A Pattern Language is at its core a philosophy that, in designing their environments, people rely on certain ‘languages’. These languages, akin to the ones we speak, allow us to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a formal system, providing coherence.

This book provides such a language, enabling the design of almost any kind of building or part of the built environment. The ‘Patterns’—the units of this language—are solutions to design problems: How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?

More than 250 patterns are outlined, each consisting of a problem statement, a discussion with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors state in their introduction, many patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that they remain pertinent to human nature and action as much today as they will in five hundred years.

A Pattern Language is related to Alexander’s other works in the Center for Environmental Structure series: The Timeless Way of Building and The Oregon Experiment.