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The Journal of Architecture

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

Ritu Bhatt
a a

School of Architecture, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA Available online: 29 Nov 2010

To cite this article: Ritu Bhatt (2010): Christopher Alexander's pattern language: an alternative exploration of space-making practices, The Journal of Architecture, 15:6, 711-729 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2011.533537

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Christopher Alexanders pattern language: an alternative exploration of space-making practices

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Ritu Bhatt

School of Architecture, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

While Christopher Alexanders 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 Alexanders 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 Alexanders 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, Alexanders 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 Alexanders insights about how and when physical settings become cognitive can provide some insights for dissolving the limits of both empiricism and relativism. Introduction
Christopher Alexanders pattern language, embraced by both building contractors and doit-yourself homeowners, is often rejected in the academy for being deterministic and authoritarian. The critiques of pattern language have been varied and have pointed to its essentialism, its reduction of the design process into a diagrammatic language and its emphasis on comfort, ease, and pleasure, which many critics see as bourgeois and encouraging of complacency. This paper argues for a more balanced re-evaluation of Alexanders work in the history and theory of architecture, 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.
# 2010 The Journal of Architecture

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977) and The Timeless Way of Building (1979), which I will refer to from now on as A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way, were written as two halves of a single work, and in these works, Alexander aimed not just to produce diagrammatic patterns, but also to provide a broader philosophical critique of the alienated modern condition.1 Throughout his writings, Alexander calls for a shift in the conception of knowledge that would involve letting go of the existing modes of perception, and an acquisition of an holistic attitude wherein buildings could be experienced without conscious attention.2 Herein, I argue, Alexanders philosophical concerns can be more fully understood in the context of recently
1360-2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2011.533537

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growing interests in philosophy, the cognitive sciences and emerging somatic practices that argue for an integration of mind and body. Furthermore, I propose that Alexanders insights about how and when physical settings become cognitive can provide some insights for dissolving the limits of both empiricism and relativism. In A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues provide 253 patterns for spaces ranging from living areas to kitchens, bathrooms, secret alcoves, staircases, workplaces, neighbourhoods, ideal universities and pathways.3 A Pattern Language aims to bring conscious awareness to the patterns through which human beings unconsciously relate to space, providing a practical language for everyday users.4 The book consists of suggestive diagrams, which Alexander introduces as elements of a practical language that describes the core of the solution to the problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.5 This assures readers of a exible, open-ended language that will allow them actively to engage in the design process. According to Alexander, the rise of a modern aesthetic and a specialised architectural profession had contributed to the failure of modern architecture to relate to the deep psychological needs of users. In seeking insights from pre-modern traditional environments, A Pattern Language aimed to create a system of knowledge that would help to blur the distance between professional designers and everyday users. When Alexander wrote A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way, critiques of modernism were emerging from an understanding that

pre-modern traditional environments employed knowledge and shared techniques that largely functioned unconsciously. Bernard Rodofskys Architecture without Architects (1964), as well as Amos Rapoports inuential books, House Form and Culture (1969) and The Meaning of the Built Environment (1982), had underscored the role that unconscious and intuitive processes play in the design of traditional environments.6 Around the same time, other inuential critiques such as Robert Venturis books, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) and Learning from Las Vegas (1972), which had emphasised the role of the ordinary in making architecture more communicable, played a key part in the theorisation of postmodernism.7 Kevin Lynchs seminal work Image of City (1960) drew attention to the experiences of users, showing how everyday users perceive and organise spatial information as they navigate through cities. Architectural culture of the 1960s and 1970s was potent with critiques of modernism, including Jane Jacobs inuential study The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). By giving impetus and encouragement to grassroots efforts at the local level, Jacobs study attacked the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the USA that were in the process of destroying neighbourhoods. Even some later critiques of modernism, such as Kenneth Framptons critical regionalism, shared an appreciation for traditional knowledge and cultural meaning in architecture. In Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Frampton argues for recognition of the particularities of a local context, including topography, climate and tactile qualities, over visual properties.

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Within such an intellectual climate, a surge of interest in Alexanders pattern language transpired in academia, focusing on user empowerment, the use of patterns in the design process, and community participatory design, in addition to the phenomenological leanings of Alexanders theories. Later, however, this interest leveled off to a quiet punctuated by the occasional laudatory or disparaging review, mainly criticizing Alexanders work for its determinism and authoritarianism.8 Since its publication, however, A Pattern Language has continued to nd enduring success with builders and contractors as well as do-it-yourself homeowners who use it mainly as a self-help practice. Herein, I will rst provide a brief overview of the reception of Alexanders work to show the extreme variation within academic writing on the subject, ranging from disparaging reviews to positive reception to a general silence in recent scholarship. Then I will analyse A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way to shed light on their key arguments and philosophical insights in order to show how they connect with emerging inquiries in somatics, the cognitive sciences and the neurosciences. I will then outline how Alexanders insights about how and when physical settings become cognitive can provide insights for dissolving the limits of both empiricism and relativism.

