vii
I discovered Christopher Alexander’s important idea of a Pattern Language more than 40 ago, when
I was a young graduate student at the University of Oregon. It was a chance discovery as I was
working part-time for a local planning consultant under contract to prepare a series of housing studies for the Warm Spring Consolidated Tribe, a Native American community located in the eastern
part of the state. I had been tasked to prepare a housing options report and in the process of research
found Alexander’s books. Multiple volumes, beginning with The Timeless Way of Building and A
Pattern Language, were like none I had ever read – more like sacred design scriptures, it seemed,
than a typical book. The third volume in this remarkable sequence was one specifically applying
these ideas to the University of Oregon (called The Oregon Experiment), where I was studying, and
so to me it made the idea of patterns even more relevant and impactful (this document is apparently
still the official master plan for the campus). To me the notion of timeless and ancient building and
townscape patterns made considerable sense. Surely, we had learned much as a species over the
several hundred thousand years of our evolutionary life (and out of 10,000 years of living in place
in villages and settlements) about what we needed to build and about the physical and social relationships needed to flourish. Why reinvent what ancient builders and planners had known for millennia? The essential insight was an epiphany – that there were tested and timeless place-building
patterns that could be tapped to guide our future design and planning work.
In the last few years there seems to have been an encouraging renaissance and rediscovery of the
power of Alexander's pattern language idea and belief in the need to refresh and expand the repertoire
of patterns. These efforts have included the 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, written by Bill Browning
and his colleagues at Terrapin Bright Green; Michael Mehaffy’s A New Pattern Language for Growing
Regions: Places, Networks, Processes; and Phillip Tabb’s work on biophilic patterns derived from the
inspiring biophilic community of Serenbe, among others.
1
Peter Kahn has argued for the need to collect and re-invigorate new patterns of nature experiences.
2
He believes – and rightly so, I think – that we have forgotten many of the ways we as a species have
historically utilised, enjoyed, celebrated and closely experienced nature in our lives. We have even
forgotten what we have lost: Kahn believes we suffer from a pernicious form of “shifting baselines,”
as fewer and fewer of us remember the many wondrous and life-affirming ways we tended to interact
with nature in the past.
Against this backdrop of climate crisis, global biodiversity loss, and an unravelling of our planetary
ecosystems, Roös’s book adds immeasurably to a sense of what is possible and needed. Urban design
1 E.g. see “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design,” found here: https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/reports/14-patterns/;
Mehaffy, et al, A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions: Places, Networks, Processes, found here: https://patterns.architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-193137; Phillip Tabb, Serene Urbanism: A biophilic theory and practice of sustainable placemaking, found here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315608433
2 Peter Kahn, et al. “A Nature Language: An Agenda to Catalog, Save, and Recover Patterns of Human–Nature
Interaction,”
Ecopsychology,
2010,
found
here:
https://depts.washington.edu/hints/
publications/A%20Nature%20Language%20(published).pdf
New Patterns for a Healthy Planet
I discovered Christopher Alexander’s important idea of a Pattern Language more than 40 ago, when
I was a young graduate student at the University of Oregon. It was a chance discovery as I was
working part-time for a local planning consultant under contract to prepare a series of housing studies for the Warm Spring Consolidated Tribe, a Native American community located in the eastern
part of the state. I had been tasked to prepare a housing options report and in the process of research
found Alexander’s books. Multiple volumes, beginning with The Timeless Way of Building and A
Pattern Language, were like none I had ever read – more like sacred design scriptures, it seemed,
than a typical book. The third volume in this remarkable sequence was one specifically applying
these ideas to the University of Oregon (called The Oregon Experiment), where I was studying, and
so to me it made the idea of patterns even more relevant and impactful (this document is apparently
still the official master plan for the campus). To me the notion of timeless and ancient building and
townscape patterns made considerable sense. Surely, we had learned much as a species over the
several hundred thousand years of our evolutionary life (and out of 10,000 years of living in place
in villages and settlements) about what we needed to build and about the physical and social relationships needed to flourish. Why reinvent what ancient builders and planners had known for millennia? The essential insight was an epiphany – that there were tested and timeless place-building
patterns that could be tapped to guide our future design and planning work.
In the last few years there seems to have been an encouraging renaissance and rediscovery of the
power of Alexander's pattern language idea and belief in the need to refresh and expand the repertoire
of patterns. These efforts have included the 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, written by Bill Browning
and his colleagues at Terrapin Bright Green; Michael Mehaffy’s A New Pattern Language for Growing
Regions: Places, Networks, Processes; and Phillip Tabb’s work on biophilic patterns derived from the
inspiring biophilic community of Serenbe, among others.
1
Peter Kahn has argued for the need to collect and re-invigorate new patterns of nature experiences.
2
He believes – and rightly so, I think – that we have forgotten many of the ways we as a species have
historically utilised, enjoyed, celebrated and closely experienced nature in our lives. We have even
forgotten what we have lost: Kahn believes we suffer from a pernicious form of “shifting baselines,”
as fewer and fewer of us remember the many wondrous and life-affirming ways we tended to interact
with nature in the past.
Against this backdrop of climate crisis, global biodiversity loss, and an unravelling of our planetary
ecosystems, Roös’s book adds immeasurably to a sense of what is possible and needed. Urban design
1 E.g. see “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design,” found here: https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/reports/14-patterns/;
Mehaffy, et al, A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions: Places, Networks, Processes, found here: https://patterns.architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-193137; Phillip Tabb, Serene Urbanism: A biophilic theory and practice of sustainable placemaking, found here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315608433
2 Peter Kahn, et al. “A Nature Language: An Agenda to Catalog, Save, and Recover Patterns of Human–Nature
Interaction,”
Ecopsychology,
2010,
found
here:
https://depts.washington.edu/hints/
publications/A%20Nature%20Language%20(published).pdf
New Patterns for a Healthy Planet