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Christopher Alexander's pattern language: an alternative exploration of

space-making practices
Ritu Bhatta
a
School of Architecture, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Online publication date: 29 November 2010

To cite this Article Bhatt, Ritu(2010) 'Christopher Alexander's pattern language: an alternative exploration of space-
making practices', The Journal of Architecture, 15: 6, 711 — 729
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 711

The Journal
of Architecture
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Number 6

Christopher Alexander’s pattern

language: an alternative
exploration of space-making
practices
Ritu Bhatt
Downloaded By: [University of Westminster] At: 21:28 31 January 2011

School of Architecture, University of Minnesota,

Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

While Christopher Alexander’s pattern language has been widely accepted by building
contractors and do-it-yourself homeowners, academics have often rejected it for being
deterministic and authoritarian. This paper argues for a balanced re-evaluation of Alexan-
der’s work, arguing that its importance lies in its recognition that life patterns allow for
unconscious cognitive relationships with space that can be discerned and actively improved.
When reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977) and The Timeless
Way of Building (1979), it becomes apparent that Alexander’s aim is not just to produce
diagrammatic patterns, but to provide a broad critique of the alienated modern condition.
Alexander calls for a shift in knowledge that would allow for an holistic attitude wherein
buildings could be experienced without conscious attention. Herein, I argue, Alexander’s
philosophical concerns can be more fully understood in the context of recently growing
interests in philosophy, the cognitive sciences and emerging somatic practices that argue
for an integration of mind and body. Furthermore, I propose that Alexander’s insights
about how and when physical settings become cognitive can provide some insights for
dissolving the limits of both empiricism and relativism.

Introduction A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construc-

Christopher Alexander’s pattern language,
embraced by both building contractors and do-
it-yourself homeowners, is often rejected in the
academy for being deterministic and authoritarian.
The critiques of pattern language have been varied
and have pointed to its essentialism, its reduction
of the design process into a diagrammatic language
and its emphasis on comfort, ease, and pleasure,
which many critics see as bourgeois and encoura-
ging of complacency. This paper argues for a more
balanced re-evaluation of Alexander’s work in the
history and theory of architecture, arguing that its
importance lies in its recognition that life patterns
allow for unconscious cognitive relationships with
space that can be discerned and actively improved.
tion (1977) and The Timeless Way of Building
(1979), which I will refer to from now on as A
Pattern Language and The Timeless Way, were
written as two halves of a single work, and in
these works, Alexander aimed not just to produce
diagrammatic patterns, but also to provide a
broader philosophical critique of the alienated
modern condition.1 Throughout his writings,
Alexander calls for a shift in the conception of
knowledge that would involve letting go of the
existing modes of perception, and an acquisition
of an holistic attitude wherein buildings could be
experienced without conscious attention.2 Herein,
I argue, Alexander’s philosophical concerns can be
more fully understood in the context of recently

# 2010 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2011.533537

 712
Christopher Alexander’s pattern
language: an alternative exploration
of space-making practices
Ritu Bhatt
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growing interests in philosophy, the cognitive
sciences and emerging somatic practices that
argue for an integration of mind and body. Further-
more, I propose that Alexander’s insights about how
and when physical settings become cognitive can
provide some insights for dissolving the limits of
both empiricism and relativism.
In A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander
and his colleagues provide 253 patterns for spaces
ranging from living areas to kitchens, bathrooms,
secret alcoves, staircases, workplaces, neighbour-
hoods, ideal universities and pathways.3 A Pattern
Language aims to bring conscious awareness to
the patterns through which human beings uncon-
sciously relate to space, providing a practical
language for everyday users.4 The book consists of
suggestive diagrams, which Alexander introduces
as elements of a practical language that ‘describes
the core of the solution to the problem, in such a
way that you can use this solution a million times
over, without ever doing it the same way twice.’5
This assures readers of a flexible, open-ended
language that will allow them actively to engage
in the design process.
According to Alexander, the rise of a modern aes-
thetic and a specialised architectural profession had
contributed to the failure of modern architecture to
relate to the deep psychological needs of users. In
seeking insights from pre-modern traditional
environments, A Pattern Language aimed to create
a system of knowledge that would help to blur the
distance between professional designers and every-
day users. When Alexander wrote A Pattern
Language and The Timeless Way, critiques of mod-
ernism were emerging from an understanding that
pre-modern traditional environments employed
knowledge and shared techniques that largely func-
tioned unconsciously. Bernard Rodofsky’s Architec-
ture without Architects (1964), as well as Amos
Rapoport’s influential books, House Form and
Culture (1969) and The Meaning of the Built
Environment (1982), had underscored the role that
‘unconscious’ and intuitive processes play in the
design of traditional environments.6
Around the same time, other influential critiques
such as Robert Venturi’s books, Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture (1966) and Learning
from Las Vegas (1972), which had emphasised the
rôle of the ordinary in making architecture more
communicable, played a key part in the theorisation
of postmodernism.7 Kevin Lynch’s seminal work
Image of City (1960) drew attention to the experi-
ences of users, showing how everyday users per-
ceive and organise spatial information as they
navigate through cities. Architectural culture of the
1960s and 1970s was potent with critiques of mod-
ernism, including Jane Jacobs’ influential study The
Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). By
giving impetus and encouragement to grassroots
efforts at the local level, Jacobs’ study attacked the
urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the USA
that were in the process of destroying neighbour-
hoods. Even some later critiques of modernism,
such as Kenneth Frampton’s critical regionalism,
shared an appreciation for traditional knowledge
and cultural meaning in architecture. In Modern
Architecture: A Critical History, Frampton argues
for recognition of the particularities of a local
context, including topography, climate and tactile
qualities, over visual properties.

