be" concerning everything from civil planning and city layout,
to floor-plans, to architectural design, to furnishing. The author is very opinionated and does not shy away
from boldly telling you what is wrong with the physical constructs of our urban, suburban, and rural areas,
and how all of that should be properly done in his imagined ideal world.
In some ways, this book is like reading the professional diary of your crazy uncle who is constantly ranting
about what's wrong with the world, and how he thinks it should be set right. However, after reading it for
a while, you get the impression that the author is not really crazy, so much as he is a brilliant eccentric
whose experience and understanding is based on an extremely broad appreciation of how human beings choose
to craft their surroundings, and how we get it right, and how we get it wrong, and why.
Be forewarned... you are not going to agree with everything the author says.
I don't agree, for example, with his outlandish claim that living in a home that is more than four stories
about the ground will eventually make you crazy, because I have loved living on the top floor of my
high-rise condo for the past ten years. I also don't agree with his idea that all kitchen cabinets should
be open shelves with no doors, because the doors just get in the way, hide what is contained therein,
and are essential useless. I must admit, however, that I love reading the author's insights on things
with which I disagree with him, and I have to admit that even on such issues... he's got good points!
Many times I find myself saying "Almost, thou persuadest me."
To be fair, I actually do agree with the author's views regarding the vast majority of his observations,
as they are all just good common-sense approaches, and I must admit they often leave me thinking
"Yes, that's such a beautifully simple truth... why don't we always build it that way, or do it that way?"
This book gives you the benefit of the sage wisdom of an author who is genuinely worth reading
and considering. Even though this book is decades-old, most of its observations are timeless.
It's so hard to classify the book. Is it a Western approach to Feng Shui ... without all the questionable
Eastern Spiritualism, and more of practical philosophy on how to best craft your environment?
Or is it better described as foundational reading for everyone from a City Planner, to an Architect,
to anyone building a house, to anyone one looking to make their home a more pleasant place?
However you choose to classify it... this book is a unique, delightful treatise on how things should
ideally be in order for human beings to be more comfortable, productive, and happy in their surroundings.
1. Swimming. He is intensely focused on swimming as a major factor in civic planning and personal recreation. It's a considerable contortion at multiple points.
2. Dancing, especially in the streets. Alexander was a great fan of the Peckham Clinic which focused on (guess what) swimming and dancing as exercise and recreation. It shows.
3. Many of his patterns make an uncomfortably dated misstep when they pertain to women--and another, subtler one when dealing with work concerns and issues of children while not mentioning women directly. Women working outside the home is not a gutiding concern or a base assumption for him; a base assumption IS that women prefer and want to care for children. It's a very important shaping concern for many other parts of life, so this blind spot, characteristic of its time and place and socioeconomic environment, is very significant.
4. Disabled people, other than mildly infirm and otherwise hale elderly people, do not exist. Another blind spot.
Bear these crotchets in mind as you consider these patterns, and how to find even better patterns for a wonderful world.
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I have referred to this book uncountable number of times while designing. Very very useful.