Scholarly debates about pattern language

In an essay entitled The Poverty of Pattern Language, J.P. Protzen criticises Alexander for presenting evidence through what Protzen calls a consensus theory of truth.9 The idea that many people will agree represents a pervasive mode of

presenting evidence in A Pattern Language, and statements like Nobody wants fast through trafc going by their homes are used to generate agreement because of their appeal to what Alexander perceives as common sense. Protzen writes, While some of these statements are readily acceptable as common sense (whether they are empirically substantiated or not), I certainly object to the logic which would conclude that because everybody wants something we ought to have it, or, conversely, that because everybody hates something we ought to do away with it. History is witness to the fact that people can agree to do the stupidest and most horrendous things, and that they have been reinforced in that precisely because they all have been in agreement.10 For Protzen, pattern language ultimately becomes an all-encompassing theory, and he argues that readers should refute the whole because it enforces an unenlightened conformism and leads to deterioration of intellectual capabilities, and of the power of imagination.11 In another publication, entitled Discord over Harmony in Architecture, which is a transcript of a conversation between Peter Eisenman and Christopher Alexander at the Harvard School of Design, Eisenman criticises the values of comfort, ease, legibility, sociability, pleasure, mental health, peacefulness, [and] opportunities for both solitude and participation in family and community life as values that can easily be seen as bourgeois and encouraging of complacency, passivity and parochialism.12 Throughout the conversation, Alexander defends his work while striving to distance it from theories of postmodernism and poststructuralism, arguing that they are disharmonious

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and explaining that he had been searching for a conception of knowledge in architecture that makes use of a different cosmology. Both Protzen and Eisenmans critiques fail to demonstrate an understanding of key issues that Alexander is addressing; Protzen, in examining Alexanders work through the keen eye of an empiricist, fails to see the limitations of a purely empirical approach in understanding knowledge based on deep human feelings, and in the Eisenman-Alexander debate, Eisenmans continuous referencing of structuralist and poststructuralist thought as the only critiques of western epistemology fails to see the particular kind of shift in knowledge that Alexander is pointing toward. Kim Doveys article The Pattern Language and Its Enemies addresses this idea, arguing that the pattern language approach calls for a marked shift in environmental epistemology. According to Dovey, patterns are derived from the lived world of everyday experience, and they gain their power not by being proven empirically correct, but by showing us a direct connection between the pattern and our experience of the built environment.13 In other words, by resonating with the user on a personal, intuitive level, patterns of spatial use often emerge at an unconscious level, can be shared collectively by people and come to be seen as a source of knowledge without being easily or necessarily empirically veriable. More recently, William Saunders has made the point that readers who dismiss Alexanders work are depriving themselves of the chance to savour its bounty of delightful details and insights, such as its acute seeing of the built environment, as well as its contributions to

phenomenology. Describing Alexanders work as New Age ower-child wishfulness, Saunders argues, if only because Pattern Language is a perennial best-seller, architectural curricula have some obligation to study it as a cultural phenomenon.14 On the other hand, the success of Alexanders theories has often been attributed to the direct links they draw between users and the process of design, aiding in design without requiring the user to have comprehensive, professional knowledge. In Lingua Francas for Design: Sacred Places and Pattern Languages, Tom Erickson speaks to A Pattern Languages accessible diagrams and rich, vivid descriptions, which he argues have the capacity to evoke a response of I see from the user.15 Unlike abstract principles that require users to understand a conceptual framework and then map the principles onto their own domain of concerns, Erickson argues that Alexanders patterns function as concrete prototypes. Grounded in rich, concrete experiences, patterns nd immediate connection with users (Fig. 1). In fact, A Pattern Language has found its most compelling success not so much in architectural design but in computer science, within software and object-oriented design, wherein patterns are now recognised as a concrete framework upon which complex design decisions involving highly abstract concepts can be anchored. The term pattern is described by Doug Lea in Christopher Alexander: An Introduction for Object-Oriented Designers as a pre-formal construct describing sets of forces in the world and relations among them.16 Each pattern entry is seen as a link of forces, and the format of each pattern is easy to understand,

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comprised of three different spatial layersthat of a problem, solution and constructionallowing the layers to evolve concurrently. Such formatting allows for a common vocabulary to express key concepts, and a language for relating them together; in doing so, pattern language allows a designer to formalise optimum solutions and improve the quality of the resulting systems. In The Timeless Way: Making Living Cooperative Buildings with Design Patterns, Pemberton and Grifths write: Patterns could enable designers to benet from the knowledge and experience of creators of successful systems, providing reusable templates

adapted to t the particular issues which the designer is addressing. Above all, patterns, because they are themselves alive and engaging, provide a means of communicating either between designers of similar artifacts, e.g. one architect to another, or designers looking at reshaping the environment at quite different levels, e.g. furniture designer to interface designer.17 Pattern construction involves an iterative social process of collecting, sharing and amplifying distributed experience and knowledge. Because the forms of patterns and their relationships are only loosely

Figure 1. What the user wanted. Alexanders diagram shows how architects typically have a hard time connecting with what the user wanted. The success of pattern language, however, has been attributed to its accessible diagrams and rich, vivid descriptions, which have the capacity to function as concrete prototypes, projecting a reality grounded in concrete experiences to which users can immediately relate and use to recongure the most intimate of their spaces. (Christopher Alexander et al., The Oregon Experiment (New York, Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 44.