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Within such an intellectual climate, a surge of
interest in Alexander’s pattern language transpired
in academia, focusing on user empowerment, the
use of patterns in the design process, and commu-
nity participatory design, in addition to the phenom-
enological leanings of Alexander’s theories. Later,
however, this interest leveled off to a quiet punctu-
ated by the occasional laudatory or disparaging
review, mainly criticizing Alexander’s work for its
determinism and authoritarianism.8 Since its publi-
cation, however, A Pattern Language has continued
to find enduring success with builders and contrac-
tors as well as do-it-yourself homeowners who use it
mainly as a self-help practice.
Herein, I will first provide a brief overview of
the reception of Alexander’s work to show the
extreme variation within academic writing on the
subject, ranging from disparaging reviews to posi-
tive reception to a general silence in recent
scholarship. Then I will analyse A Pattern Language
and The Timeless Way to shed light on their key
arguments and philosophical insights in order to
show how they connect with emerging inquiries in
somatics, the cognitive sciences and the neuro-
sciences. I will then outline how Alexander’s insights
about how and when physical settings become
cognitive can provide insights for dissolving the
limits of both empiricism and relativism.
Scholarly debates about pattern language
In an essay entitled ‘The Poverty of Pattern
Language’, J.P. Protzen criticises Alexander for
presenting evidence through what Protzen calls a
‘consensus theory of truth’.9 The idea that ‘many
people will agree’ represents a pervasive mode of
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presenting evidence in A Pattern Language, and
statements like ‘Nobody wants fast through traffic
going by their homes’ are used to generate agree-
ment because of their appeal to what Alexander
perceives as common sense. Protzen writes,
While some of these statements are readily accep-
table as common sense (whether they are empiri-
cally substantiated or not), I certainly object to the
logic which would conclude that because every-
body wants something we ought to have it, or,
conversely, that because everybody hates some-
thing we ought to do away with it. History is
witness to the fact that people can agree to do
the stupidest and most horrendous things, and
that they have been reinforced in that precisely
because they all have been in agreement.10
For Protzen, pattern language ultimately becomes an
all-encompassing theory, and he argues that readers
should ‘refute the whole’ because it ‘enforces an
unenlightened conformism’ and ‘leads to deterio-
ration of intellectual capabilities, and of the power
of imagination’.11 In another publication, entitled
‘Discord over Harmony in Architecture’, which is a
transcript of a conversation between Peter Eisenman
and Christopher Alexander at the Harvard School of
Design, Eisenman criticises the values of ‘comfort,
ease, legibility, sociability, pleasure, mental health,
peacefulness, [and] opportunities for both solitude
and participation in family and community life’
as values that can easily be seen as bourgeois
and encouraging of complacency, passivity and
parochialism.12 Throughout the conversation,
Alexander defends his work while striving to distance
it from theories of postmodernism and post-
structuralism, arguing that they are disharmonious
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Christopher Alexander’s pattern
language: an alternative exploration
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and explaining that he had been searching for a
conception of knowledge in architecture that
makes use of a different cosmology. Both Protzen
and Eisenman’s critiques fail to demonstrate an
understanding of key issues that Alexander is
addressing; Protzen, in examining Alexander’s work
through the keen eye of an empiricist, fails to see
the limitations of a purely empirical approach in
understanding knowledge based on deep human
feelings, and in the Eisenman-Alexander debate,
Eisenman’s continuous referencing of structuralist
and poststructuralist thought as the only critiques
of western epistemology fails to see the particular
kind of shift in knowledge that Alexander is pointing
toward.
Kim Dovey’s article ‘The Pattern Language and Its
Enemies’ addresses this idea, arguing that the
pattern language approach calls for a marked shift
in environmental epistemology. According to
Dovey, patterns are derived from the lived world of
everyday experience, and they gain their power
‘not by being proven empirically correct, but by
showing us a direct connection between the
pattern and our experience of the built environ-
ment.’13 In other words, by resonating with the
user on a personal, intuitive level, patterns of spatial
use often emerge at an unconscious level, can be
shared collectively by people and come to be seen
as a source of knowledge without being easily or
necessarily empirically verifiable. More recently,
William Saunders has made the point that readers
who dismiss Alexander’s work are depriving them-
selves of the chance to savour its bounty of delightful
details and insights, such as its ‘acute seeing’ of
the built environment, as well as its contributions to
phenomenology. Describing Alexander’s work as
‘New Age flower-child wishfulness’, Saunders argues,
‘if only because Pattern Language is a perennial
best-seller, architectural curricula have some
obligation to study it as a cultural phenomenon’.14
On the other hand, the success of Alexander’s
theories has often been attributed to the direct
links they draw between users and the process of
design, aiding in design without requiring the user
to have comprehensive, professional knowledge.
In ‘Lingua Francas for Design: Sacred Places and
Pattern Languages’, Tom Erickson speaks to A
Pattern Language’s accessible diagrams and rich,
vivid descriptions, which he argues have the
capacity to evoke a response of ‘I see’ from the
user.15 Unlike abstract principles that require users
to understand a conceptual framework and then
map the principles onto their own domain of con-
cerns, Erickson argues that Alexander’s patterns
function as concrete prototypes. Grounded in rich,
concrete experiences, patterns find immediate con-
nection with users (Fig. 1). In fact, A Pattern
Language has found its most compelling success
not so much in architectural design but in computer
science, within software and object-oriented design,
wherein patterns are now recognised as a concrete
framework upon which complex design decisions
involving highly abstract concepts can be anchored.
The term ‘pattern’ is described by Doug Lea in
‘Christopher Alexander: An Introduction for
Object-Oriented Designers’ as a pre-formal con-
struct describing sets of forces in the world and
relations among them.16
Each pattern entry is seen as a link of forces, and
the format of each pattern is easy to understand,
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Figure 1. ‘What the

