Christopher Alexander believed that people have a right to determine and shape their environment. The genuine and wholehearted involvement of the users in the shaping of their buildings contributes positively to good architecture. It gives life, identity and personal qualities to space. The initial driving force in the development of patterns was to provide a useful tool to users and enable them to participate effectively in the design and construction process. Furthermore, aspiring to better results and trusting their potential, he formulated step-by-step rules for laying out houses in order to guide the users with confidence, through the whole making process. .

In the last two centuries "modular" design has produced identical apartments, arranged in typical apartment blocks. The same is true for mass-produced furniture. Uniqueness, which expresses personal needs and whiches, and which springs from the need to adapt and connect the constructed item to its surroundings and context, is completely missing. The participation of the users in the design process will not properly resolve this issue, unless the required decision is made at the right moment in the sequence of decision making during design. The organic unfolding of a building tells us when various decisions must be made --as an example, the decision point for sizes and shapes of windows will be after decisions on position and size of rooms, and on position of the windows in each room in relation to views and light have been finalized. The uniqueness of people's individual worlds and the geometric uniqueness of each space are tightly intertwined and arise from proper sequence in the process of design.

The benefits of the involvement of the users in the actual construction of their houses under the guidance and management of the architect-builder or the contractor, besides the obvious economical, are manifested in the personal qualities and feeling of these houses, which is utterly absent in low income mass produced housing. Alexander was involved in low income housing projects and in low cost experimental construction techniques, trying in each one to improve the building process and techniques, which would lead to good buildings without increasing costs. The projects in Mexico, Colombia and Peru demonstarte his progress in this area. Alexander's experiments for low cost construction techniques led him to spent several weeks in a row, working on the building sites of projects he was their user. .