WriteNow@=>'HHH@  >eHHH@  $3|  ~ PH h \0~~$4 ~HHH@0~$4 ~HHH@0~$4 ~HHH@0@~$4 ~HHH@PP$ PP$ 0~H$4 ~ Table Style0~$,<HeaderS ~WHHH@/0 ~$,<FooterS ~WHHH@/ 3. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive. 4. In order to define this quality in buildings and in towns, we must begin by understanding that ever place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there. 5. These patterns of events are always interlocked with certain geometric patterns in the space. Indeed, as we shall see, each building and each town is ultimately made out of these patterns in the space, and out of nothing else: they are the atoms and the molecules from which a building or a town is made.   6. The specific patterns of of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked in inner conflict. 7. The more living patterns there are in a place--a room, a building, or a town--the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name. 8. And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repitition and variety created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself. d 11. These pattern languages are not confined to villages and farm society. All acts of building are governed by a pattern language of some sort, and the patterns in the world are there, entirely because they are created by the pattern languages which people use. And, beyond that, it is not just the shape of towns and buildings which comes from pattern languages--it is their quality as well. Even the life and beauty of the most awe-inspiring great religious buildings came from the languages their builders used. z? 13. But in our time the languages have broken down. Simnce they are no longer shared, the processes which keep them keep have broken down; and it is therefore virtually impossible for anybody, in our time, to make a building live. 14. To work our way towards a shared and living language once again, we must first learn how to discover patterns which are deep, and capable of generating life. 15. We may then gradually improve these patterns which we share, by testing them against experience: we can determine, very simply, whether these patterns make our surroundings live, or not, by recognizing how they make us feel. A 16. Once we have understood how to discover individual patterns which are alive, we may then make a language for ourselves for any building tak we face. The structure of the language is created by the network of connections among individual patterns: and the language lives, or not, as a totality, to the degree these patterns form a whole. 17. Then finally from separate languages for different building tasks, we can create a larger structure still, a structure of structures, evolving constantly, which is the common language for a town. This is the gate. 5  20. The process of unfolding goes step by step, one pattern at a time. Each step brings just one pattern to life; and the intensity of the result depends on the intensity of each ond of these individual steps. 21. From a sequence of these individual patterns, whole buildings with the character of nature will form themselves within your thoughts, as easily as sentences. 22. In the same way, groups of people can conceive their larger public buildings, on the ground, by following a common pattern language, almost as if they had a single mind. S 23. Once the buildings are conceived like this, they can be built, directly, from a few simple marks made in the ground--again within a common language, but directly, and without the use of drawings. 24. Next, several acts of building, each one done to repair and magnify the product of the previous acts, will slowly generate a larger and more complex whole than any single act can generate. 25. Finaly, within the framework of a common language, millions of individual acts of building will together generate a town which is alive, and whole, and unpredictable, without control. this is the slow emergence of the quality without a name, as if from nothing. xu ,$4GenevaɆ HelveticaIDSkia`W*Lp@hB HLPTX\`dhUUUUUU65% Graykֳl;l @  l;l @  'l;l @  l;l @  Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building X׿& l;l @    /4 +1HHOZG(HH(d'` `yd0>@dn>@dk$dD>>