user wanted’.
Alexander’s diagram
shows how architects
typically have a hard
time connecting with
‘what the user wanted’.
The success of pattern
language, however, has
been attributed to its
accessible diagrams and
rich, vivid descriptions,
which have the capacity
to function as concrete
prototypes, projecting a
reality grounded in
concrete experiences to
which users can
immediately relate and
use to reconfigure the
most intimate of their
spaces. (Christopher
Alexander et al., The
Oregon Experiment
(New York, Oxford
University Press, 1975),
p. 44.
comprised of three different spatial layers—that of a adapted to fit the particular issues which the
problem, solution and construction—allowing the designer is addressing. Above all, patterns,
layers to evolve concurrently. Such formatting because they are themselves alive and engaging,
allows for a common vocabulary to express key con- provide a means of communicating either
cepts, and a language for relating them together; in between designers of similar artifacts, e.g. one
doing so, pattern language allows a designer to for- architect to another, or designers looking at
malise optimum solutions and improve the quality of reshaping the environment at quite different
the resulting systems. In ‘The Timeless Way: Making levels, e.g. furniture designer to interface
Living Cooperative Buildings with Design Patterns’, designer.17
Pemberton and Griffiths write: Pattern construction involves an iterative social
Patterns could enable designers to benefit from process of collecting, sharing and amplifying distrib-
the knowledge and experience of creators of suc- uted experience and knowledge. Because the forms
cessful systems, providing reusable templates of patterns and their relationships are only loosely
 716
Christopher Alexander’s pattern
language: an alternative exploration
of space-making practices
Ritu Bhatt
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constrained and written in a language that evolves
naturally, it is argued that they allow for infinite
nondeterministic generativity.18 Some of these
claims attest to pattern language’s influence on
innovations such as Wiki, as well as its influence
on many grassroots programming communities.
However, the applications of pattern language in
computer science have failed to engage with the
philosophical critique of modern thought that is
central to Alexander’s work. In his keynote address
at the 1996 ACM conference, ‘Object-Oriented Pro-
grams, Systems, Languages, and Applications’,
Alexander addresses this issue, stating that the
ability of patterns to reconfigure and facilitate
design processes usually does not fully represent
the potential of the arguments that sought to
create ‘good’ and ‘nurturing’ environments.19
Such claims, and the uneven reception that Alexan-
der’s work has received, suggest a re-evaluation of
his work, particularly its relevance to architecture.
Re-reading A Pattern Language and The
Timeless Way
A closer review of A Pattern Language and The
Timeless Way reveals that Alexander does not just
aim to produce a pattern language for design.
Rather, his work provides a far-reaching philosophi-
cal critique of the modern alienated condition,
which is characterised by separation of humans
from nature, regimented divisions between work
and home, and separation of professional architec-
tural knowledge from its everyday users. A Pattern
Language argues for an ideal balance between
work and family life, suitable public institutions,
mixed use of space in neighbourhoods, and rich
public spaces for carnivals and other expressions of
irrationality. According to Alexander, when human
beings share a rich community life, spaces transform
from being merely functional to being social and
vital, and in such settings lie possibilities for learning
and cognition that are spatial, emotional and affec-
tive. Alexander’s descriptions of patterns discuss
how to transform a specific space from being
merely functional to being socially interactive. In
doing so, the patterns often challenge conventional
ways of seeing.
For instance, in the pattern that discusses stair-
cases (Pattern 133: ‘Staircase as a Stage’), Alexander
writes, ‘A staircase is not just a way of getting from
one floor to another [Fig. 2]. The stair is itself a
space, a volume, a part of the building; and unless
this space is made to live, it will be a dead spot,
and work to disconnect the building and to tear its
processes apart.’20 He argues that one should
design stairs in such a way that they become fully
integrated with the rest of the building, providing
a gradual and natural transition to the next level.
He suggests flaring out the bottom of the stairs
and widening them, as well as making the stairs
part of the outer perimeter of the room, if possible,
so the steps can be used as seats. Stairs then would
not remain merely stairs, but would be transformed
into social spaces where people would feel naturally
inclined to sit and chat. Through such critiques
of modern functionalism, Alexander continually
draws attention to the potential of architecture to
facilitate and increase the intuitive tendencies of
human beings to gather socially and to move
around. Furthermore, by delving into the seemingly
mundane aspects of everyday life that the
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Figure 2. Patterns for

stairs. Alexander argues
that stairs that merely
connect two levels of a
building work further to
disconnect the building
and tear its processes
apart. In the patterns
for stairs, he suggests
flaring out the bottom
and widening them as
well as, if possible,
making the stairs part of
the outer perimeter of
the room so the steps
can be used as seats.
Such patterns
transform stairs into
social spaces where
people would be
naturally inclined to sit,
chat or engage in other
activities. (Pattern 133:
‘Staircase as a Stage’, A
Pattern Language,
pp. 637 –40.)
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Christopher Alexander’s pattern

language: an alternative exploration
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Ritu Bhatt
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Figure 3. Communal
Sleeping. In this
pattern, Alexander
points to the positive
effects of communal
sleeping, which is
perceived in many
traditional societies to
play a vital rôle in
intensifying social
relationships. He
critiques the modern
associations of sleeping
with privacy and
suggests a pattern that
places beds ‘within
sight and sound of
other beds’. (Pattern
186: ‘Communal
Sleeping’, A Pattern
Language, p. 863.)

disciplinary knowledge in architecture in general psychological benefits of communal eating.22 He

tends to overlook, pattern language creates a rich
dialogue that has the potential to encourage a
user to reconfigure his or her most intimate spaces.
For instance, in a pattern that focuses on sleeping
(Pattern 186: ‘Communal Sleeping’), Alexander
points out that ‘in many traditional and primitive
cultures, sleep is a communal activity without
the sexual overtones it has in the West today’
(Fig. 3).21 In these societies, he explains, communal
sleeping between adults, or between adults and
children in large family-size groups, plays a vital
part in building and intensifying relationships to
the degree that its social rôle is perceived as being
similar to the easier-to-cite positive social and
says that we may not accept this idea so easily in
contemporary societies, wherein we tend to over-
compartmentalise everyday life and associate sleep-
ing with privacy and sexuality. In his critique of how
we view sleeping, he offers an amusing anecdote:
The pattern may seem strange at first, but when
our typist read it, she was fascinated and
decided to try it one Saturday night with her
family. They spread a big mat across the living
room. They all got up together and helped the
youngest son on his paper route; then they had
some breakfast.
Ed: ‘Are they still doing it?’
Au: ‘No, after 2 weeks they were arrested.’23

