Making Christopher Alexander and co's work including A Pattern Language more accessible online.
Have loved Christopher Alexander and co's work for more than 20 years.
Want a good online version of e.g. a pattern language with search, directory of patterns, linking, real text etc.
Using the physical book can be a bit painful trying to move between patterns or even find the page for a given pattern.
See https://twitter.com/rufuspollock/status/1646138887042134019 for more.
A Pattern Language is Alexander's best known work. It is also one of his earliest (published in 1977 and reflecting ideas developed in late 60s and early 70s). Alexander explicitly stated that Pattern Languages were superseded by his later work in the [[Nature of Order]] developing generative codes*.
- Pattern Language: a set of patterns for creating centers. However, without any specific order to apply the patterns in.
- Sequences: A pattern language with a sequence with an emphasis on unfolding. Crudely: an order to use the patterns in.
- Generative codes: refined sequences which include additional aspects especially around social interactions e.g. with various stakeholders, legal aspects etc (the "code" is a partial reference to a building code)
See http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/patternlanguages.htm
PATTERN LANGUAGES CAME FIRST, about 1967. There were many pattern languages of various kinds, published. Each pattern language contained a number of patterns, in a rough order going from the largest patterns to the smallest. The pattern language gave a descripiton of a certain kind of environment, by displaying the functional barebones, so that one could be sure that buildings or other environments would at least respond adequately, through their geometry, to the functional needs which were identified in the patterns.
MORPHOGENETIC SEQUENCES, also known just as SEQUENCES CAME SECOND, about 1990. A sequence is a pattern language which places emphasis on the order of unfolding, and gives much more importance to the orderly unfolding, so that by applying the steps in the sequence, in the order specified, a coherent geometric order will unfold, which also contains the patterns and is therefore well behaved as an environment.
GENERATIVE CODES CAME THIRD, and most recently, about 2002. A generative code includes all the information needed for practical implementation: thus it not only describes the order in which decisions must be made, to generate coherent form but in addition describes all the human interactions, and practical and legal and procedural details, to get an actual living neighborhood to appear on the ground, as a result of interactions among the people who live and work there.
ALL THREE TYPES MAY BE VIEWED AS GENERATIVE SEQUENCES, but pattern languages and morphogenetic sequences lack essential features of a generative code, and therefore cannot get the practical work done successfully. Human interactions, human relationships, and the roles people need to play together when building a neighborhood, are missing. Yet these are needed to form viable living structure.
Only the FULL generative codes are capable of helping a human community to steer themselves towards a living structure. Developers who follow the blueprint of behavior laid down in the second half of the 20th century, will not achieve a living structure. It cannot be done that way. If developers were to choose to use generative code, and to follow the demands placed on them by the generative code, that might work. And it is possible that a more serious examination of underlying processes is needed, in order for developers in any form, to succeed in building real community.
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