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constrained and written in a language that evolves naturally, it is argued that they allow for innite nondeterministic generativity.18 Some of these claims attest to pattern languages inuence on innovations such as Wiki, as well as its inuence on many grassroots programming communities. However, the applications of pattern language in computer science have failed to engage with the philosophical critique of modern thought that is central to Alexanders work. In his keynote address at the 1996 ACM conference, Object-Oriented Programs, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Alexander addresses this issue, stating that the ability of patterns to recongure and facilitate design processes usually does not fully represent the potential of the arguments that sought to create good and nurturing environments.19 Such claims, and the uneven reception that Alexanders work has received, suggest a re-evaluation of his work, particularly its relevance to architecture.

Re-reading A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way

A closer review of A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way reveals that Alexander does not just aim to produce a pattern language for design. Rather, his work provides a far-reaching philosophical critique of the modern alienated condition, which is characterised by separation of humans from nature, regimented divisions between work and home, and separation of professional architectural knowledge from its everyday users. A Pattern Language argues for an ideal balance between work and family life, suitable public institutions, mixed use of space in neighbourhoods, and rich

public spaces for carnivals and other expressions of irrationality. According to Alexander, when human beings share a rich community life, spaces transform from being merely functional to being social and vital, and in such settings lie possibilities for learning and cognition that are spatial, emotional and affective. Alexanders descriptions of patterns discuss how to transform a specic space from being merely functional to being socially interactive. In doing so, the patterns often challenge conventional ways of seeing. For instance, in the pattern that discusses staircases (Pattern 133: Staircase as a Stage), Alexander writes, A staircase is not just a way of getting from one oor to another [Fig. 2]. The stair is itself a space, a volume, a part of the building; and unless this space is made to live, it will be a dead spot, and work to disconnect the building and to tear its processes apart.20 He argues that one should design stairs in such a way that they become fully integrated with the rest of the building, providing a gradual and natural transition to the next level. He suggests aring out the bottom of the stairs and widening them, as well as making the stairs part of the outer perimeter of the room, if possible, so the steps can be used as seats. Stairs then would not remain merely stairs, but would be transformed into social spaces where people would feel naturally inclined to sit and chat. Through such critiques of modern functionalism, Alexander continually draws attention to the potential of architecture to facilitate and increase the intuitive tendencies of human beings to gather socially and to move around. Furthermore, by delving into the seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life that the

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Figure 2. Patterns for stairs. Alexander argues that stairs that merely connect two levels of a building work further to disconnect the building and tear its processes apart. In the patterns for stairs, he suggests aring out the bottom and widening them as well as, if possible, making the stairs part of the outer perimeter of the room so the steps can be used as seats. Such patterns transform stairs into social spaces where people would be naturally inclined to sit, chat or engage in other activities. (Pattern 133: Staircase as a Stage, A Pattern Language, pp. 637 40.)

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Figure 3. Communal Sleeping. In this pattern, Alexander points to the positive effects of communal sleeping, which is perceived in many traditional societies to play a vital role in intensifying social relationships. He critiques the modern associations of sleeping with privacy and suggests a pattern that places beds within sight and sound of other beds. (Pattern 186: Communal Sleeping, A Pattern Language, p. 863.)

disciplinary knowledge in architecture in general tends to overlook, pattern language creates a rich dialogue that has the potential to encourage a user to recongure his or her most intimate spaces. For instance, in a pattern that focuses on sleeping (Pattern 186: Communal Sleeping), Alexander points out that in many traditional and primitive cultures, sleep is a communal activity without the sexual overtones it has in the West today (Fig. 3).21 In these societies, he explains, communal sleeping between adults, or between adults and children in large family-size groups, plays a vital part in building and intensifying relationships to the degree that its social role is perceived as being similar to the easier-to-cite positive social and

psychological benets of communal eating.22 He says that we may not accept this idea so easily in contemporary societies, wherein we tend to overcompartmentalise everyday life and associate sleeping with privacy and sexuality. In his critique of how we view sleeping, he offers an amusing anecdote: The pattern may seem strange at rst, but when our typist read it, she was fascinated and decided to try it one Saturday night with her family. They spread a big mat across the living room. They all got up together and helped the youngest son on his paper route; then they had some breakfast. Ed: Are they still doing it? Au: No, after 2 weeks they were arrested.23