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Such humorous anecdotes are common in the book
and work well with its overall theme of making
architectural knowledge accessible to the everyday
user. Often through self-mockery, they critique
modern ways of living and often work to facilitate
an understanding of knowledge that differs dra-
matically from modern cultural norms. In this
pattern, Alexander recommends the practice of
communal sleeping for the positive psycho-social
benefits that it may have, and suggests a space
that would allow children and adults to have their
beds ‘within the sight and sound of other beds.’24
However, pattern language abounds in sweeping
generalisations about human nature, and Alexan-
der’s critics have often become angered when anec-
dotes or generalisations are taken to an extreme. For
instance, in a section on bathing (Pattern 144:
‘Bathing Room’), Alexander claims that a recent
study has shown that ‘cross-culturally there is a cor-
relation between the degree to which society places
restrictions on bodily pleasures (such as co-
bathing)—particularly in childhood—and the
degree to which society engages in the glorification
of warfare and sadistic practices.’25 William Saun-
ders points to the frequent use of such adages in
A Pattern Language, writing ‘While we can under-
stand and generally agree with these adages, it is
their extremism—“No people . . . no human
group”—that seems not just shrill but also nutty
as this preposterous sentence: “There is abundant
evidence to show that high rise buildings make
people crazy.” ’26 While it is important to refute
these sweeping, direct causal links that Alexander
sometimes draws between human behaviour and
architectural spaces, in doing so, the debates
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about Alexander’s work often miss the merits of
what Alexander is arguing for. In Pattern 144 on
bathing, for instance, the critics’ focus on determin-
ism overshadows his argument for broadening the
definition of bathing, which shows how physical
cleansing represents only a small aspect of the
ritual of bathing and highlights the larger thera-
peutic and social benefits of communal bathing’s
shared pleasure (Fig. 4).27
Critics have also noted that while Alexander
rightly points to the positive aspects of socially
inhabited spaces, he seldom takes into consider-
ation the idea that user responses can be diverse,
and that for some users, socially inhabited spaces
can also be oppressive because of the discomfort
they cause. Another evident inconsistency in Alex-
ander’s work involves how he argues throughout
his writings for a break from rational, compartmen-
talised thinking, while reconciling himself often
uncritically with scientific studies that overly ration-
alise human behaviour and reduce it to singular
dimensions. Ambiguities abound in Alexander’s
work, and reconciling its valuable insights with its
serious flaws and contradictions poses quite a chal-
lenge. The larger, more important issue, however, is
that Alexander’s occasional dogmatic and unsub-
stantiated determinism, as well as the level of
criticism that determinism has received, has under-
mined the larger, more important arguments
about broader holistic modes of knowing for
which Alexander is arguing.
In a later book entitled Christopher Alexander:
The Search for a New Paradigm in Architecture
(1983), written by Stephen Grabow, Alexander
puts forth some clear explanations of what he
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Christopher Alexander’s pattern

language: an alternative exploration
of space-making practices
Ritu Bhatt
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Figure 4. Pattern for

Bathing. In the pattern
on bathing, Alexander
argues that cleansing is
only a small part of the
larger therapeutic,
social and pleasurable
benefits that bathing
can bring, and that
designs of bathing
spaces should
accommodate such
needs. (Pattern 144:
‘Bathing Room’, A
Pattern Language,
pp. 681 –6.)

