Lec 10 a pattern language

ALEXANDER)
LEC 10
JAN 1 ,2016

CONSTRUCTIONS (1977)
• Christopher Alexander, an architect and author, coined
the term Pattern Language. He used it to refer to
common problems of the design and construction of
buildings and towns and how they should be solved.
The solutions proposed in the book include suggestions
related to how cities and towns should be structured to
where windows should be placed in a room.
• While “A Pattern Language” contains 253 “patterns”
from the first pattern, “Independent Regions” (the
most general) to the last, “Things from Your Life”,

the authors intend to give ordinary
people, not only professionals, a way to work
with their neighbors to improve a town or
neighborhood, design a house for themselves
or work with colleagues to design an office,
workshop or public building such as a school

is a careful description of a permanent solution to a
recurring problem within a building context, describing one of
the configurations which brings life to a building.
• Just as words must have grammatical and semantic
relationships to each other in order to make a spoken
language useful, design patterns must be related to each
other in order to form a pattern language
• Usually a pattern contains an underlying principle referring to
some given values. For Christopher Alexander, it is most
important to think about the people who will come in contact
with a piece of architecture. One of his key values is making
these people feel more alive. He talks about the “quality
without a name” (QWAN)

of Disorientation , FEAR of being lost
• Lay out very large buildings and collections of small
buildings so that one reaches a given point inside by
passing through a sequence of realms, each marked by a
gateway and becoming smaller and smaller, as one passes
from each one, through a gateway, to the next.
• From your point of view, the building is easy to grasp if
someone can explain the position of this address to you, in
a way you can remember easily, and carry in your head
while you are looking for it. “Come straight through the
main gate, down the main path and turn into the second
little gate, the small one with the blue grillwork – you can’t
miss my door.”

that any environment which
requires that a person pay attention to it
constantly is as bad for a person who knows it,
as for a stranger. A good environment is one
which is easy to understand, without
conscious attention.
• Treat the first entrances to the whole system
of circulation realms, the very largest ones, as
gateways , MAIN GATEWAYS

movements – The entrance must be placed in such a
way that people who approach the building see the
entrance or some hint of where the entrance is, as soon as
they see the building itself.
• Therefore, the first step in placing the entrances is to
consider the main lines of approach to the site. Locate
entrances so that, once the building(s) come into view, the
entrance, too, comes into view; and the path toward the
entrance is not more than 50 feet along the building.
• The relative color of the entrance, the light and shade
immediately around it, the presence of mouldings and
ornaments, may all play a part too. But above all, it is
important that the entrance be strongly differentiated from
its immediate surroundings.
• Make sure that the entrance has the proper relationship to
parking

a transition space between the street and the front
door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance
through this transition space, and mark it with a change of
light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of
surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a
change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.

They are intended to be private open spaces for people to
use – but they end up unused, full of gravel and abstract
sculptures.
• Place every courtyard in such a way that there is a view out
of it to some larger open space; place it so that at least two
or three doors open from the building into it and so that
the natural paths which connect these doors pass across
the courtyard. And, at one edge, beside a door, make a
roofed veranda or a porch, which is continuous with both
the inside and the courtyard.
• The courtyard should never be perfectly enclosed by the
rooms which surround it, but should give at least a glimpse
of some other space beyond.

at the edge of buildings, which are partly inside,
partly outside – play a vital role in the way that people interact with
buildings
• Arcades don’t work if the edges of the ceiling are too high. Keep the
edges of the arcade ceilings low.
• To make them public, the public path to the building must itself
become a place that is partly inside the building; (many doors and
windows and half-open walls – then people are drawn into the
building)
• To establish this place as a territory which is also apart from the
public world, it must be felt as an extension of the building interior
and therefore covered (at least seven feet deep. )
• Make the columns thick enough to lean against
• Make the openings between columns narrow and low either by
arching them or by making deep beams or with lattice work – so
that the inside feels enclosed

public place where people loiter, add a few steps at the edge
where stairs come down or where there is a change of level. Make
these raised areas immediately accessible from below, so that
people may congregate and sit to watch the goings-on.
• For a person looking at the horizon, the visual field is far larger
below the horizon than above it. It is therefore clear that anybody
who is “people-watching” will naturally try to take up a position a
few feet above the action. This means that any places which are
slightly elevated must also be within easy reach of passers-by,
hence on circulation paths, and directly accessible from below.
• The bottom few steps of stairs, and the balusters and rails along
stairs, are precisely the kinds of places which resolve these
tendencies. People sit on the edges of the lower steps, if they are
wide enough and inviting, and they lean against the rails.

STAGE
• A staircase is not just a way of getting from one floor to another.
The stair is itself a space, a volume, a part of the building; and
unless this space is made to live, it will be a dead spot, and work to
disconnect the building and to tear its processes apart.
• Flare out the bottom of the stair with open windows or balustrades
and with wide-steps so that the people coming down the stair
become part of the action in the room while they are on the stair,
and so that people below will naturally use the stair for seats. the
first four or five steps are the places where people are most likely to
sit if the stair is working well
• Stair is the key to movement in a building. It must therefore be
visible from the front door
• If the stair is too near the door, it will be so public that its position
will undermine the vital social character

any natural outdoor area, and make minor
boundaries between outdoor areas with low walls,
about 16 inches high, and wide enough to sit on, at
least 12 inches wide.
• If there is a high wall or a hedge, then the people in
the garden have no way of being connected to the
street; the people in the street have no way of being
connected to the garden. But if there is no barrier at all
– then the division between the two is hard to
maintain. Stray dogs can wander in and out at will; it is
even uncomfortable to sit in the garden, because it is
essentially like sitting in the street.

the glare around the window. When
there is bright light coming in through the
window, it creates glare against the darkness
of the wall around the window
• To create filtered light, partially cover those
windows which get direct sunlight, with vines
and lattices. Leaves are special because they
move.

BETWEEN THE
STONES
• Asphalt and concrete surfaces outdoors are easy
to wash down, but they do nothing for us,
nothing for the paths, and nothing for the
rainwater and plants.
• Therefore, On paths and terraces, lay paving
stones with a 1 inch crack between the stones, so
that grass and mosses and small flowers can grow
between the stones. Lay the stones directly into
earth, not into mortar, and, of course, use no
cement or mortar in between the stones.

to walk on, good for the plants, good for the
passage of time, good for the rain. You walk from stone to
stone, and feel the earth directly under foot. It does not
crack, because as the earth settles, the stones move with
the earth and gradually take on a rich uneven character. As
time goes by, the very age and history of all the moments
on that path are almost recorded in its slight unevenness.
Plants and mosses and small flowers grow between the
cracks. The cracks also help preserve the delicate ecology of
worms and insects and beetles and the variety of plant
species. And when it rains, the water goes directly to the
ground; there is no concentrated run-off, no danger of
erosion, no loss of water in the ground around the path.