a guide to the seminal architecture book
A Pattern
Language
- Christopher Alexander
- Sara Ishikawa
- Murray Silverstein
- with
- Max Jacobson
- Ingrid Fiksdahl-King
- Shlomo Angel
published in 1977
Using this book
About this book:
A Pattern Language is the second in a series of books which describe an entirely new attitude to architecture and planning. The books are intended to provide a complete working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning—an alternative which will, we hope, gradually replace current ideas and practices.
About this site:
My friends and I have long been fans of this book, and attempt to use its patterns in our own homes and spaces. The book is 1,200 pages long, with countless intertextual connections. It always seemed ripe for mapping and distilling the patterns together more interactively. All text, except this section, is excerpted from the book.
Below are a few pages with information on how the patterns work and how to use them. After, you’ll find all the patterns themselves. Enjoy!
Towns
We begin with that part of the language which defines a town or community. These patterns can never be “designed” or “built” in one fell swoop—but patient piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community that has these global patterns in it.
Regional Policy
within each region work toward those regional policies which will protect the land and mark the limits of the cities;
City Policy
through city policies, encourage the piecemeal formation of those major structures which define the city;
Self-Governing Communities
build up these larger city patterns from the grass roots, through action essentially controlled by two levels of self-governing communities, which exist as physically identifiable places;
Connecting Communities
connect communities to one another by encouraging the growth of the following networks;
Neighborhood Policy
establish community and neighborhood policy to control the character of the local environment according to the following fundamental principles;
Local Centers
both in the neighborhoods and the communities, and in between them, in the boundaries, encourage the formation of local centers;
Housing Clusters
around these centers, provide for the growth of housing in the form of clusters, based on face-to-face human groups;
Connecting Clusters
between the house clusters, around the centers, and especially in the boundaries between neighborhoods, encourage the formation of work communities;
Neighborhood Policy
between the house clusters and work communities, allow the local road and path network to grow informally, piecemeal;
Public Activity
in the communities and neighborhoods, provide public open land where people can relax, rub shoulders and renew themselves;
Common Land
in each house cluster and work community, provide the smaller bits of common land, to provide for local versions of the same needs;
Families
within the framework of the common land, the clusters, and the work communities encourage transformation of the smallest independent social institutions: the families, workgroups, and gathering places. The family, in all its forms;
Work Groups
the workgroups, including all kinds of workshops and offices and even children’s learning groups;
Gathering Places
the local shops and gathering places.
Buildings
This completes the global patterns which define a town or a community. We now start that part of the language which gives shape to groups of buildings, and individual buildings, on the land, in three dimensions. These are the patterns which can be “designed” or “built”—the patterns which define the individual buildings and the space between buildings; where we are dealing for the first time with patterns that are under the control of individuals or small groups of individuals, who are able to build the patterns all at once.
Groups of Buildings
The first group of patterns helps to lay out the overall arrangement of a group of buildings: the height and number of these buildings, the entrances to the site, main parking areas, and lines of movement through the complex;
Site Arrangement
fix the position of individual buildings on the site, within the complex, one by one, according to the nature of the site, the trees, the sun: this is one of the most important moments in the language;
Building Shape
within the buildings’ wings, lay out the entrances, the gardens, courtyards, roofs, and terraces: shape both the volume of the buildings and the volume of the space between the buildings at the same time—remembering that indoor space and outdoor space, yin and yang, must always get their shape together;
Paths between Buildings
when the major parts of buildings and the outdoor areas have been given their rough shape, it is the right time to give more detailed attention to the paths and squares between the buildings;
Gradients of Space
now, with the paths fixed, we come back to the buildings: within the various wings of any one building, work out the fundamental gradients of space, and decide how the movement will connect the spaces in the gradients;
Rooms
within the framework of the wings and their internal gradients of space and movement, define the most important areas and rooms. First, for a house;
Offices and Public Buildings
then the same for offices, workshops, and public buildings;
Outbuildings
add those small outbuildings which must be slightly independent from the main structure, and put in the access from the upper stories to the street and gardens;
Building Edges
prepare to knit the inside of the building to the outside, by treating the edge between the two as a place in its own right, and making human details there;
Gardens
decide on the arrangement of the gardens, and the places in the gardens;
Minor Rooms
go back to the inside of the building and attach the necessary minor rooms and alcoves to complete the main rooms;
Shape of Rooms
fine tune the shape and size of rooms and alcoves to make them precise and buildable;
Walls
give all the walls some depth, wherever there are to be alcoves, windows, shelves, closets, or seats;
Construction
At this stage, you have a complete design for an individual building. If you have followed the patterns given, you have a scheme of spaces, either marked on the ground, with stakes, or on a piece of pa per, accurate to the nearest foot or so. You know the height of rooms, the rough size and position of windows and doors, and you know roughly how the roofs of the building, and the gardens are laid out.\n\nThe next, and last part of the language, tells how to make a buildable building directly from this rough scheme of spaces, and tells you how to build it in detail.
Structural Philosophy
Before you lay out structural details, establish a philosophy of structure which will let the structure grow directly from your plans and your conception of the buildings;
Structural Layout
within this philosophy of structure, on the basis of the plans which you have made, work out the complete structural layout; this is the last thing you do on paper, before you actually start to build;
Main Building Frame
put stakes in the ground to mark the columns on the site, and start erecting the main frame of the building according to the layout of these stakes;
Doors and Windows
within the main frame of the building, fix the exact positions for openings—the doors and windows—and frame these openings;
Supporting Patterns
as you build the main frame and its openings, put in the following subsidiary patterns where they are appropriate;
Surfaces and Details
put in the surfaces and indoor details;
Outdoor Details
build outdoor details to finish the outdoors as fully as the indoor spaces;
Your Personal Touch
complete the building with ornament and light and color and your own things;