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means by holistic knowledge and what that might
imply both for architectural design and for interdis-
ciplinary synergies of knowledge in general. In the
foreword, Alexander describes his work as a search
for a new paradigm: a paradigm that ‘would not
only make it necessary to modify our view of archi-
tecture, but also modify our picture of the world . . .
so that what we know as physics, biology, chemistry
. . . and other related fields, will all have to take on a
different cast.’28 This call for a shift in epistemology
across disciplines, when understood in the context
of the arguments proposed in A Pattern Language
and The Timeless Way, provides a rich, cohesive
theory that extends beyond emphasising day-
to-day experiences of living, developing into a
nuanced exploration of how and when physical,
spatial settings become cognitive.
The following argument emerges: Life patterns,
at multiple levels of complexity, allow for uncon-
scious cognitive relationships with space. Alexander
argues that these relationships can be consciously
recognised to some degree, and actively improved.
For Alexander, traditional pre-modern built environ-
ments serve as excellent examples of such unself-
conscious methods of construction.29 They possess
what Alexander calls the ‘quality without a name’
that ‘cannot be made, but only generated indirectly,
by the ordinary actions of people.’30
To seek this understanding and knowledge, Alex-
ander argues that architects should let go of all the
methods of architecture they know, and move away
from paying conscious attention to buildings. This
process, he states ‘will happen on its own accord,
if we let it’ and ‘will enhance innate human
capacities for intuitive learning.’31 In this framework
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of knowledge, objectivity and subjectivity are not
mutually opposed. Alexander calls for dissolution
of the binary framework of knowledge, describing
his work as ‘a search for the quality of things that
is subjective, cannot be named, and yet has an
objectivity and precision to it.’32 This precision, he
clarifies, cannot be attained mechanically; it is
based on deep human feelings and needs.
Somatics and cognition
In the emerging field of somatics, deep feelings as
well as unconscious processes and patterns of
thought and movement are seen as an important
source of knowledge. Somatics is a broad term
that is used to signify a variety of approaches,
such as the Feldenkrais method, the Alexander tech-
nique, body-mind centring, eutony, yoga, martial
arts and dance movement therapy; these practices
argue for mind-body cognition and place a great
deal of emphasis on the student or client’s active
participation. Practitioners claim that in modern
medicine, the body has been approached as an
object and studied as something external and separ-
ate from the self. Somatic practitioners, in contrast,
approach the body as a subject, experienced from
within rather than from without. In dissolving the
object-subject split, somatic practitioners argue for
the recognition (‘re-cognition’) of the fact that the
human body is the ground from which one needs
to explore experience.
The key issue that somatic practitioners often
focus on is patterns—or rather, on the re-patterning
of thought, movement and behaviour, arguing
that unconscious patterns held within the body
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Christopher Alexander’s pattern
language: an alternative exploration
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Ritu Bhatt
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can affect functioning at all levels: physiological,
psychological, social and spiritual. Somatics argues
against the objectified, static view of the body and
argues that the body, like the mind, remains in con-
stant flux, changing from moment to moment in
response to underlying processes of which it is an
expression. Somatic therapies attend to this subtle
flux within the body-mind, using various techniques
such as touch, tissue manipulation, sensory aware-
ness, body imagery and movement. Through the
use of specific techniques, these therapies bring
awareness to unconscious patterns, introduce new
sensations and choices of response, and support
changes leading to greater integration, health and
wellbeing.
In Performing Live: Aesthetic Renewals to the
Ends of Art, Richard Shusterman argues that
somatic practices of ‘self-help’ not only free us
from bodily habits and defects that tend to impair
cognitive performance, but also enrich our lives
through integrating a rich aesthetic experience
into our everyday lives.33 In doing so, Shusterman
argues, these everyday practices reinvent the post-
modern subject. Unlike the Foucauldian subject
under a constant panoptic gaze, there emerges an
agent who—through a focus on self-knowledge
and self-interpretation—is capable of challenging
the repressive power relationships encoded in our
bodies.34 Somatics allows the development of the
body’s capacities for direct sensory experience and
human intuitions. This awareness of the body’s
feelings and movement, Shusterman points out,
has been long criticised in western philosophical
traditions as a harmful distraction that corrupts
our ethics through fostering self-absorption.35
Along a similar vein, in their powerful and influen-
tial critique of western philosophical traditions, Phil-
osophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought, George Lakoff and
Mark Johnson challenge western conceptions of
rationality, arguing that our bodies, brains and inter-
actions with our environments provide the primarily
unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics;
that is, our sense of what is real. Reason and
reality, they argue, are not dispassionate or disem-
bodied, but grow out of bodily capacities; they are
emotionally engaged and fundamentally embo-
died.36
The idea that objectivity is not dispassionate and
can evolve from deeply embodied subjective feel-
ings is an argument that pervades much of Alexan-
der’s work. In A Pattern Language, his discussion of
a pattern for sleeping (Pattern 138: ‘Sleeping to the
East’) serves as a particularly strong illustration of
how subjective feelings can be argued to have an
objective basis (Fig. 5). In this pattern, Alexander
argues that when deciding which space is most
appropriate for sleeping, one must pay attention
to the needs of the human body when waking
from sleep. He begins by saying that this is one of
the patterns that people most often disagree with,
for, they argue, ‘What if one had an intention to
sleep late? Why would someone want to be
woken up by the sun?’ In expressing such concerns,
Alexander points out, people often assume that
such decisions are only a matter of personal prefer-
ence. On the contrary, he argues, sensitive biological
clocks within the human body work in conjunction
with natural rhythms and cycles. The human body
is attuned to its own needs for rest, and light will
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Figure 5. Sleeping to
the East. Alexander
writes ‘Give those parts
of the house where
people sleep, an eastern
orientation, so that they
wake up with the sun
and light. This means,
typically, that the
sleeping area needs to
be on the eastern side
of the house; but it can
also be on the western
side provided there is a
courtyard or a terrace to
the east of it.’ (Pattern
affect it differently depending on how much rest it derstood the needs of the human body. The 138: ‘Sleeping to the
needs. The description of the pattern reads: human body, she says, is inherently in a state of East’, A Pattern
Since the sun warms you, increases the light, flux and instability, and our conventionally accepted Language, pp. 656 – 9.)
gently nudges you, you are likely to wake up at ‘seated posture’ on the chair often causes a host of
a moment which serves you the best. Therefore, health-related concerns. And yet, she points out, we
the right place for sleeping is one which provides continue intuitively to seek comfort through the act
morning light—consequently a window in the of sitting in a chair. She explains this discord in the
room that lets in eastern light—and a bed that following passage:
provides a view of the light without being directly We currently live in a society where for an average
in the light shaft.37 person, because of years of faulty alignment
Often Alexander suggests a ‘right place’, or ‘a more an idea of what feels right may have taken
or less correct way’, and he argues that this concept precedence over the direct bodily sensation of
of rightness is based on deep human sensations and what feels right. And, this means that for most
needs. Such connections between individual human people an anatomically efficient posture no
feelings and their normative basis are also increas- longer feels ‘right’ or ‘comfortable’, to the
ingly being explored by emerging somatic practices. degree that we reject it in favor of a collapsed
For instance, in a recent book called The Chair: slump.38
Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design, Galen Cranz Cranz asserts that our intuitive tendency to seek
has challenged accepted notions of chair design. comfort in a collapsed slump reflects our disturbed
She explores the needs of the body by drawing relationship with our bodies, wherein our concept
upon how somatic practitioners understand them. of what feels right does not necessarily correspond
Cranz points out how chair designers have misun- with our internal sensory experience, and she
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argues for ‘unlearning the cultural conditioning that
ignores internal sensory experience in favor of
abstract thought.’ Furthermore, Cranz points out
that such concepts as ‘comfort’ are not adequately
taken into account as an integral part of design
even in approaches that do take the human body
into account, such as ergonomic design. Asserting
that faulty sensory awareness has caused people
to give unreliable reports to ergonomic researchers
regarding what feels comfortable to them, Cranz
writes:
They [ergonomic researchers] have observed that
people cannot consistently describe what is com-
fortable, but they don’t know why; they just chalk
it up to the annoying unreliability or variability of
human subjects, rather than asking why such pro-
found variation should exist. This much variation
points to a profound disturbance in our relation-
ship to our bodies. Rather than try to restore
that relationship, as somatic practitioners do,
ergonomic science has ignored the realm of kines-
thetic reeducation. For designers, somatics
creates an unsettling demand to make chairs
that might feel uncomfortable until people’s
bodies and minds unlearn the poor sitting
posture learned from conventional chairs.39
Herein lie some distinctions between Cartesian
rationalism and conceptions of holistic knowledge.
In the rationalist object-subject relationship, objec-
tivity and subjectivity are mutually opposed and sub-
jectivity becomes a highly variable concept that is
based on ‘mere’ human feelings. These feelings
are not seen as a reliable source of knowledge. In
holistic conceptions, on the other hand, wherein
the human body is seen as the fundamental
ground through which to understand experiences,
subjectivity emerges from an understanding of inter-
relationships within the body as well as its larger
relationships with the environment, and remains in
a state of constant flux. In this perspective, the dis-
tinctions between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ are
blurred, and they are no longer defined as mutual
opposites. For instance, Cranz explains that
somatic practitioners do not define comfort as the
opposite of ‘no work’. Rather, they define comfort
as balanced work throughout the whole system,
explaining that the subjective counterpart to this
‘balanced work’ would be a feeling of vitality and
ease.40 Likewise, Alexander continually draws corre-
lations between when things are ‘just right’ and ‘in
balance’, and the concurrent feeling of vitality and
ease. For Alexander too, physical spaces affect quali-
tative aspects of life, and to understand how and
when that happens, we need to shift our perception
of knowledge from Cartesian rationalism to an hol-
istic understanding of spaces.
As part of developing an holistic understanding,
Alexander asks us to become aware of how build-
ings affect us cognitively. He frequently comments
about paying attention to the moments when build-
ings come ‘alive’, and about how and when build-
ings could be argued to be ‘more real’ or ‘less
real’. This emphasis on ‘when’ is similar to Nelson
Goodman’s arguments for aesthetic cognition in
his Languages of Art (1968). Goodman stresses
that the question to ask is not ‘What is Art?’ but
‘When is Art?’ In doing so, Goodman shifts the
emphasis from the ‘art object’ to an understanding
of aesthetic experience as a temporal occurrence
when some form of transformation or cognition

