Go BackA Pattern Language
1977“A Pattern Language” is the second volume of “The Center for Environmental Structure Series” on architecture published by Oxford University Press. You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. Moreover, you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction.
“A Pattern Language”, along with “The Timeless Way of Building” and “The Oregon Experiment”, presents, in the authors words, “an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will, we hope, replace existing ideas and practices entirely”. 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 these 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 formal system, which gives them coherence.
“A Pattern Language” is a working document for such an architecture. It is an archetypal language, which allows any layperson or group of persons to design any part of the environment for themselves. It applies equally to the design of houses, public buildings, neighborhoods, streets, gardens, individual window seats…
The book was exhibited at Locus Manifesto-exposition “Re-enchant the World: Architecture and the City facing society´s transitions”, together with others in Science Cabinet #1.
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A Pattern Language
01/01/1977
“A Pattern Language” is the second volume of “The Center for Environmental Structure Series” on architecture published by Oxford University Press. You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to ...
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Un Lenguaje de Patrones
01/01/1980
Translation of “A Pattern Language” in Spanish and its publication in Spain, in 1980.
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A Pattern Language: Ubersetzung - Seminar fur Planungsmethoden, Technische Universitat Graz; 1st version
01/05/1980
An unofficial translation which arose out of the Seminar for Planning Methods in the Summer Semester of 1979, in the Technical University Graz, prepared by the participants in the seminar. It is a 192-page bound copy of “A Pattern ...
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Designing with Patterns and Generic Rules for Making Centers
Pattern languages consist of a multitude of patterns which reflect and define a way of life, people's inner feelings and aspirations, they relate to culture, to climate and to the actual place, and they are rooted in observation. During the pattern ...
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Patterns in Software Development
Christopher Alexander had developed a long and diverse relationship to the use of computers in design since the 1960s. It culminated with the interest the computer software community showed to the idea of pattern and pattern languages and how the ...
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Theory of Patterns and Pattern Languages
In 'The Timeless Way of Building' Christopher Alexander postulates that the quality in buildings cannot by made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people. He asserts that people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done ...
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A Pattern Language Which Generates Multi-Service Centers
1968
The first of Alexander’s early works published by the Center for Environmental Structure, notably the first pattern language for a project. It is presented as a system of generating principles, called a pattern language for multi-service centers. It includes 64 ...
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Houses Generated by Patterns
1969
The second of Alexander’s early works published by the Center for Environmental Structure, lays out the process of creating the pattern language for a group of houses designed for an experimental housing competition in Lima, Peru in 1969. It ...
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人間都市, A Human City
1970
“A Human City”, bilingual book, both in Japanese and English, includes the material which first appeared as an exhibit in the Theme Pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair “Progress and Harmony for Mankind”, in 1970. The book concentrates on ten ...
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Bronx Multi-Service Center
1968 to
1973
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 ...
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Peru Project - Low Cost Housing for the United Nations
1969 to
1970
Master plan for a community of 1500 houses, submitted as one out of twelve other competition entries for the United Nations sponsored international housing competition PREVI (Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda). The Center for Environmental Structure was chosen as the ...
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Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (SWRL)
1969
Application of the early ideas of pattern language to the design of an educational research and development facility. The architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Architects (S.O.M.) asked C.E.S. to work with them on the schematic design of the SWRL ...
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Lecture course during the Fall Quarter, the second year of Alexander's teaching as an Associate professor in the Department of Architecture
1967
A series of twenty four lectures starting with organic wholeness, its relatioship to environmental structure, the identification of the building blocks of this structure and their recognition as a system with generative features; and then proceeding to the main body ...
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Teaching at Centro Intercultural de Documentacion, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on March 1971: Design with a communal pattern language
1971
Series of workshops taught at Centro Intercultural de Documentacion (CIDOC), a higher education campus founded by Ivan Illich. CES was invited to participate in the school activities; the contact was made by UCB professor Roslyn Lindheim, a friend of Ivan ...
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Architecture 100: The Timeless Way of Building
1978
Introduction to the theory of pattern languages and the geometric principles.
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Research Seminar by The Center for Environmental Structure, an independent non- profit organization, incorporated in late March 1967, and set up to create an environmental pattern language
01/07/1967 to
30/09/1967
Research Seminar on the question of the structure and formulation of a pattern and a pattern language, and the process and activities required for their development. The basic concepts introduced were those of “an environmental pattern” and of “an environmetal ...
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Locus Manifesto-exposition "Re-enchant the World: Architecture and the City facing Society´s Transitions"
21/05/2014 to
06/10/2014
The 40 architects already awarded the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture participated and exhibited their works. The exhibition was on international touring until 2016. Christopher Alexander’s participation included the extensive presentation of the Mexicali project in the “Saving the People’s Habitat” ...