Our towns and buildings are all made of patterns. The patterns of our time, like all other patterns in the built environment, come from the pattern languages which people use.For instance, freeways are built from handbooks, which contain, more or less exactly in the form of patterns, rules which prescribe the optimum spacing of exits at different densities, the best configurations for the exits under different conditions, the proper curvature and inclination of the petals of a cloverleaf...
Consider, for example, the language which generated my office at school. It is an ugly place, terrible, dark and dead. It is one of many similar offices, and these are generated by the following language:
* LONG AND NARROW
* DAYLIGHT AT ONE END ONLY
* WINDOW THE FULL WIDTH OF THE WALL
* CONCRETE WAFFLE CEILING, 5' GRID
* FLOURESCENT LIGHTS AT 10' CENTERS
* FLAT CONCRETE WALL
* UNPAINTED CONCRETE CEILING SURFACE
* STEEL WINDOW
* PLYWOOD WALL SURFACEThis terrible language has generated hundreds of offices.
Patterns always come from languages. Of course, patterns do not come only from the work of architects or planners. Architects are responsible for no more than perhaps 5% of all the buildings in the world.
Every person has a pattern language in his mind.
The fact is, that the creation of a town, and the creation of the individual buildings of a town, is fundamentally a genetic process. This conclusion, simple though it is, calls for a shattering revision of our attitude to architecture and planning. We may conclude that the central task of "architecture" is the creation of a single, shared, evolving, pattern language, which everyone contributes to, and everyone can use.