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takes place. ‘When art happens’ Goodman asks us
to pay attention to moments of non-judgement
and disinterest that allow the subject to experience
the deeply transformative potential of aesthetics.41
The more important point for Goodman, however,
is that in such moments, emotions function cogni-
tively and can be seen as a source of knowledge
or a form of knowing. Furthermore, aesthetic
experiences are not limited just to art, but can
happen at any time in our everyday lives, and fully
to benefit from them, we must draw distinctions
between when works of art function cognitively
and when they do not.
Drawing distinctions between ‘less’ and ‘more’
real, Alexander argues that holistic perception
allows for an experience of a more ‘real world’:
one that is radically different from the physical
world as seen. Alexander writes ‘When I say some-
thing is real, I mean that the fundamental neurologi-
cal processes and deep-seated cognitive processes
going on in the brain are actually taking place in a
holistic way. . . . and the person who is seeing a
thing holistically is actually seeing what is congruent
within it instead of just its physical geometry.’42 The
viewer is then experiencing the building instead of
merely looking at it. And, Alexander argues, cultivat-
ing an awareness of our responses to buildings will
allow us to design environments that are better for
us as individuals and communities.
Such thinking is consistent with somatic philos-
ophies that argue for an integration of the mind
and body, and explore how and when experiences
can be seen to be cognitive, as well as what that
may imply for the physical, emotional and affective
growth of human beings. In recent years, the
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emergence of the concept of neuroplasticity in
neuroscience has pointed to the extraordinary
adaptive capabilities of the human brain, and the
continual restructuring and reorganisation that
neural circuits are capable of in response to
both internal and external stimuli, in a dramatic
shift from the earlier belief that the nervous
system remains fixed throughout adulthood. Such
possibilities, yet again, provoke further inquiry into
the possible correlations that might exist between
qualitative aspects of physical environments and
human wellbeing.
Conclusion
In the last decade, debates in architectural theory have
emerged around what might be termed a ‘post-
critical’ or a ‘projective’ turn that attempts to
surpass ‘criticality’ by fundamentally destabilising
architectural autonomy and acknowledging architec-
ture’s inherent multiplicity and many contingencies.43
Positing to impact culture in new non-oppositional
ways, through exploring the potentialities of ‘the
diagram’, post-critical architecture argues for a
‘quality of sensibility’ that is ‘non-dissenting’ and
‘non-utopian’, and thus accommodative of socio-cul-
tural norms in a discipline that remains constantly in
flux. The ‘post-critical’ turn has opened provocative
interrogation about the operative rôle of theory, rel-
evance of ‘critical’ or ‘neo-critical’ positions in archi-
tecture, and architecture’s active agency to play a
broader social and cultural rôle.44 While these
debates have rightly questioned the limitations of
autonomous quests and narrow epistemic constructs,
they have shed limited light on agency, intentionality,
aesthetics, phenomenology and cognition: constructs
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that continue to remain under-studied and under-
served in architectural theory.
Human agency and intentionality have emerged
as central concepts in recent debates in philosophy
as well—especially regarding how phenomenology,
the newly emerging neuro-phenomenology, ana-
lytic philosophy of the mind and the cognitive
sciences have fundamentally re-thought and re-
shaped our understanding of knowledge and the
rôle that the human body plays in it.45 In the light
of these developments, despite its many contradic-
tions and inconsistencies, Alexander’s oeuvre
emerges as an insightful experiment that merits rec-
ognition for its sustained attention to the relevance
of everyday experience in understanding and struc-
turing the built environment. But, most importantly,
A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way’s argu-
ment—that normative frameworks of knowledge
arising from the body can often support human
agency and self-knowledge—provides insights for
rethinking the limitations of both empiricism and
relativism.
Further, Alexander’s focus on the everyday user
offers much insight for understanding the self-
determinism that is becoming increasingly promi-
nent in post-traditional societies. These societies,
wherein tradition no longer constitutes the basis
for our actions, Anthony Giddens postulates,
evolve a modern reflexivity wherein agents begin
to choose and control parts of their everyday lives.
Giddens points to the phenomenon of ‘self-help’
as a modern reflexive project in which ‘we are not
what we are, but what we make ourselves into’.46
In critiquing modern alienated spatial conditions,
Alexander’s pattern language, ironically, also
engages in the modern reflexive project, granting
everyday users the agency to choose how to
design their own spaces.
Notes and references
1. Alexander introduces the two books in the following
way: ‘Volume I, The Timeless Way of Building, and
Volume II, A Pattern Language are two halves of a
single work. This book [A Pattern Language] provides
a language, for building and planning; the other pro-
vides theory and instruction for the use of the langua-
ge.. . .We have been forced by practical considerations,
to publish these two books under separate covers; but
in fact, they form an indivisible whole. It is possible to
read them separately. But to gain insight which we
have tried to communicate in them, it is essential
that you read them both.’; A Pattern Language:
Towns, Buildings, Construction (New York, Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1977), p. ix.
2. In The Timeless Way, Alexander writes ‘In fact, the con-
scious effort to attain this quality, or to be free, or to be
anything, the glance which this creates, will always
spoil it.’; The Timeless Way of Building (New York,
Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 52 (also see
pp. 14– 15).
3. C. Alexander, S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein, M. Jacobson,
I. Fiksdahl-King, S. Angel, A Pattern Language, op. cit.
4. Ibid., p. xvii.
5. Ibid., p. x.
6. See Bernard Rodofsky, Architecture without Archi-
tects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architec-
ture (New York, The Museum of Modern Art Press,
1964). See also, Amos Rapoport, House Form and
Culture (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall,
1969); Amos Rapoport, Human Aspects of Urban
Form (Elkins Park, PA, Franklin Book Co., 1977);
and Amos Rapoport, The Meaning of the Built-

