A Pattern Language

“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.