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Such humorous anecdotes are common in the book and work well with its overall theme of making architectural knowledge accessible to the everyday user. Often through self-mockery, they critique modern ways of living and often work to facilitate an understanding of knowledge that differs dramatically from modern cultural norms. In this pattern, Alexander recommends the practice of communal sleeping for the positive psycho-social benets that it may have, and suggests a space that would allow children and adults to have their beds within the sight and sound of other beds.24 However, pattern language abounds in sweeping generalisations about human nature, and Alexanders critics have often become angered when anecdotes or generalisations are taken to an extreme. For instance, in a section on bathing (Pattern 144: Bathing Room), Alexander claims that a recent study has shown that cross-culturally there is a correlation between the degree to which society places restrictions on bodily pleasures (such as cobathing)particularly in childhoodand the degree to which society engages in the glorication of warfare and sadistic practices.25 William Saunders points to the frequent use of such adages in A Pattern Language, writing While we can understand and generally agree with these adages, it is their extremismNo people . . . no human groupthat seems not just shrill but also nutty as this preposterous sentence: There is abundant evidence to show that high rise buildings make people crazy. 26 While it is important to refute these sweeping, direct causal links that Alexander sometimes draws between human behaviour and architectural spaces, in doing so, the debates

about Alexanders work often miss the merits of what Alexander is arguing for. In Pattern 144 on bathing, for instance, the critics focus on determinism overshadows his argument for broadening the denition of bathing, which shows how physical cleansing represents only a small aspect of the ritual of bathing and highlights the larger therapeutic and social benets of communal bathings shared pleasure (Fig. 4).27 Critics have also noted that while Alexander rightly points to the positive aspects of socially inhabited spaces, he seldom takes into consideration the idea that user responses can be diverse, and that for some users, socially inhabited spaces can also be oppressive because of the discomfort they cause. Another evident inconsistency in Alexanders work involves how he argues throughout his writings for a break from rational, compartmentalised thinking, while reconciling himself often uncritically with scientic studies that overly rationalise human behaviour and reduce it to singular dimensions. Ambiguities abound in Alexanders work, and reconciling its valuable insights with its serious aws and contradictions poses quite a challenge. The larger, more important issue, however, is that Alexanders occasional dogmatic and unsubstantiated determinism, as well as the level of criticism that determinism has received, has undermined the larger, more important arguments about broader holistic modes of knowing for which Alexander is arguing. In a later book entitled Christopher Alexander: The Search for a New Paradigm in Architecture (1983), written by Stephen Grabow, Alexander puts forth some clear explanations of what he

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Figure 4. Pattern for Bathing. In the pattern on bathing, Alexander argues that cleansing is only a small part of the larger therapeutic, social and pleasurable benets that bathing can bring, and that designs of bathing spaces should accommodate such needs. (Pattern 144: Bathing Room, A Pattern Language, pp. 681 6.)

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means by holistic knowledge and what that might imply both for architectural design and for interdisciplinary synergies of knowledge in general. In the foreword, Alexander describes his work as a search for a new paradigm: a paradigm that would not only make it necessary to modify our view of architecture, but also modify our picture of the world . . . so that what we know as physics, biology, chemistry . . . and other related elds, will all have to take on a different cast.28 This call for a shift in epistemology across disciplines, when understood in the context of the arguments proposed in A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way, provides a rich, cohesive theory that extends beyond emphasising dayto-day experiences of living, developing into a nuanced exploration of how and when physical, spatial settings become cognitive. The following argument emerges: Life patterns, at multiple levels of complexity, allow for unconscious cognitive relationships with space. Alexander argues that these relationships can be consciously recognised to some degree, and actively improved. For Alexander, traditional pre-modern built environments serve as excellent examples of such unselfconscious methods of construction.29 They possess what Alexander calls the quality without a name that cannot be made, but only generated indirectly, by the ordinary actions of people.30 To seek this understanding and knowledge, Alexander argues that architects should let go of all the methods of architecture they know, and move away from paying conscious attention to buildings. This process, he states will happen on its own accord, if we let it and will enhance innate human capacities for intuitive learning.31 In this framework

of knowledge, objectivity and subjectivity are not mutually opposed. Alexander calls for dissolution of the binary framework of knowledge, describing his work as a search for the quality of things that is subjective, cannot be named, and yet has an objectivity and precision to it.32 This precision, he claries, cannot be attained mechanically; it is based on deep human feelings and needs.

Somatics and cognition

In the emerging eld of somatics, deep feelings as well as unconscious processes and patterns of thought and movement are seen as an important source of knowledge. Somatics is a broad term that is used to signify a variety of approaches, such as the Feldenkrais method, the Alexander technique, body-mind centring, eutony, yoga, martial arts and dance movement therapy; these practices argue for mind-body cognition and place a great deal of emphasis on the student or clients active participation. Practitioners claim that in modern medicine, the body has been approached as an object and studied as something external and separate from the self. Somatic practitioners, in contrast, approach the body as a subject, experienced from within rather than from without. In dissolving the object-subject split, somatic practitioners argue for the recognition (re-cognition) of the fact that the human body is the ground from which one needs to explore experience. The key issue that somatic practitioners often focus on is patternsor rather, on the re-patterning of thought, movement and behaviour, arguing that unconscious patterns held within the body

