A Pattern Language. Towns. Buildings. Construction by Christopher Alexander

First published in 1977, the book presents a radically new approach to architecture and construction. At the core is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people.

The book in dust jacket

The book describes a new language for environmental design whose entities called patterns provide answers to architectural questions: how tall should the windows be, how many floors should a building have, what area should trees and lawns take up in a neighborhood, etc.

The edition contains more than 250 patterns, each including a description of the issue, its discussion supported by an illustration, and a solution. Using the book, one can design their own house, develop a design of an office, a workshop or a public building, together with their neighbors improve their community or even the whole city.

A Pattern Language is one of the most influential books of the 20th century which has never before been published in Russian despite its strong influence on the development of design, engineering, architecture and computer science, including object-oriented programming.

The personal rhythms of maintenance and repair are central to the well being of any part of a community, because it is only these rhythms which keep up a steady sequence of adaptations and corrections in the organization of the whole. Slums happen when these rhythms break down.

Now in a town, the processes of maintenance and repair hinge on the fact of user ownership. In other words, the places where people are user-owners are kept up nicely; the places where they are not, tend to run down. When people have their own homes among shops, workplaces, schools, services, the university, these places are enhanced by the vitality that is natural to their homes. They extend themselves to make it personal and comfortable. A person will put more of himself into his home than into any of the other places where he spends his time. And it is unlikely that a person can put this kind of feeling into two places, two parts of his life. We conclude that many parts of the environment have the arid quality of not being cared for personally, for the simple reason that indeed nobody lives there.

It is only where houses are mixed in between the other functions, in twos and threes, in rows and tiny clusters, that the personal quality of the households and house-building activities gives energy to the workshops and offices and services.

From the pattern “Housing in Between”