Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Feng Shui / Pattern Language

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

We did not use any specific Feng Shui guidance in our planning, but a 
parallel could be drawn to Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language". 
This is a book many of us used in developing our thinking about our site 
and our individual homes. This lists patterns which are observed to 
"work", in the Western world mostly. To most Americans and Europeans, 
many of the patterns are easily recognized as positive ones, at least 
when we stop and think about it. (More so, for me, than Chinese 
patterns.) 

For the sake of anyone who doesn't know the book, this group of 
architects studied use patterns in many contexts and places, and noted 
what made people comfortable, interactive, feeling part of things and yet 
having a sense of privacy, and so forth. 

The book is arranged in terms of scale: the layout of towns, of 
neighborhoods, of houses, of rooms. Hundreds of different "patterns" --- 
winning combinations, so to speak--- are named and summarized and 
elaborated upon with examples. So for instance they observed people 
sitting on park benches, or ignoring certain benches and never sitting on 
them, and decided that people like sun, something behind their back (like 
a wall), and something in the distance to look at. In rooms, he noted 
that a room with windows on only one side, no matter how many windows 
that might be, was considerably less attractive to people than one with 
light on more than one side. He articulated this as Pattern #__ Light on 
Two Sides of the Room. 

The book is useful as a reminder of what we like. Some patterns you may 
dismiss: Windows With Many Tiny Panes doesn't intrigue me: I just think 
of the nuisance of cleaning them. And others resonate and you mark them 
and see how you can incorporate them into what you are doing. 

It would be great if this book were readable on line. Anyone know if it 
is?

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA
http://www.olypen.com/sstowell/rosewind
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