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Environment: A Non-Verbal Approach (Tucson,
Arizona University Press, 1990). B8
7. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Archi-
tecture (New York, The Museum of Modern Art Press,
1966), and Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and
Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge,
Mass., The MIT Press, 1972; revised 1977).
8. See K. Dovey, ‘The Pattern Language and Its Enemies’,
Design Studies, II, no. 1 (January, 1990), pp. 3– 9. For a
reading that highlights the phenomenological leanings
of Alexander’s work, see D. Seamon, ‘Concretizing
Heidegger’s Notion of Dwelling: The Contributions of
Thomas Thiis Evenson and Christopher Alexander’,
in Building and Dwelling, ed., E. Fuhr (Munich,
Waxmann Verlag GmbH; New York, Waxmann,
2000), pp. 189 –202.
9. J.P. Protzen, ‘The Poverty of Pattern Language’, Design
Methods and Theories, 12, no. 3/4 (September –
December, 1978), p. 194.
10. Ibid., p. 194.
11. Ibid.
12. ‘Discord over Harmony in Architecture: Peter Eisenman
and Christopher Alexander in Discussion’, Studio
Works, 7 (2001), pp. 50 –57. William Saunders pro-
vides a succinct review of Peter Eisenman’s critique
of Alexander’s work in his review of A Pattern
Language contained in Harvard Design Magazine,
no. 16 (Hard/Soft, Cool/Warm, Winter/Spring,
2002), to be found at the following link (accessed
17.06.08): http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/
publications/hdm/back/16books_saunders.html.
13. K. Dovey, ‘The Pattern Language and Its Enemies’, op.
cit., p. 4.
14. W. Saunders, review of A Pattern Language, op. cit.
His review also includes a commentary on Alexander’s
more recent four-volume series on The Nature of
Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the
Nature of the Universe (Berkeley, The Center for
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Environmental Structure, 2002– 2003). For a review
of Alexander’s more recent work, see R. Bhatt and
J. Brand, ‘Christopher Alexander: A Review Essay’,
Design Issues, XXIV, no. 2 (Spring, 2008), pp. 93–102.
15. Tom Erickson, ‘Lingua Franca for Design: Sacred Places
and Pattern Languages’, The Proceedings of DIS 2000
(New York, ACM Press, 2000), pp 357 –368.
16. D. Lea, ‘Christopher Alexander: An Introduction for
Object-Oriented Designers’, SUNY Oswego, NY CASE
Center, http://g.oswego.edu/dl/ca/ca/ca.html (accessed
25.06.08).
17. L. Pemberton and R.N. Griffiths, ‘The Timeless Way:
Making Living Cooperative Buildings with Design
Patterns’, in Cooperative Buildings: Integrating
Information, Organization, and Architecture, eds,
N. Streitz et al. (Darmstadt, Springer, 1998). Also see
‘Lecture Notes in Computer Science’ (Heidelberg,
Springer, 1998), pp. 142 –53.
18. D. Lea, ‘Christopher Alexander: An Introduction for
Object-Oriented Designers’, op. cit. See also: N. A.
Salingaros, ‘The Structure of Pattern Languages’,
Architectural Research Quarterly, 4 (2000),
pp. 149– 61.
19. C. Alexander, ‘The Origins of Pattern Theory: The Future
of the Theory and the Generation of a Living World’,
IEEE Software (September/October, 1999), pp. 71–82.
20. C.Alexander, A Pattern Language, p. 638.
21. Ibid., p. 861.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 863.
24. Ibid., p. 833.
25. Alexander cites Philip Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness
(Boston, Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 89– 90 (A Pattern
Language, p. 682).
26. Saunders, op. cit., http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/
research/publications/hdm/back/16books_saunders.
html (accessed 17.06.08).
27. Ibid., pp. 681 –6.
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28. C. Alexander, foreword to Stephen Grabow’s Christo-
pher Alexander: The Search for a New Paradigm in
Architecture (London, Oriel Press, 1983), p. x.
29. C. Alexander, The Timeless Way, op. cit., pp. 10–11.
30. Ibid., p. xi.
31. Ibid., p. ix (also see p. 546).
32. Ibid., pp.12 and 25.
33. R. Shusterman, ‘Somaesthetics and the Body/Media
Issue’, Performing Live: Aesthetic Renewals to the
Ends of Art (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2000),
pp. 137– 53.
34. R.Shusterman, ‘Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Propo-
sal’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57:3
(Summer, 1999), pp. 299– 313. In this proposal, Shus-
terman also argues that Michel Foucault’s seminal
vision of the body as a docile, malleable site for inscrib-
ing social power reveals the crucial rôle somatics can
play for political philosophy (pp. 303 –4).
35. R. Shusterman, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of
Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (New York, Cam-
bridge University Press, 2008), pp. ix –14.
36. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The
Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
(New York, Basic Books, 1999), p. 17. Lakoff and
Johnson also argue that metaphors are not mere poe-
tical or rhetorical embellishments; instead, they are
part of everyday speech that affect the ways in
which we perceive, think and act. In doing so, Lakoff
and Johnson argue that metaphorical thought pro-
vides a principal insight for understanding reality.
37. Alexander cites a study by Dr London at the
San Francisco Medical School that claims that our
whole day depends critically on the conditions in
which we wake up. If we wake up immediately after
a period of dreaming (REM sleep), we will feel ebulli-
ent, energetic and refreshed for the whole day,
because certain critical hormones are injected into
the bloodstream immediately after REM sleep. If,
however, we wake up during delta sleep (another
type of sleep, which happens in between periods of
dreaming) we feel irritable, drowsy, flat and lethargic
all day long because the necessary hormones are not
in the bloodstream at the critical moment of awaken-
ing (A Pattern Language, op. cit., p. 658).
38. Ibid., p. 136.
39. Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and
Design (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1998),
p. 136.
40. In The Timeless Way, Alexander makes a similar point,
stating that genuine comfort ‘goes far beyond its
simply understood meaning’ and describing comforta-
ble places as places without inner contradictions and
with no or little disturbance. On the other hand, ‘a
bed which is too soft’ and ‘a room which always has
even room temperature’ are examples of comforts
that can be stultifying and deadening (op. cit.,
pp. 32– 33).
41. N. Goodman, ‘Art and Understanding’, in Languages
of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indiana-
polis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1976), pp. 225–
265.
42. Alexander was highly influenced by Jerome Bruner,
one of the pioneers of cognitive psychology at Har-
vard’s Center for Cognitive Studies. The actual quota-
tion reads as follows:
There is a certain sense in which the holistic percep-
tion actually corresponds more closely to the real
structure of the thing being perceived. But just
saying that raises a very interesting topic. I know
that this is one of the reasons why some people
dislike my work. They say he’s so dogmatic; or
what does he mean by ‘real’ or ‘not real?’ After
all, we have people seeing this thing in such and
such a way and how could he dare say that what
they are seeing is not real? And this is the sort of
typical kind of criticism, which is often levelled at

