Music and Cats

In the book meme that I posted recently, I listed Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language as a book that means a lot to me.

In December of 1983, shortly after I applied to architecture school, Paul gave me a copy of A Pattern Language for Christmas. It was early in the difficult period in our relationship; we had broken up several months before, and I was dating someone else. I had no expectation of a Christmas present from Paul. However, he had seen a review of the book in the journal CoEvolution Quarterly, and thought that I, a former student of psychology and new student of architecture, should have a copy.

I was quite taken with the book, and stayed up poring over it late into a number of nights. However, at 1171 pages, plus 44 pages of a prologue entitled ‘Using this Book’ (I don’t know that I’ve seen, before or since, another page numbered ‘xliv‘), this is not a book that one breezes through. In fact, I can’t say with certainty that I have read the entire book. I have read many parts of it more than once, but I’ve not read the book straight through. I don’t believe that it’s intended for that sort of reading.

A Pattern Language is comprised of 253 patterns for the design of places ranging in scale from geopolitical regions to the corners of rooms and the sills of windows. Alexander writes in the preface, “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.” The description of each pattern includes one or more black & white photographs and hand-drawn sketches. The patterns are interrelated, with each pattern having connections to other patterns at both larger and smaller scales. Some of the patterns will be familiar to a reader who has lived in particular types of towns or urban neighborhoods; others may resonate with a sense of rightness, even if the reader is seeing them for the first time; still others may seem odd and uncomfortable.

The book’s patterns are divided into three sections: Towns, Buildings and Construction. The 94 patterns in Towns describe a (some would say utopian) vision for the design of towns and neighborhoods. These are not patterns that can be accomplished by the individual architect or homebuilder; they require the participation of a community, and evolve over time. Here are excerpts from a few of these patterns:

36 Degree of Publicness: People are different, and the way they want to place their houses in a neighborhood is one of the most basic kinds of differences. Some people want to live where the action is. Others want more isolation. This corresponds to a basic human personality dimension, which could be called the “extrovert-introvert” dimension, or the “community loving - privacy loving” dimension.

89 Corner Grocery: It has lately been assumed that people no longer want to walk to local stores. This assumption is mistaken…Give every neighborhood at least one corner grocery, somewhere near its heart. Place them on corners, where large numbers of people are going past. And combine them with houses, so that the people who run them can live over them or next to them.

94 Sleeping in Public: It is a mark of success in a park, public lobby or a porch, when people can come there and fall asleep. Keep the environment filled with ample benches, comfortable places, corners to sit on the ground, or lie in comfort in the sand. Make these places relatively sheltered, protected from circulation, perhaps up a step, with seats and grass to slump down upon, read the paper and doze off.

The patterns in the sections Buildings (95-204) and Construction (205-253) are related to single buildings or clusters of buildings, and are patterns that individuals can use in their own homes. These are excerpts of several of my favorite patterns related to the design of spaces within a house:

159 Light on Two Sides of Every Room: When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty… Locate each room so that it has outdoor space outside it on at least two sides, and then place windows in these outdoor walls so that natural light falls into every room from more than one direction.

188 Bed Alcove: Bedrooms make no sense. The valuable space around the bed is good for nothing except access to the bed. And all the other functions - dressing, working, and storage of personal belongings which people stuff uncomfortably into the corners of their bedrooms - in fact, need their own space, and are not at all well met by the left over areas around a bed.

202 Built-In Seats: Built-in seats are great. Everybody loves them. They make a building feel comfortable and luxurious. But most often they do not actually work. They are placed wrong, or too narrow, or the back does not slope, or the view is wrong, or the seat is too hard. This pattern tells you what to do to make a built-in seat that really works.

239 Small Panes: When plate glass windows became possible, people thought that they would put us more directly in touch with nature. In fact, they do the opposite. They alienate us from the view. The smaller the windows are, and the smaller the panes are, the more intensely windows help connect us with what is on the other side.

While A Pattern Language is ostensibly a book about architectural and urban design, it delves into the realms of psychology, sociology and anthropology. Its aim is to help people understand how to create a built environment that fosters healthy communities, families and individuals. What better purpose could an architecture book, or any work of architecture, have?

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