Notes on The Timeless Way of Building (2018)

A Pattern Language is a fascinating read, and an online copy can be found using DuckDuckGo if you persist.

It's interesting both from an architectural/societal point of view, as well as providing a great example of a wiki-like organisation of ideas and patterns that build on and enhance each other.

Once crucial concept is the idea of generative codes (like L-Systems for construction/architectural design), that 's the "language" part of Pattern Language. It's like a poetic meter for physical expression that guides and is guided by the flow of events.

See Living Neighborhoods: http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm

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> Something that turned me off was this book's emphasis on quality being a mystical characteristic that requires secret knowledge to understand. As the references to "the quality without a name" built, I wondered if I had accidentally switched to reading the Tao Te Ching.

Ach, well, don't read his magnum opus "The Nature of Order" then. :-)

He goes further and develops a fusion of form and mysticism. It's fascinating to me that the pursuit of the intangible in arguably the most concrete art form (no pun intended) has lead C.A. to statements that smack of the Tao.

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> I think that we, as practitioners, have an obligation to make entry into our fields accessible and attainable to as many folks as possible, and that we curse ourselves to an impoverished and impoverishing field if we narrow it to folks with enough ego and resources to self-nominate against a pervasive pressure to opt-out in self-doubt. This is, in my opinion, the book's chief failure, and one I hope I can avoid repeating.

This interpretation seems bizarre to me, C.A. makes a very big deal of including the "end users" of a building directly and intimately in the process of architectural design. Few architects have been as radically committed to making their field accessible and attainable as he.

Vol. 1 "The Oregon Experiment"

> It describes an experimental approach to campus community planning at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon which resulted in a theory of architecture and planning described in the group's later published and better-known volumes A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Experiment

He literally wants the "users" to walk the site and layout the plan with sticks and even build the building themselves (he developed whole experimental building methods that normal folks could use to "sculpt" their own space!)

This is one of my all time favorite books. It’s actually had a significant influence on a wide variety of fields. I’ve heard it said that Object Oriented Programming was inspired by Alexander’s book. He gave a talk in ‘96 on what he thought software had gotten right, and gotten wrong, about A Pattern Language:

http://www.patternlanguage.com/archive/ieee.html

Brilliant book. Thought provoking. It is one of those books that when you read it again, new insights emerge. The principles apply far beyond architecture. Fun to introspect and apply socratic thinking methods to see how it relates to aspects in our modern day life.

I’ve been working my way through this for the last few days and I am undecided whether it is too generic to be of practical use or not.