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can affect functioning at all levels: physiological, psychological, social and spiritual. Somatics argues against the objectied, static view of the body and argues that the body, like the mind, remains in constant ux, changing from moment to moment in response to underlying processes of which it is an expression. Somatic therapies attend to this subtle ux within the body-mind, using various techniques such as touch, tissue manipulation, sensory awareness, body imagery and movement. Through the use of specic techniques, these therapies bring awareness to unconscious patterns, introduce new sensations and choices of response, and support changes leading to greater integration, health and wellbeing. In Performing Live: Aesthetic Renewals to the Ends of Art, Richard Shusterman argues that somatic practices of self-help not only free us from bodily habits and defects that tend to impair cognitive performance, but also enrich our lives through integrating a rich aesthetic experience into our everyday lives.33 In doing so, Shusterman argues, these everyday practices reinvent the postmodern subject. Unlike the Foucauldian subject under a constant panoptic gaze, there emerges an agent whothrough a focus on self-knowledge and self-interpretationis capable of challenging the repressive power relationships encoded in our bodies.34 Somatics allows the development of the bodys capacities for direct sensory experience and human intuitions. This awareness of the bodys feelings and movement, Shusterman points out, has been long criticised in western philosophical traditions as a harmful distraction that corrupts our ethics through fostering self-absorption.35

Along a similar vein, in their powerful and inuential critique of western philosophical traditions, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson challenge western conceptions of rationality, arguing that our bodies, brains and interactions with our environments provide the primarily unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics; that is, our sense of what is real. Reason and reality, they argue, are not dispassionate or disembodied, but grow out of bodily capacities; they are emotionally engaged and fundamentally embodied.36 The idea that objectivity is not dispassionate and can evolve from deeply embodied subjective feelings is an argument that pervades much of Alexanders work. In A Pattern Language, his discussion of a pattern for sleeping (Pattern 138: Sleeping to the East) serves as a particularly strong illustration of how subjective feelings can be argued to have an objective basis (Fig. 5). In this pattern, Alexander argues that when deciding which space is most appropriate for sleeping, one must pay attention to the needs of the human body when waking from sleep. He begins by saying that this is one of the patterns that people most often disagree with, for, they argue, What if one had an intention to sleep late? Why would someone want to be woken up by the sun? In expressing such concerns, Alexander points out, people often assume that such decisions are only a matter of personal preference. On the contrary, he argues, sensitive biological clocks within the human body work in conjunction with natural rhythms and cycles. The human body is attuned to its own needs for rest, and light will

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affect it differently depending on how much rest it needs. The description of the pattern reads: Since the sun warms you, increases the light, gently nudges you, you are likely to wake up at a moment which serves you the best. Therefore, the right place for sleeping is one which provides morning lightconsequently a window in the room that lets in eastern lightand a bed that provides a view of the light without being directly in the light shaft.37 Often Alexander suggests a right place, or a more or less correct way, and he argues that this concept of rightness is based on deep human sensations and needs. Such connections between individual human feelings and their normative basis are also increasingly being explored by emerging somatic practices. For instance, in a recent book called The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design, Galen Cranz has challenged accepted notions of chair design. She explores the needs of the body by drawing upon how somatic practitioners understand them. Cranz points out how chair designers have misun-

derstood the needs of the human body. The human body, she says, is inherently in a state of ux and instability, and our conventionally accepted seated posture on the chair often causes a host of health-related concerns. And yet, she points out, we continue intuitively to seek comfort through the act of sitting in a chair. She explains this discord in the following passage: We currently live in a society where for an average person, because of years of faulty alignment an idea of what feels right may have taken precedence over the direct bodily sensation of what feels right. And, this means that for most people an anatomically efcient posture no longer feels right or comfortable, to the degree that we reject it in favor of a collapsed slump.38 Cranz asserts that our intuitive tendency to seek comfort in a collapsed slump reects our disturbed relationship with our bodies, wherein our concept of what feels right does not necessarily correspond with our internal sensory experience, and she

Figure 5. Sleeping to the East. Alexander writes Give those parts of the house where people sleep, an eastern orientation, so that they wake up with the sun and light. This means, typically, that the sleeping area needs to be on the eastern side of the house; but it can also be on the western side provided there is a courtyard or a terrace to the east of it. (Pattern 138: Sleeping to the East, A Pattern Language, pp. 656 9.)

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argues for unlearning the cultural conditioning that ignores internal sensory experience in favor of abstract thought. Furthermore, Cranz points out that such concepts as comfort are not adequately taken into account as an integral part of design even in approaches that do take the human body into account, such as ergonomic design. Asserting that faulty sensory awareness has caused people to give unreliable reports to ergonomic researchers regarding what feels comfortable to them, Cranz writes: They [ergonomic researchers] have observed that people cannot consistently describe what is comfortable, but they dont know why; they just chalk it up to the annoying unreliability or variability of human subjects, rather than asking why such profound variation should exist. This much variation points to a profound disturbance in our relationship to our bodies. Rather than try to restore that relationship, as somatic practitioners do, ergonomic science has ignored the realm of kinesthetic reeducation. For designers, somatics creates an unsettling demand to make chairs that might feel uncomfortable until peoples bodies and minds unlearn the poor sitting posture learned from conventional chairs.39 Herein lie some distinctions between Cartesian rationalism and conceptions of holistic knowledge. In the rationalist object-subject relationship, objectivity and subjectivity are mutually opposed and subjectivity becomes a highly variable concept that is based on mere human feelings. These feelings are not seen as a reliable source of knowledge. In holistic conceptions, on the other hand, wherein the human body is seen as the fundamental