Downloaded By: [University of Westminster] At: 21:28 31 January 2011
my work. However, we happen to be caught in this
weird sort of nominalist period of philosophical
history at the moment where someone will say
that however you choose to see something is the
way you see it; or however you choose to name it
is the way you name it. And of course that coincides
with pluralism and is a genuine reaction against
positivism. So what do I mean when I say that
there is a certain perception of this that is more
real? I am actually making two different statements:
one of them is psychological and one of them has to
do with physics. The psychological statement that I
am making is that the fundamental neurological
processes and deep-seated cognitive processes
going on in the brain are actually taking place in
the holistic way and that the sequential way is sec-
ondary and constructed out of it. That’s the first
thing that I mean when I say that one is more real
than the other.. . .Now the second thing is that
when I say it corresponds to physics, I mean that
the holistic perception is congruent with the behav-
ior of the reality being perceived.. . .the person who
is seeing the thing holistically is actually seeing what
is congruent with the behavior of the thing and not
just its physical geometry.
C. Alexander, from Stephen Grabow’s Christopher
Alexander: The Search for a New Paradigm in Archi-
tecture, op. cit., pp. 195 –196. Also see R. Bhatt and
J. Brand, ‘Christopher Alexander: A Review Essay’,
op. cit., pp. 93– 102.
43. Advocates of the post-critical position include Robert
Somol and Sarah Whiting, ‘Notes Around the
Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism’, in,
eds, Michael Osman, Adan Ruedig, Matthew Seidel
and Lisa Tinley, Mining Autonomy, a special issue of
Perspecta, 33 (2002), pp. 72– 7; Michael Speaks,
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‘Design Intelligence, Part 1: Introduction’, A + U:
Architecture and Urbanism (December, 2002),
pp.10 –18. See also George Baird, ‘ “Criticality” and
its Discontents’, Harvard Design Magazine, 21 (Fall/
Winter, 2004), pp. 16 –21; and Reinhold Martin,
‘Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism’,
Harvard Design Magazine, 22 (Spring/Summer,
2005), pp. 104 –9.
44. For debates about ‘critical’ versus ‘neo-critical’ and the
operative rôle of theory, see a compendium of essays
published in Critical Architecture, eds, Jane Rendell,
Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser and Mark Dorrian
(London, Routledge, 2007). The essays as a whole
provide an important critique of the post-critical turn
in architecture.
45. See David Woodruff Smith and Amie L. Thomasson,
Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.1 –15; J. Petitot,
F. Varela, B. Pachoud and J. M. Roy, Naturalizing Phe-
nomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology
and Cognitive Science (Palo Alto, Stanford University
Press, 1999), pp. 1–81.
46. Lars Bo Kaspersen, ‘The Analysis of Modernity: Globa-
lization, the Transformation of Intimacy, and the Post-
Traditional Society’, in Anthony Giddens: An Introduc-
tion to a Social Theorist, trs., Steven Sampson (Oxford,
Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 106 –9. Giddens
argues that self-identity in post-traditional societies
must be understood as a reflexive project for which
the individual is responsible. By using knowledge
developed by expert systems, we are able to control a
part of our everyday lives and we therefore become
re-skilled. However, the expert system also de-skills us
(p. 109). Also see Anthony Giddens, Modernity and
Self-Identity: Self and Society in Late Modern Age
(Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 1991).