Cohousing-L Mailing List: What is a pattern language?

[Frank Boosman (frank]

To answer the question "What is a pattern language," here is an excerpt
from the jacket of "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction:"

"At the core of the books too is the point that in designing their
environments people always rely on certain 'languages,' which, like the
languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite
variety of designs within a formal system which gives them coherence.

This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make
a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built
environment.

'Patterns,' the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How
high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How
much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More
than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists
of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration,
and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the
patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it
seems likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as
much in five hundred years as they are today."

-- Frank

|  Frank Boosman   |   Morrisville, NC   |   frank [at] internet.net  |
|       Have you read "Snow Crash" yet? If not, you should!      |