ground through which to understand experiences, subjectivity emerges from an understanding of interrelationships within the body as well as its larger relationships with the environment, and remains in a state of constant ux. In this perspective, the distinctions between objective and subjective are blurred, and they are no longer dened as mutual opposites. For instance, Cranz explains that somatic practitioners do not dene comfort as the opposite of no work. Rather, they dene comfort as balanced work throughout the whole system, explaining that the subjective counterpart to this balanced work would be a feeling of vitality and ease.40 Likewise, Alexander continually draws correlations between when things are just right and in balance, and the concurrent feeling of vitality and ease. For Alexander too, physical spaces affect qualitative aspects of life, and to understand how and when that happens, we need to shift our perception of knowledge from Cartesian rationalism to an holistic understanding of spaces. As part of developing an holistic understanding, Alexander asks us to become aware of how buildings affect us cognitively. He frequently comments about paying attention to the moments when buildings come alive, and about how and when buildings could be argued to be more real or less real. This emphasis on when is similar to Nelson Goodmans arguments for aesthetic cognition in his Languages of Art (1968). Goodman stresses that the question to ask is not What is Art? but When is Art? In doing so, Goodman shifts the emphasis from the art object to an understanding of aesthetic experience as a temporal occurrence when some form of transformation or cognition

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takes place. When art happens Goodman asks us to pay attention to moments of non-judgement and disinterest that allow the subject to experience the deeply transformative potential of aesthetics.41 The more important point for Goodman, however, is that in such moments, emotions function cognitively and can be seen as a source of knowledge or a form of knowing. Furthermore, aesthetic experiences are not limited just to art, but can happen at any time in our everyday lives, and fully to benet from them, we must draw distinctions between when works of art function cognitively and when they do not. Drawing distinctions between less and more real, Alexander argues that holistic perception allows for an experience of a more real world: one that is radically different from the physical world as seen. Alexander writes When I say something is real, I mean that the fundamental neurological processes and deep-seated cognitive processes going on in the brain are actually taking place in a holistic way. . . . and the person who is seeing a thing holistically is actually seeing what is congruent within it instead of just its physical geometry.42 The viewer is then experiencing the building instead of merely looking at it. And, Alexander argues, cultivating an awareness of our responses to buildings will allow us to design environments that are better for us as individuals and communities. Such thinking is consistent with somatic philosophies that argue for an integration of the mind and body, and explore how and when experiences can be seen to be cognitive, as well as what that may imply for the physical, emotional and affective growth of human beings. In recent years, the

emergence of the concept of neuroplasticity in neuroscience has pointed to the extraordinary adaptive capabilities of the human brain, and the continual restructuring and reorganisation that neural circuits are capable of in response to both internal and external stimuli, in a dramatic shift from the earlier belief that the nervous system remains xed throughout adulthood. Such possibilities, yet again, provoke further inquiry into the possible correlations that might exist between qualitative aspects of physical environments and human wellbeing.

Conclusion
In the last decade, debates in architectural theory have emerged around what might be termed a postcritical or a projective turn that attempts to surpass criticality by fundamentally destabilising architectural autonomy and acknowledging architectures inherent multiplicity and many contingencies.43 Positing to impact culture in new non-oppositional ways, through exploring the potentialities of the diagram, post-critical architecture argues for a quality of sensibility that is non-dissenting and non-utopian, and thus accommodative of socio-cultural norms in a discipline that remains constantly in ux. The post-critical turn has opened provocative interrogation about the operative role of theory, relevance of critical or neo-critical positions in architecture, and architectures active agency to play a broader social and cultural role.44 While these debates have rightly questioned the limitations of autonomous quests and narrow epistemic constructs, they have shed limited light on agency, intentionality, aesthetics, phenomenology and cognition: constructs

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that continue to remain under-studied and underserved in architectural theory. Human agency and intentionality have emerged as central concepts in recent debates in philosophy as wellespecially regarding how phenomenology, the newly emerging neuro-phenomenology, analytic philosophy of the mind and the cognitive sciences have fundamentally re-thought and reshaped our understanding of knowledge and the role that the human body plays in it.45 In the light of these developments, despite its many contradictions and inconsistencies, Alexanders oeuvre emerges as an insightful experiment that merits recognition for its sustained attention to the relevance of everyday experience in understanding and structuring the built environment. But, most importantly, A Pattern Language and The Timeless Ways argumentthat normative frameworks of knowledge arising from the body can often support human agency and self-knowledgeprovides insights for rethinking the limitations of both empiricism and relativism. Further, Alexanders focus on the everyday user offers much insight for understanding the selfdeterminism that is becoming increasingly prominent in post-traditional societies. These societies, wherein tradition no longer constitutes the basis for our actions, Anthony Giddens postulates, evolve a modern reexivity wherein agents begin to choose and control parts of their everyday lives. Giddens points to the phenomenon of self-help as a modern reexive project in which we are not what we are, but what we make ourselves into.46 In critiquing modern alienated spatial conditions, Alexanders pattern language, ironically, also

engages in the modern reexive project, granting everyday users the agency to choose how to design their own spaces.

