A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)
ISBN:9780195019193 read summary

Sorry, but if you think that women and men are integrated, connected, rational beings in touch with nature and themselves, you're hiding your head in the sand! The primary conditions of modernity are alienation from nature, from the rest of humanity, and from the self. As described by Kafka, Camus, etc., savvy? Architects are notoriously money-hungary business people who don't give a damn about the human condition. Christopher Alexander and company not excluded. Strangely enough, all the post-modern philosophy I've read doesn't rescue us from the abyss, although it purports to rationalize this condition and be some kind of saving grace. You want to be a new-age drone? Read this book. Otherwise, think for yourself!

This book was recommended to me by one of my professors in college, and it is a really good guide for what certain parts of buildings (courtyards, types of rooms) as well as cities do. I found it particularly helpful in deciding how to improve my designs from some of the book's suggestions. Really a great book.

This book provided very valuable insight into the type of home that we wanted to build. We ultimately bought a home that we did not design, but this book helped us to develop values that would assist us in finding a home that would nurture us and our environment.

Lent it to a client and of course, never got it back. Bought it originally back in college. Everyone in the design field should be required to read this book.

This classic architecture work contains abundant wisdom and practical direction for living for every thinking person. I first read it nearly thirty years ago and used its principles to create a garden that delights to this day. When I found it again, I was eager to read the parts I had skipped over the first time. To my sorrow, the book is no longer relevant to the way most people now live. There is barely any nod to electronic communication or entertainment. If you want to be overwhelmed by how much we have lost, or changed, since this was written, I highly recommend it. I hope that, as with other lost arts, a new generation will be fascinated by the old ways people used to live, and will adopt the good and reinvent human spaces. Big box stores, super highways, multiplex cinemas, malls, security-driven barriers and other structures such as looping airport approaches and chaotic store layout, fractured product placement in retail outlets: all were not thought of in this work. The serenity of the human soul was the overriding value. It is easy to see the world today is organized more like a bandit's trap than a serene living arena. Definitely a deep and thought-provoking read.