A pattern language
by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel, Nax Jacobsohn · first published 1977
48% recommend48% neutral4% critical
Why HN recommends it
Catalogue of architectural patterns for buildings, towns and shared spaces, and the source of the software pattern movement. Valued for practical design ideas on homes and cities, for architects and programmers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Alexander and his co-authors present us with over two hundred (roughly 250) "patterns" that they believe must be present in order for an environment to be pleasing, comfortable, or in their words, "alive." The patterns start at the most general level -- the first pattern, "Independent Regions," describes the ideal political entity, while another of my favorite patterns, "Mosaic of Subcultures," described the proper distribution of different groups within a city. The patterns gradually become more specific -- you'll read arguments about how universities should relate to the community, the prope
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Read "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander. http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Constructio...
on “City Layout Design: A programmer's perspective” ↗Massive PDF of A Pattern Language: https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Alexander_A_Patt... But I recommend owning and reading it in print. Great book to dip in and out of at whim.
on “Christopher Alexander has died” ↗…and it was "unrivaled in its monotony and depressing blandness" despite being quite nice in many ways. It was just so empty. Christopher Alexander has done a fantastic job of putting forth a solution (Pattern Language; Nature of Order) and his main site is actually called "Living Neighborhoods". https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm What to do about the rest of it I have no idea.
on “What Armenians should know about life in America (2014)” ↗In a similar topic of books about system design, someone on HN recommended A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander et. al. They're not about designing distributed software systems... they're a complete design language for the proper design of a city, from…
on “A non-standard book list for software developers” ↗FWIW, if you really want to understand Pattern Language you should go and read the source material: Christopher Alexander's book of the same name and it's companion volumes. The GoF did a fine job, but there's a richer and deeper constellation of ideas and…
on “Python Design Patterns (2018)” ↗I just buy a new copy of A Pattern Language whenever I see it in a bookstore, because I know I'm going to end up giving it to someone. It's one of those books you can confidently recommend to any curious, intelligent person, and it may change their…
on “Christopher Alexander has died” ↗I love Pattern Language and use ideas from it all the time. It, and Alexander, are much more interesting than the mechanistic stuff that software people reduced him to. I think Chris Alexander is one of those rare cases where…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading? What've you read lately?” ↗Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a candidate. It is cited as the inspiration of the Design Patterns book. But it is actually a very good (though long-winded) book.
on “Books Programmers Don't Really Read But Recommend” ↗+1 for Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It's superb. I'd add A Pattern Language to the list. It's actually been very appropriately valued by the programming community, but massively undervalued by its intended audience of architects and urban planners. Should've been the architecture…
on “Surprisingly undervalued books” ↗Anyone who has read Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language"[1] can easily extrapolate his ideas to cubicles. Alexander pointed out that if you drop any human in an open field with a tree, within a few minutes they'll be sitting with their back to the tree, facing…
on “Research: Cubicles Are the Absolute Worst” ↗I really enjoyed the book 'A Pattern Language' by Christopher Alexander. It looks at architecture from the level of the ordinary person and has some brilliant insight into what makes a building pleasant to live in. I applied some ideas from the book…
on “The Psychological Cost of Boring Buildings” ↗…utility, paid through taxes, that requires no activation. I've never had to explicitly pay for water or have it turned on/off when I switch apartments, it would be amazing for internet to be the same. See Pattern Language/Christopher Alexander for ideas on how to design the physical spaces to work for the people who will be using them, including random passersby. Put cars lowest on the priority list. To me it feels like…
on “New Cities” ↗For anyone who wants to see a pragmatic way to build cities and communities, I'd highly recommend Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Constructi...
on “We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)” ↗Gotta plug my favorite book of all time here: “A Pattern Language”, by this speaker, Christopher Alexander et al. Tons of small, progressive, human-centered hand-drawn architecture patterns in a hard-bound brick of bible-thin pages. The book inspired code patterns…
on “Christopher Alexander – Patterns in Architecture (1996) [video]” ↗I have been an admirer of Alexander's A Pattern Language book on architecture for 40 years. Even then, this is new to me. I recommend you read this article, even though it's deep and difficult. It can be read as a fundamental criticism of UI/UX as it's practiced…
on ““A pattern language” explained (2016)” ↗