Notes and references

1. Alexander introduces the two books in the following way: Volume I, The Timeless Way of Building, and Volume II, A Pattern Language are two halves of a single work. This book [A Pattern Language] provides a language, for building and planning; the other provides theory and instruction for the use of the language.. . .We have been forced by practical considerations, to publish these two books under separate covers; but in fact, they form an indivisible whole. It is possible to read them separately. But to gain insight which we have tried to communicate in them, it is essential that you read them both.; A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (New York, Oxford University Press, 1977), p. ix. 2. In The Timeless Way, Alexander writes In fact, the conscious effort to attain this quality, or to be free, or to be anything, the glance which this creates, will always spoil it.; The Timeless Way of Building (New York, Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 52 (also see pp. 14 15). 3. C. Alexander, S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein, M. Jacobson, I. Fiksdahl-King, S. Angel, A Pattern Language, op. cit. 4. Ibid., p. xvii. 5. Ibid., p. x. 6. See Bernard Rodofsky, Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture (New York, The Museum of Modern Art Press, 1964). See also, Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1969); Amos Rapoport, Human Aspects of Urban Form (Elkins Park, PA, Franklin Book Co., 1977); and Amos Rapoport, The Meaning of the Built-

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7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

Environment: A Non-Verbal Approach (Tucson, Arizona University Press, 1990). B8 Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York, The Museum of Modern Art Press, 1966), and Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1972; revised 1977). See K. Dovey, The Pattern Language and Its Enemies, Design Studies, II, no. 1 (January, 1990), pp. 3 9. For a reading that highlights the phenomenological leanings of Alexanders work, see D. Seamon, Concretizing Heideggers Notion of Dwelling: The Contributions of Thomas Thiis Evenson and Christopher Alexander, in Building and Dwelling, ed., E. Fuhr (Munich, Waxmann Verlag GmbH; New York, Waxmann, 2000), pp. 189 202. J.P. Protzen, The Poverty of Pattern Language, Design Methods and Theories, 12, no. 3/4 (September December, 1978), p. 194. Ibid., p. 194. Ibid. Discord over Harmony in Architecture: Peter Eisenman and Christopher Alexander in Discussion, Studio Works, 7 (2001), pp. 50 57. William Saunders provides a succinct review of Peter Eisenmans critique of Alexanders work in his review of A Pattern Language contained in Harvard Design Magazine, no. 16 (Hard/Soft, Cool/Warm, Winter/Spring, 2002), to be found at the following link (accessed 17.06.08): http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/ publications/hdm/back/16books_saunders.html. K. Dovey, The Pattern Language and Its Enemies, op. cit., p. 4. W. Saunders, review of A Pattern Language, op. cit. His review also includes a commentary on Alexanders more recent four-volume series on The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (Berkeley, The Center for

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

Environmental Structure, 2002 2003). For a review of Alexanders more recent work, see R. Bhatt and J. Brand, Christopher Alexander: A Review Essay, Design Issues, XXIV, no. 2 (Spring, 2008), pp. 93102. Tom Erickson, Lingua Franca for Design: Sacred Places and Pattern Languages, The Proceedings of DIS 2000 (New York, ACM Press, 2000), pp 357 368. D. Lea, Christopher Alexander: An Introduction for Object-Oriented Designers, SUNY Oswego, NY CASE Center, http://g.oswego.edu/dl/ca/ca/ca.html (accessed 25.06.08). L. Pemberton and R.N. Grifths, The Timeless Way: Making Living Cooperative Buildings with Design Patterns, in Cooperative Buildings: Integrating Information, Organization, and Architecture, eds, N. Streitz et al. (Darmstadt, Springer, 1998). Also see Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Heidelberg, Springer, 1998), pp. 142 53. D. Lea, Christopher Alexander: An Introduction for Object-Oriented Designers, op. cit. See also: N. A. Salingaros, The Structure of Pattern Languages, Architectural Research Quarterly, 4 (2000), pp. 149 61. C. Alexander, The Origins of Pattern Theory: The Future of the Theory and the Generation of a Living World, IEEE Software (September/October, 1999), pp. 7182. C.Alexander, A Pattern Language, p. 638. Ibid., p. 861. Ibid. Ibid., p. 863. Ibid., p. 833. Alexander cites Philip Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness (Boston, Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 89 90 (A Pattern Language, p. 682). Saunders, op. cit., http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/ research/publications/hdm/back/16books_saunders. html (accessed 17.06.08). Ibid., pp. 681 6.

