On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 9:24 AM, Joan Vermette <[email protected]> wrote:
> Here's your correction, William - a gallery of real built spaces on > Alexander's principals, from his website: > http://www.patternlanguage.com/picturegallery/picturegallery.htm > > He was a real working architect with college campuses, numerous public > buildings and private residences to his credit. > > Wikipedia says he's built 200 buildings, but being Wikipedia, who knows if > that's accurate. Also, a friend of a friend has an Alexander house - > purportedly, he was difficult to work with. > Yes, and even in the related books he describes a real experiment where he and others applied his principles to build real stuff. If you were to rush out and buy one of the books, *The Timeless Way* is the one you want--it focuses on the theory and underpinnings, though *A Pattern Language* can help you see a lot of concrete examples of what he means. And certainly in the software field those same essential principles have been used many times to good effect. As ways to communicate knowledge to help people build stuff well, patterns are top notch, maybe even the best, next to lived experience ("the hard way") and direct tutelage under a master. Even if you are a master, they can serve as a great enhancement for design language. Patterns are not overrated, but they have been misunderstood and abused. And yes, they have to be adapted to the context--that's part of what makes them a pattern... To say that "you have to have done it" in order to truly understand it is pretty axiomatic about just about anything. So it doesn't add value in a discussion of whether or not patterns are good as a communication tool for good design and as a way to discover a good design for a particular problem context. -a ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
