The Timeless Way of Building (Hardcover)

Here's a very simple example of a pattern. When a room has a window with a view, the window becomes a focal point: people are attracted to the window and want to look through it. The furniture in the room creates a second focal point: everyone is attracted toward whatever point the furniture aims them at (usually the center of the room or a TV). This makes people feel uncomfortable. They want to look out the window, and toward the other focus at the same time. If you rearrange the furniture, so that its focal point becomes the window, then everyone will suddenly notice that the room is much more ``comfortable''.

I applied that pattern to my own living room, by moving the TV under the window and rearranging the furniture, and I was amazed what a difference it made! That's a very simple example, and there are literally hundreds more in this book and its sequel. Simply reading them is fascinating; it will convince you that you can make your own home into something as wonderful in its own way as the Taj Mahal--which is Alexander's whole point.

In fact, the book's main idea is much more powerful than that. It applies to almost every aspect of life, not just to architecture. When a situation makes us unhappy, it is usually because we have two conflicting goals, and we aren't balancing them properly. Alexander's idea is to identify those ``conflicting forces'', and then find a solution which brings them into harmony. It's a simple concept, but once you appreciate it you realize how deep it really is.

This is definitely one of the best books on my shelf. It has really changed the way I look at...everything.

The book is organized into three sections, I'll summarize each of them for you.

The Quality

The author postulates a Quality without a Name. "The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise... I shall try to show you now, why words can never capture it, by circling around it, through the medium of a half a dozen words." These words are "Alive" "Whole" "Comfortable" "Free" "Exact" "Egoless" "Eternal." The Quality is related to yet is none of those things.

My take on this section is that this Quality Without a Name is very sort of touchy feely. It seems to boil down to trusting your emotions - if something feels good it is good.

The Gate

In the introduction the author says that there is only one way of building. "There is one timeless way of building... It is... powerful and fundamental... And there is no other way in which a building or a town which lives can possibly be made." The author states that because architects and city planners are removed from the community, unlike the way people once built things, that we've lost this way, this language.

He then proposes a Pattern Language, which is the heart of the book (In my humble opinion). A Pattern is a way to identify, build, and share this precies way of making buildings and towns that are alive.

"... every pattern we define must be formulated in the form of a rule which establishes a relationship between a context, a system of forces which arises in that context, and a configuration which allows these forces to resolve themselves in that context.

"It has the following generic form:

Context -> System of forces -> Configuration."

If you can define a context, problem, and solution, you have a pattern that can be used to build something, and can be shared by other people.

You get to this definition by thinking of a place that is alive, that's comfortable, and focusing on the geography, on the space. What makes it so good? What is the need that this place fills? This is always hard to do: going from the general to the specific or the specific to the general requires a mental leap, and the author provides a some examples of how to do this. How to determine if something has this "Quality Without a Name."

Every complex thing (like a flower) is made up of many simple things that are self-sustaining. Any non-sustaining system within the whole will bring the whole down.

This is true of buildings and places as well. "Half Hidden Garden", for example, may be made up of "Courtyards Which Live" "Garden Growing Wild" "Terraced Slope" "Fruit Trees" "Sunny Place," etc. You shouldn't even begin to design until you have a complete picture of what the garden will be like by filling in all of the details.

This section, I believe, inspired Object Oriented Programming. A "Sunny Place" can be used in other "Half Hidden Gardens" or in an entirely different structure, like a Park.

The Way

I decided to skim this section, so my summary here will probably miss a few important points. I may go back and read it in more depth at a later date.

Here he describes how the language can live, like a genetic code - picked up and modified by people over time so that multiple languages can evolve. He also describes how to put the pattern into action.

The idea of a Pattern Language appeals to me, and I like many of the concepts the book puts forward, however I found his tone to be self-congradulatory, and he didn't seem to put much stock in his reader. The tone was very much "My idea is revolutionary, and you must be prepared to recieve it."

Many of his arguments are put forth poorly. Either he doesn't describe his premise well, or the logic itself seems flawed. For example, he says that this process is both precise and based on feelings. Reading the book this seems contradictory, but upon later reflection it makes sense. It was just stated poorly. What he's proposing is a way of defining, or pinning down, what about a place makes it feel good. A specific process to define why a you like something, and formula for communicating it.

Overall, I felt he could've been a LOT more concise and either made the book smaller, or packed a lot more useful information in. It felt very much like a first draft, and that he was still working through his ideas and not quite prepared to communicate them effectively. Several of the other reviews of this book seem to miss the point, and I take that as further indication that the author was struggling to get his ideas across.

The author believes that getting an overview of his concepts is more important than the details, so he arranged the book so you can read the "headlines" quickly to get an overview. For me this was distracting because he changes voice for every paragraph, and the book loses it's narrative flow.

I give this book five stars for content, but remove one for the way it was communicated. I suggest it to anyone who is interested in developing a system (these ideas apply to much more than architecture), a taxonomy, a structure, or those with a purely academic interest in the author's ideas. I'm actually anxious to put some of them to use.

The second book in this series is called A Pattern Language, and it's 230 or so patterns, ranging from Region to Town to Sunny Area. The third book is The Oregon Experiment, which I believe chronicles the building of a school based on these principles.