A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book on architecture. It was authored by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein of the Center for Environmental Structure of Berkeley, California, with writing credits also to Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel. Twenty five years after its publication, it is still one of the best-selling books on architecture.
The book is a substantive, illustrated ...
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A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book on architecture. It was authored by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein of the Center for Environmental Structure of Berkeley, California, with writing credits also to Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel. Twenty five years after its publication, it is still one of the best-selling books on architecture.
The book is a substantive, illustrated discussion of a pattern language derived from traditional architecture, with 253 unitary patterns such as Main Gateways given a treatment over several pages. It is written as a set of rules that are invoked by circumstances. This is a form that a theoretical mathematician or computer scientist might call a generative grammar.
The work originated from an observation that many medieval cities are attractive and harmonious. The authors said that this occurs because they were built to local regulations that required specific features, but freed...
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