Bronx Multi-Service Center

An early study of the use of pattern language in community designed buildings. The Bronx Multi-Service Center is one of the eight centers included in the book "A Pattern Language Which Generates Multi-Service Centers", and presents a prototype for these buildings. A multi-service center being a community facility, was intended to provide a variety of special facilities to citizens, and to solve some of the problems of low income communities. The design of the prototype multi-service center was based on a system of generating principles, which could be transformed according to local circumstances, but which never fail to convey the essentails. This was developed as a system of patterns with rules for combining them, being one of the first pattern languages specific to a type of building, developed by C.E.S. These first patterns contributed, among others to the development of "A Pattern Language", published in 1977.