Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building

I saw this book recommended on Naabel S. Qureshi's site and found it extremely interesting.

Have to add latter (-> p. 304)

...

The Gate

Chapter 16: The Structure of a Language

Once we have understood how to discover individual patterns which are alive, we may then make a language for ourselves, for any building task we face. The structure of the language is created by the network of connections among individual patterns: and the language lives, or not, as a totality, to the degree these patterns form a whole.

Patterns cover every range of scale. To build something beautiful, I must find or create a pattern language for that thing. The structure of the pattern language handles the relations of the individual patterns. A → B means that pattern A needs pattern B as part of it to be complete; and that pattern B needs to be part of pattern A to be complete. A diagram of all patterns connected to pattern A shows pattern A in the center of a network of patterns where some are above it, some below it. The links between patterns are almost as much part of the language as the patterns themselves. The structure of the network anchors the individual patterns and helps make them complete.

The language is a good one, capable of making something whole, when it is morphologically and functionally complete.

Morphologically: patterns together form a complete structure, in detail, with no gaps. Functionally: peculiar self-consistency in which the patterns generate forces that they themselves resolve.

The language is morphologically complete when I can visualize the kind of buildings which it generates very concretely.

Keep working at every pattern until there is a collection of subpatterns which completely resolve morphological and functional problems. Patterns below a certain pattern need to be principal components.

And this process of defining the principal components of a given pattern is what finally completes it.

The preparation of the language may take a very long time but the use of the language may take no more than a few hours.

So, the real work of any process of design lies in this task of making up the language, from which you can later generate the one particular design.
You must make the language first, because it is the structure and the content of the language which determine the design. The individual buildings which you make, will live, or not, according to the depth and wholeness of the language which you use to make them with.
But of course, once you have it, this language is general. If it has the power to make a single building live, it can be a used a thousand times, to make a thousand buildings live.

Chapter 17: The Evolution of a Common Language for a Town

253 patterns regarded as valuable in the second volume A Pattern Language. You have to create a pattern language for yourself. Pattern pool working like a gene pool. Didn't know the word piecemeal until now. Piecemeal evolution of independent patterns.

Yet, changing as it is, each language is a living picture of a culture, and a way of life.

The Way

Once we have built the gate, we can pass through it to the practice of the timeless way.

Chapter 18: The Genetic Power of Language

This means, then, that the growth and rebirth of a living town is built up from a myriad of smaller acts.

Each building stems from the seed that is the pattern language of the town. Tiny acts also help to generate the larger patterns. Not the end product of the process is alive, but the continuous flux itself.

We see then the enormous power which a common pattern language has.
The process of life is marked by the continuous creation of wholes from parts. In an organism, cells cooperate to form organs and the body as a whole. In a society the individual actions of the people cooperate to form institutions and larger wholes. ...
And in a town a pattern language is a source of life, above all, because it helps to generate the wholes, from the cooperation of the individual acts.

Chapter 19: Differentiating Space

Within this process, every individual act of building is a process in which space gets differentiated. It is not a process of addition, in which pre-formed parts are combined to create a whole: but a process of unfolding, like the evolution of an embryo, in which the whole precedes its parts, and actually gives birth to them, by splitting.

The whole gives the parts their shape. The circumstances influence the concrete design of the patterns. New wholes get created morphologically top down. The example of the balcony whose shape grew by a differentiating process. Sequence of the patterns: Pay attention to hierarchy and closeness of the patterns above and then below. Each pattern a field which spreads throughout the whole.

In nature, a thing is always born, and developed, as a whole.

Chapter 20: One Pattern at a Time

The process of unfolding goes step by step, one pattern at a time. Each step brings just one pattern to life: and the intensity of the result depends on the intensity of each one of these individual steps.

Imagine the pattern. Close your eyes.

The most important thing is that you take the pattern seriously.

Paying serious attention to the pattern. The pattern creates a character and appears full, maybe almost strange. Building the thing with courage and the certainty that it is needed. No compromises, this is this certain thing, in full. Giving patterns their full intensity and letting them interact freely with circumstances.

Your mind is a medium within which the creative spark that jumps between the pattern and the wolrd can happen. You yourself are only the medium for this creative spark, not its originator.

Don't create "thought out" configurations. One pattern at a time with high intensity while implementing it (I have to think of chess strategy as a metaphor). The rule of transformation allows each pattern to inject a new configuration into the old configuration without disturbing the original harmony. Injecting a main entrance into the design for example in its most beautfiul and extreme form possible.

The order of the language will make sure that it is possible.

The morphological order of the pattern language allows the patterns to develop in their full intensity.

Within the sequence which the language defines, you can focus on each pattern by itself, one at a time, certain that those patterns which come later in the sequence will fit into the design which has evolved so far.
You can pay full attention to each pattern; you can let it have its full intensity.
Then you can give each pattern just that strange intensity which makes the pattern live.

Chapter 21: Shaping One Building

The example of the small cottage/workshop. Doing the design completely in your mind as a medium.

Chapter 22: Shaping a Group of Buildings

The example of a clinic. A few sticks in the ground, or stones, or chalk marks to help people create an image in their minds.

The simple process by which people generate a living building, simply by walking it out, waving their arms, thinking together, placing stakes in the ground, will always touch them deeply.
It is a moment when, within the medium of a shared language, they create a common image of their lives together, and experience the union which this common process of creation generates in them.

Chapter 23: The Process of Construction

Buildings built, directly, from simple marks made in the ground. The details must be carefully shaped according to the whole as well.

It is essential, therefore, that the builder build only from rough drawings: and that he carry out the detailed patterns from the drawings according to the processes given by the pattern language in his mind.

A concrete sequence of construction processes from p. 464.

The building, like the countless buildings of traditional society, has the simplicity of a rough pencil drawing. Done in a few minutes, the drawing captures the whole—the essence and the feeling of a horse in motion, a woman bending—because its parts are free within the rhythm of the whole.
And just so with the building now. It has a certain roughness. But it is full of feeling, and it forms a whole.

Chapter 24: The Process of Repair

Next, several acts of building, each one done to repair and magnify the product of the previous acts, will slowly generate a larger and more complex whole than any single act can generate.

Piecemeal. Every act of building with respect to the larger context an act of repair.