Summary of A Pattern Language

By Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein; with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, and Shlomo Angel. Published by Oxford University Press in 1977.

This resource is a bare-bones quick reference made for use in study, criticism, or review, as permitted by the doctrine of fair dealing in UK copyright law. In the book, each pattern contains extensive discussion and illustrations, all of which are omitted here. Each reference page has a link to the original in the full book at the Internet Archive, where you can also read the companion volume The Timeless Way of Building. Please consider buying the books.

Tip: On mobile devices, move between the patterns by swiping left or right.

We begin with that part of the language which defines a town or community. These patterns can never be “designed” or “built” in one fell swoop — but patient piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community that has these global patterns in it.

Do what you can to establish a world government, with a thousand independent regions, instead of countries.

Independent Regions

With each region work toward those regional policies which will protect the land and mark the limits of the cities.

Through city policies, encourage the piecemeal formation of those major structures which define the city.

Build up these larger city patterns from the grass roots, through action essentially controlled by two levels of self-governing communities, which exist as physically identifiable places.

Connect communities to one another by encouraging the growth of networks.

Establish community and neighborhood policy to control the character of the local environment according to the following fundamental principles.

Both in the neighborhoods and the communities, and in between them, in the boundaries, encourage the formation of local centers.

Around these centers, provide for the growth of housing in the form of clusters, based on face-to-face human groups.

Between the house clusters, around the centers, and especially in the boundaries between neighborhoods, encourage the formation of work communities;

Between the house clusters and work communities, allow the local road and path network to grow informally, piecemeal.

In the communities and neighborhoods, provide public open land where people can relax, run shoulders and renew themselves.

In each house cluster and work community, provide the smaller bits of common land, to provide for local versions of the same needs.

Within the framework of the common land, the clusters, and the work communities encourage transformation of the smallest independent social institutions: the families, workgroups, and gathering places. the family, in all its forms.

The workgroups, including all kinds of workshops and offices and even children’s learning groups.

The local shops and gathering places.

We now start that part of the language which gives shape to groups of buildings, and individual buildings, on the land, in three dimensions. These are the patterns which can be “designed” or “built” — the patterns which define the indivual buildings and the space between buildings; where we are dealing for the first time with patterns that are under the control of individuals or small groups of individuals, who are able to build the patterns all at once.

Lay out the overall arrangement of a group of buildings: the height and number of these buildings, the entrances to the site, main parking areas, and lines of movement through the complex.

Fix the position of individual buildings on the site, within the complex, one by one, according to the nature of the site, the trees, the sun: this is one of the most important moments in the language.

Within the buildings’ wings, lay out the entrances, the gardens, courtyards, roofs, and terraces: shape both the volume of the buildings and the volume of the space between the buildings at the same time — remembering that indoor space and outdoor space, yin and yang, must always get their shape together.

When the major parts of buildings and the outdoor areas have been given their rough shape, it is the right time to give more detailed attention to the paths and squares between the buildings.

Now, with the paths fixed, we come back to the buildings: within the various wings of any one building, work out the fundamental gradients of space, and decide how the movement will connect the spaces in the gradients.

Within the framwork of the wings and their internal gradients of space and movement, define the most important areas and rooms. First, for a house.

Then the same for offices, workshops, and public buildings.

Add those small outbuildings which must be slightly independent from the main structure, and put in the access from the upper stories to the street and gardens.

Prepare to knit the inside of the building to the outside, by treating the edge between the two as a place in its own right, and making human details there.

Decide on the arrangement of the gardens, and the places in the gardens.

Go back inside the building and attatch the necessary minor rooms and alcoves to complete the main rooms.

Fine tune the shape and size of rooms and alcoves to make them precise and buildable.

Give all the walls some depth, wherever there are to be alcoves, windows, shelves, closets or seats.

The last part of the language tells how to make a buildable building, directly from this rough scheme of space, and tells you how to build it, in detail.

Before you lay out structural details, establish a philosphy of structure which will let the structure grow directly from your plans and your conception of the buildings.

Within this philosphy of structure, on the basis of the plans which you have made, work out the complete strutural layout; this is the last thing you do on paper, before you actually start to build.

Put the stakes in the ground to mark the columns on the site, and start erecting the main frame of the building according to the layout of these stakes.

Within the main frame of the building, fix the exact positions for openings — the doors and windows — and frame these openings.

As you build the main frame and its openings, put in the following subsidiary patterns where they are appropriate.

Put in the surfaces and indoor details.

Build outdoor details to finish the outdoors as fully as the indoor spaces.

Complete the buildings with ornament and light and color and your own things.