Pattern languages

A pattern language is essentially a way of defining generic centers, and then using them, sequentially, in design projects. The entities we called patterns were — albeit in an early formulation — somewhat similar to the entities I now call centers.
One might say that every pattern which was defined under that theory was, in effect, a rule for making or partly making some important type of center, necessary to the life of a living human environment.

The essential ideas of pattern language theory are the following:

1. In traditional cultures, successful environments were always built by using pattern languages. They showed people how to make an almost infinite variety of buildings by combining and recombining the patterns, and contained within the process a modest guarantee that the buildings would be successful. Hence the great variety and beauty of buildings built by traditional societies.
2. Each culture had its own pattern language. The pattern languages reflected differences from culture to culture, and often nearly embodied the culture as a whole, in the form of rules which defined the spatial structure of the built environment.
3. The patterns were, for the most part, based on human needs, understanding, necessity. They reflected the deep practical daily concerns of people and were, as rules, expressed in a form which made it possible to put these things into the built environment in an immediate, practical, and effective form.
4. At the same time, although patterns vary from culture to culture, and while human needs vary and are highly specific in different human cultures, there is a core of material — a central invariant structure — which is common to all cultures. A portion of this invariant core — or at least a sketch of such a thing — is described in A Pattern Language.

This much of the theory is descriptive. But for the most part, the main purpose of the pattern language theory was not descriptive, but prescriptive. We discovered that it is possible to create pattern-language-like systems, artificially. That is:

1. It is possible to create pattern languages for our own time, which, like traditional languages, embody knowledge, cultural subtlety, human need, and empirical information about the structure of living environments, in a form which may then be used to generate living centers by a combinatorial unfolding process.
2. It is possible to invent and create new pattern languages, artificially, by trying to see what new patterns will solve problems that exist in a given context. Although these may be new, in the sense that they are newly defined, many of them may, obviously, be versions of ancient patterns, familiar in different cultures, but so deep that in some form they are still relevant to our new era and new settings.
3. The objectivity of the patterns is context-sensitive, and always includes a built-in reference to the context for which that pattern works.
4. The patterns, because of their explicitness, allow discussion, debate, and gradual improvement of the material.
5. The artificial language will work well only to the extent that it embraces a whole — that is to say, to the extent it comprises everything that needs to be said about a given building situation, and that the various patterns it contains work together as a whole system, which accounts for all morphology that is required to design, plan, design, or make, a complete building of that type and its immediate surroundings.
6. These artificial languages, like traditional languages, can then be used to steer processes of design and building, just as traditional languages played that role in traditional society.
7. For any new building project it is necessary to construct such a language, merely to provide a clear functional basis for the character and organization of the building. The language that is written down, at the beginning of a project may be invented from scratch, composed of known languages that have been re-combined, or may be a modification of a known language developed earlier. This will vary, according to the degree that the project is new, not yet fully understood, or old and familiar.

Each pattern is a rule which describes a type of strong center that is likely to be needed, on a recurring basis, throughout a particular environment or class of environments.
Further, a pattern not only describes a recurring center, but also describes a relation between other generic centers. The pattern both describes a generic center, and describes a generic relation among other generic centers.
But it must be remembered that the pattern describes a generic center, not a particular center. In this sense the pattern is not so much like an element in an erector set, but more a rule for making a certain kind of center capable of making an infinite number of particular centers of the same type, whenever they are needed.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/13 Patterns#