Pattern Language
Patterns may be collected together into a pattern language that addresses a particular domain. A large body of patterns was published by Alexander and his collaborators as A Pattern Language. The patterns in that book were intended to enable communities to construct and modify their own homes, workplaces, towns and cities.
Other than Alexander's own projects, few building projects have tried to use Alexander's patterns. Those that have, have met a mixed responses from other architects and builders, architectural critics and users. Alexander has come to believe that patterns themselves are not enough, and that one needs a "morphogenetic" understanding of the formation of the built environment; he has published his ideas in the four-volume work The Nature of Order.
While the pattern language idea has so far had limited impact in the building industry, it has had a profound influence on many workers in the information technology industry.
Read more about this topic: Pattern (architecture)
Famous quotes containing the words pattern and/or language:
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)