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Interesting that you mentioned pattern language. My brother is an architecht, I'm into tech. I remember asking him about Alexander / pattern language after read

by mmalone 10y ago

Interesting that you mentioned pattern language. My brother is an architecht, I'm into tech. I remember asking him about Alexander / pattern language after reading GoF, et. al. and he hadn't heard of him. He looked into it and was kind of like shrug. Seems Alexander isnt't super mainstream in the architecture community, and his ideas weren't that revolutionary. My read is that he's better know to software engineers than actual architects?

jkaunisv1 10y ago
I've heard of his books being required reading in some architecture courses, and I've heard many architects don't care as you said. Whether or not his ideas were revolutionary, just going on the way new developments in my city are built, they could really stand to take a page out of his book. Everything is just a big rectangular box plopped down on a rectangular grid with ugly materials. I assume it's all optimized for cost. So right now I don't have much respect for the architecture community.
elihu 10y ago
Part of the point of A Pattern Language is that it wasn't revolutionary. The premise is that people have been building buildings for thousands of years, and certain common patterns appear without anyone calling them out specifically. So, Alexander set out to compile a list of all those patterns, and hypothesize about the problems they solve and why that particular solution is preferable to the alternatives. To someone who is trying to make an artistic statement with their buildings, A Pattern Language might be uninteresting, since his advice is essentially the architectural equivalent of composing music in a major key according to traditional rules of harmony. If that's what you want to do, that's great, but if you want to make something deliberately dissonant or challenge traditional notions, it's not so helpful. It's also worth noting that Alexander has some very strong opinions about things, and (just like any other area of human endeavor) there are architects who disagree with him.

by mmalone 10y ago

jkaunisv1 10y ago

I've heard of his books being required reading in some architecture courses, and I've heard many architects don't care as you said. Whether or not his ideas were revolutionary, just going on the way new developments in my city are built, they could really stand to take a page out of his book. Everything is just a big rectangular box plopped down on a rectangular grid with ugly materials. I assume it's all optimized for cost. So right now I don't have much respect for the architecture community.

elihu 10y ago

Part of the point of A Pattern Language is that it wasn't revolutionary. The premise is that people have been building buildings for thousands of years, and certain common patterns appear without anyone calling them out specifically. So, Alexander set out to compile a list of all those patterns, and hypothesize about the problems they solve and why that particular solution is preferable to the alternatives. To someone who is trying to make an artistic statement with their buildings, A Pattern Language might be uninteresting, since his advice is essentially the architectural equivalent of composing music in a major key according to traditional rules of harmony. If that's what you want to do, that's great, but if you want to make something deliberately dissonant or challenge traditional notions, it's not so helpful. It's also worth noting that Alexander has some very strong opinions about things, and (just like any other area of human endeavor) there are architects who disagree with him.