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28. C. Alexander, foreword to Stephen Grabows Christopher Alexander: The Search for a New Paradigm in Architecture (London, Oriel Press, 1983), p. x. 29. C. Alexander, The Timeless Way, op. cit., pp. 1011. 30. Ibid., p. xi. 31. Ibid., p. ix (also see p. 546). 32. Ibid., pp.12 and 25. 33. R. Shusterman, Somaesthetics and the Body/Media Issue, Performing Live: Aesthetic Renewals to the Ends of Art (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 137 53. 34. R.Shusterman, Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Proposal, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57:3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 299 313. In this proposal, Shusterman also argues that Michel Foucaults seminal vision of the body as a docile, malleable site for inscrib ing social power reveals the crucial role somatics can play for political philosophy (pp. 303 4). 35. R. Shusterman, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. ix 14. 36. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York, Basic Books, 1999), p. 17. Lakoff and Johnson also argue that metaphors are not mere poetical or rhetorical embellishments; instead, they are part of everyday speech that affect the ways in which we perceive, think and act. In doing so, Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphorical thought provides a principal insight for understanding reality. 37. Alexander cites a study by Dr London at the San Francisco Medical School that claims that our whole day depends critically on the conditions in which we wake up. If we wake up immediately after a period of dreaming (REM sleep), we will feel ebullient, energetic and refreshed for the whole day, because certain critical hormones are injected into the bloodstream immediately after REM sleep. If,

38. 39.

40.

41.

42.

however, we wake up during delta sleep (another type of sleep, which happens in between periods of dreaming) we feel irritable, drowsy, at and lethargic all day long because the necessary hormones are not in the bloodstream at the critical moment of awakening (A Pattern Language, op. cit., p. 658). Ibid., p. 136. Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), p. 136. In The Timeless Way, Alexander makes a similar point, stating that genuine comfort goes far beyond its simply understood meaning and describing comfortable places as places without inner contradictions and with no or little disturbance. On the other hand, a bed which is too soft and a room which always has even room temperature are examples of comforts that can be stultifying and deadening (op. cit., pp. 32 33). N. Goodman, Art and Understanding, in Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1976), pp. 225 265. Alexander was highly inuenced by Jerome Bruner, one of the pioneers of cognitive psychology at Harvards Center for Cognitive Studies. The actual quotation reads as follows: There is a certain sense in which the holistic perception actually corresponds more closely to the real structure of the thing being perceived. But just saying that raises a very interesting topic. I know that this is one of the reasons why some people dislike my work. They say hes so dogmatic; or what does he mean by real or not real? After all, we have people seeing this thing in such and such a way and how could he dare say that what they are seeing is not real? And this is the sort of typical kind of criticism, which is often levelled at

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my work. However, we happen to be caught in this weird sort of nominalist period of philosophical history at the moment where someone will say that however you choose to see something is the way you see it; or however you choose to name it is the way you name it. And of course that coincides with pluralism and is a genuine reaction against positivism. So what do I mean when I say that there is a certain perception of this that is more real? I am actually making two different statements: one of them is psychological and one of them has to do with physics. The psychological statement that I am making is that the fundamental neurological processes and deep-seated cognitive processes going on in the brain are actually taking place in the holistic way and that the sequential way is secondary and constructed out of it. Thats the rst thing that I mean when I say that one is more real than the other.. . .Now the second thing is that when I say it corresponds to physics, I mean that the holistic perception is congruent with the behavior of the reality being perceived.. . .the person who is seeing the thing holistically is actually seeing what is congruent with the behavior of the thing and not just its physical geometry. C. Alexander, from Stephen Grabows Christopher Alexander: The Search for a New Paradigm in Architecture, op. cit., pp. 195 196. Also see R. Bhatt and J. Brand, Christopher Alexander: A Review Essay, op. cit., pp. 93 102. 43. Advocates of the post-critical position include Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, Notes Around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism, in, eds, Michael Osman, Adan Ruedig, Matthew Seidel and Lisa Tinley, Mining Autonomy, a special issue of Perspecta, 33 (2002), pp. 72 7; Michael Speaks,

Design Intelligence, Part 1: Introduction, A + U: Architecture and Urbanism (December, 2002), pp.10 18. See also George Baird, Criticality and its Discontents, Harvard Design Magazine, 21 (Fall/ Winter, 2004), pp. 16 21; and Reinhold Martin, Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism, Harvard Design Magazine, 22 (Spring/Summer, 2005), pp. 104 9. 44. For debates about critical versus neo-critical and the operative role of theory, see a compendium of essays published in Critical Architecture, eds, Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser and Mark Dorrian (London, Routledge, 2007). The essays as a whole provide an important critique of the post-critical turn in architecture. 45. See David Woodruff Smith and Amie L. Thomasson, Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.1 15; J. Petitot, F. Varela, B. Pachoud and J. M. Roy, Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 181. 46. Lars Bo Kaspersen, The Analysis of Modernity: Globalization, the Transformation of Intimacy, and the PostTraditional Society, in Anthony Giddens: An Introduction to a Social Theorist, trs., Steven Sampson (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 106 9. Giddens argues that self-identity in post-traditional societies must be understood as a reexive project for which the individual is responsible. By using knowledge developed by expert systems, we are able to control a part of our everyday lives and we therefore become re-skilled. However, the expert system also de-skills us (p. 109). Also see Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in Late Modern Age (Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 1991).