A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Christopher Alexander, et al, 1977) is a book with a widespread influence. A collection of key design patterns proposed to be fundamental to human spaces, it spread from architecture and urban planning circles to areas as diverse as sociology, data science, art, software, and more. It outlines 253 “languages” to utilize when studying and designing human living environments.
The book is not without its criticisms, ranging at best from being dated, quaint, or western-centric to at worst, moments of sexist and classist biases and assumptions. However, the nature of the text – small, simple conceptual units of observation – can lend itself to highlight some of the ways that human beings live together to share and utilize spaces.
A selection of the patterns from the book are listed here based on their proposed relevance to the concept of third places. Each is presented with its pattern number, title, and emphasized text (here in italics). These are directly from the book itself and are meant to serve as a reference to consult the full text of the book, which can be found online 📖 (as it is very difficult to find the out-of-print physical book). In some cases, additional commentary (❧) is given, reflecting on the pattern’s relation to third places.
Community facilities scattered individually through the city do nothing for the life of the city.
Third places serve their purpose better when clustered within areas of human activity (commercial, recreational, public spaces, etc).
Each subculture needs a center for its public life: a place where you can go to see people, and to be seen.
Most of the city’s activities close down at night; those which stay open won’t do much for the night life of the city unless they are together.
People are different, and the way they want to place their houses in a neighborhood is one of the most basic kinds of difference.
Third places can be for solitary usage, but very often there is a social element to them. This is one of the many patterns which will address a need for public space. One of the fundamental aspects to third places is the way they can blur the lines between “public” and “private”, in both the technical/legal sense and the perceived purposes.
Old people need old people, but they also need the young, and young people need contact with the old.
Concentrated, cloistered universities, with closed admission policies and rigid procedures which dictate who may teach a course, kill opportunities for learning.
All around the world, the existence of university campuses within cities not only facilitates the exchange of ideas, but contributes third places where the community at large can discuss these ideas and meet up. If a city or town has a university, consider it an important potential resource for third places.
The local town hall will not be an honest part of the community which lives around it, unless it is itself surrounded by all kinds of small community activities and projects, generated by the people for themselves.
If children are not able to explore the whole of the adult world round about them, they cannot become adults. But modern cities are so dangerous that children cannot be allowed to explore them freely.
Just as an individual person dreams fantastic happenings to release the inner forces which cannot be encompassed by ordinary events, so too a city needs its dreams.
Any one who has to work in noise, in offices with people all around, needs to be able to pause and refresh himself with quiet in a more natural situation.
People need green open places to go to; when they are close they use them. But if the greens are more than three minutes away, the distance overwhelms the need.
A town needs public squares; they are the largest, most public rooms, that the town has. But when they are too large, they look and feel deserted.
Why is it that people don’t dance in the streets today?
We came from the water; our bodies are largely water; and water plays a fundamental role in our psychology. We need constant access to water, all around us; and we cannot have it without reverence for water in all its forms. But everywhere in cities water is out of reach.
Without common land no social system can survive.
If children don’t play enough with other children during the first five years of life, there is a great chance that they will have some kind of mental illness later in their lives.
There are very few spots along the streets of modern towns and neighborhoods where people can hang out, comfortably, for hours at a time.
A castle, made of cartons, rocks, and old branches, by a group of children for themselves, is worth a thousand perfectly detailed, exactly finished castles, made for them in a factory.
Teenage is the time of passage between childhood and adulthood. In traditional societies, this passage is accompanied by rites which suit the psychological demands of the transition. But in modern society the “high school” fails entirely to provide this passage.
Around the age of 6 or 7, children develop a great need to learn by doing, to make their mark on a community outside the home. If the setting is right, these needs lead children directly to basic skills and habits of learning.
The street cafe provides a unique setting, special to cities: a place where people can sit lazily, legitimately, be on view, and watch the world go by.
Where can people sing, and drink, and shout and drink, and let go of their sorrows?
Bus stops must be easy to recognize, and pleasant, with enough activity around them to make people comfortable and safe.
Many of our habits and institutions are bolstered by the fact that we can get simple, inexpensive food on the street, on the way to shopping, work, and friends.
It is a mark of success in a park, public lobby or a porch, when people can come there and fall asleep.
The simple social intercourse created when people rub shoulders in public is one of the most essential kinds of social “glue” in society.
When a public building complex cannot be completely served by outdoor pedestrian streets, a new form of indoor street, quite different from the conventional corridor, is needed.
Outdoor spaces which are merely “left over” between buildings will, in general, not be used.
Isolated buildings are symptoms of a disconnected sick society.
If a garden is too close to the street, people won’t use it because it isn’t private enough. But if it is too far from the street, then it won’t be used either, because it is too isolated.
Buildings, and especially houses, with a graceful transition between the street and the inside, are more tranquil than those which open directly off the street.
Outdoors, people always try to find a spot where they can have their backs protected, looking out toward some larger opening, beyond the space immediately in front of them.
The courtyards built in modern buildings are very often dead. They are intended to be private open spaces for people to use—but they end up unused, full of gravel and abstract sculptures.
A vast part of the earth’s surface, in a town, consists of roofs. Couple this with the fact that the total area of a town which can be exposed to the sun is finite, and you will realize that is is natural, and indeed essential, to make roofs which take advantage of the sun and air.
Arcades – covered walkways at the edge of buildings, which are partly inside, partly outside – play a vital role in the way that people interact with buildings.
The layout of paths will seem right and comfortable only when it is compatible with the process of walking. And the process of walking is far more subtle than one might imagine.
Streets should be for staying in, and not just for moving through, the way they are today.