Christopher Alexander's pattern language: an alternative exploration of space-making practices

Abstract

While Christopher Alexander's pattern language has been widely accepted by building contractors and do-it-yourself homeowners, academics have often rejected it for being deterministic and authoritarian. This paper argues for a balanced re-evaluation of Alexander's work, arguing that its importance lies in its recognition that life patterns allow for unconscious cognitive relationships with space that can be discerned and actively improved. When reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977) and The Timeless Way of Building (1979), it becomes apparent that Alexander's aim is not just to produce diagrammatic patterns, but to provide a broad critique of the alienated modern condition. Alexander calls for a shift in knowledge that would allow for an holistic attitude wherein buildings could be experienced without conscious attention. Herein, I argue, Alexander's philosophical concerns can be more fully understood in the context of recently growing interests in philosophy, the cognitive sciences and emerging somatic practices that argue for an integration of mind and body. Furthermore, I propose that Alexander's insights about how and when physical settings become cognitive can provide some insights for dissolving the limits of both empiricism and relativism.