A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
SKU: 41978373671

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

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A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, ConstructionYou can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction.

After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language.

At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people.

At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment.

"Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.


Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 08/25/1977
ISBN: 9780195019193
Pages: 1216
Weight: 2.13lbs
Size: 8.03h x 5.65w x 1.82d

Review Citations: Newsweek 03/24/2008 pg. 16
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SKU: 41978373671

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Bruce Abell
Whiting, US
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Very strong construction--no plastic
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Expensive, but appears to be very well made. The lights are made of aluminum, so the support is sturdier than the usual plastic. The poles are in two parts, so you have a choice of heights the light is above the surface. Battery replacements are expensive, but you should get two years or more from a battery. You have a choice of a quite bright white light or a less bright yellow light.
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high quality and im picky! metal and glass and beautiful light temperature
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Judith J Spallino
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Sturdy and bright! Great for the driveway
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NICHOLAS K. LEE
West Palm Beach, US
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Extremely Overpriced
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It doesn’t hold charge too long , especially if it’s not on a perfectly bright sunny day without clouds. Even at that , It will only be able to light up for maybe two or three hours at best , and not very bright at all. Construction and materials are of good quality that’s why the one start or else zi would gave given a zero if i could. it is way overpriced for what it is. I am disappointed for what I paid and the amount of production I get from it. Would have returned it if I haven’t installed them and threw away the boxes.
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Twist
Phoenix, US
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Quality enclosure and battery. Looks great.
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Quality metal enclosure. Look great. Two color levels. Charge even in indirect sunlight just fine. I have now bought 12 of these lights.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2025

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