The powerful characteristic of Chris. Alexander’s ‘A Pattern Language’ is not immediately obvious—the patterns themselves are not rigourously researched (the authors admit this, and use a rating system to make it clear their own level of confidence in their proposals), and many do not stand the test of time. There are a few which seem to me to be worth paying deep attention to, but I won’t go into that here.
The real invention is the idea of a pattern language. What it is. The work of an architect involves dealing at a wide variety of scales, and along the whole gamut from subjectivity to objectivity. It involves crossing and re-crossing between a number of only loosely related sets of systems; all with the aim of producing something acceptable in terms of function, aesthetics, economy and constructional/structural viability. In short, it is a complex task in an irreducibly (this side of any putative singularity) complex environment.
Humans are not good at dealing with complexity—there is well established research on the limits of the human brain in handling more than a few ideas at once. This is why reductionist practices have served us so well. However, reductionist practices are all but useless in complex environments, unless you are happy to ignore aspects of that environment which you can’t handle- the error of the logical positivists.
Pattern languages offer a tool for managing our understanding of a complex environment, without self-defeating reduction (the error of Notes on the Synthesis of Form: in order to arrive at his tree-like diagrams of problems, Alexander had to develop an algorithm that decided which of the relationships between parts of the problem which had been identified should be ignored. The approach of ‘Notes’ involves deliberately ignoring parts of the analysis of the problem).
Each pattern allows for reductive thinking at an appropriate level of perspective, while the explicit links maintained between patterns at larger and smaller scales in a non tree-like ‘semi-lattice’ help maintain in consciousness and in the design process all the connections which make the situation complex in the first place.
The powerful characteristic of Chris. Alexander’s ‘A Pattern Language’ is not immediately obvious—the patterns themselves are not rigourously researched (the authors admit this, and use a rating system to make it clear their own level of confidence in their proposals), and many do not stand the test of time. There are a few which seem to me to be worth paying deep attention to, but I won’t go into that here.
The real invention is the idea of a pattern language. What it is. The work of an architect involves dealing at a wide variety of scales, and along the whole gamut from subjectivity to objectivity. It involves crossing and re-crossing between a number of only loosely related sets of systems; all with the aim of producing something acceptable in terms of function, aesthetics, economy and constructional/structural viability. In short, it is a complex task in an irreducibly (this side of any putative singularity) complex environment.
Humans are not good at dealing with complexity—there is well established research on the limits of the human brain in handling more than a few ideas at once. This is why reductionist practices have served us so well. However, reductionist practices are all but useless in complex environments, unless you are happy to ignore aspects of that environment which you can’t handle- the error of the logical positivists.
Pattern languages offer a tool for managing our understanding of a complex environment, without self-defeating reduction (the error of Notes on the Synthesis of Form: in order to arrive at his tree-like diagrams of problems, Alexander had to develop an algorithm that decided which of the relationships between parts of the problem which had been identified should be ignored. The approach of ‘Notes’ involves deliberately ignoring parts of the analysis of the problem).
Each pattern allows for reductive thinking at an appropriate level of perspective, while the explicit links maintained between patterns at larger and smaller scales in a non tree-like ‘semi-lattice’ help maintain in consciousness and in the design process all the connections which make the situation complex in the first place.
I will admit to being an architect.