Pattern Language — Different Chairs

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Different Chairs

May be part of Sequence of Sitting Spaces (142)Sitting Circle (185)Built-In Seats (202)

Conflict

People are different sizes; they sit in different ways. And yet there is a tendency in modern times to make all chairs alike.

Resolution

Never furnish any place with chairs that are identically the same. Choose a variety of different chairs, some big, some small, some softer than others, some with rockers, some very old, some with arms, some wicker, some wood, some cloth.

May contain Pools of Light (252).

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Or chairs, period.

Starbucks tried something like this, but generally public places avoid catering to the natural desire to have a place to sit. Down the block glass started to fall from the high rise and the sitting area has been closed ever since.  A block sourh they had tables and chairs and then took them away. We could make thousands of jobs just taking care of tables and chairs.

There is hope. On the street below me traffic has been zapped and there are tables and chairs. It;’s a party every night. One day public space will improve. It has to. As to inside the places where we dwell, the above is apposite.

Pattern Language — Things from Your Life

Almost everything Christopher Alexander says is worth repeating until it penetrates the skulls of high and low. This for example:

Things from Your Life

Conflict

“Decor” and conception of “interior design” have spread so widely, that very often people forget their instinct fir the things they really want to keep around them.

Resolution

Do not be tricked into believing that modern decor must be slick or psychedelic, or natural or modern art, or plants or anything else that current taste makers claim. it is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life- the things you care for, the things that tell your story.

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The more I think about it the more angry I get at the media’s veneration of design and architecture that has nothing to do with Alexander’s concerns. The NYT is a textbook example of this blindness.

Sustainable Green Living in a Few Easy Steps

Going green is great, but as you point out it is not as easy as magazines suggest. I believe we will start licking things like climate change and over-consumption only when forced by circumstance to see that what is unsustainable is our present world of detached houses, exurbs, reliance on the automobile and dependence on oil.

The future lies in the integration of high tech with the insights of Christopher Alexander and the authors of Pattern Language. For more please visit:

http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Christopher Alexander Is Making More Sense Every Day

I used to think that Christopher Alexander’s first pattern, the one that underlies all, was the height of idealism, impractical, dispensable.

But it is looking smarter day by day.

Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language I Independent Regions

What I find persuasive is the idea that we cannot really have a sustainable global economy unless our communities or human settlements are themselves sustainable. This means that they must be large enough and concentrated enough to have viable economies.

The problem with metrosprawl is that everything that relates to viable economy is miles away and requires multiple automobiles. This wastes resources, depletes wallets and defeats sustainability.

But a mixed usage settlement that is techno-savvy and green at the same time has the capacity to have its own cultural base, its own shopping, its pedestrian accesses.

Where I would differ from Alexander would be on coordinating the sizes. It seems to me an ideal size for a sustainable settlement shades toward 10,000 with nodes that would be larger. Any sort of representation would need to be calibrated to populations I feel. Otherwise we would end up with the Olympia Snowe problem. Disproportionate power to representatives of low pop areas.

We may never move beyond nations, though there are arguments for doing do. But we can at least begin to recalibrate settlements with attention to simple principles of economy that see the deleterious consequences of our phony abundance society whole.

Keeping Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language Flame Alive

Is it even possible to think that the thought of Christopher Alexander and many others will come to fruition?

The built-up world is in many respects fixed. Its patterns are inimical to those proposed by Alexander.  Alexander would build from the natural impulses he attributes to us. The world is built with the forces created by a melding of profit motive, a hierarchical perspective and a belief that originality is synonymous with being exceptional.

In other words, architecture is either designed to fulfill onerous needs — as in housing masses of people with little respect for their needs or their input — or to impress society with something that may have nothing to do with utility or natural impulses, but everything to do with creating a buzz redounding to the individual glory of the architect.

Pattern Language in architecture is a willingness to start over. But starting over is difficult when what we have is not merely in place, but very much in place.

Yesterday I went out to Coney Island. I took the N and Q trains for an hour each way and made it with relative ease. It was a great day. The ocean was there. Waves were there. Kids played in the sand. There was a barker. I even had a Nathan’s hot dog to celebrate. I felt the wind and sun. I will remember it.

How would pattern language build in an area already so fixed?

The answer might be with small things. Like the gradual population of vacant space with outdoor tables and chairs. Like making it easier for small shops to coexist with large apartment complexes. Like reducing the clog of traffic and the enhancement of public modes of going to and fro.

We Also Need To Start From Scratch

The main things I would like to see done involve essentially a tabula rasa — a blank page, somewhere where space exists — say the space contained in a square with a mile on each side.

Within this space imagine two or three structures somewhat similar to Rogers Center in Toronto.

These would seek to be ecologically self contained. In other words to have sustainability built in via recycling and solar and wind collection — along with a mix of residences and commercial and social and educational and athletic establishments sufficient to become the basis of a sustainable economy.

I see Pueblo like residences reached by pedestrian walkways in a spiral from top to bottom and bottom to top. I see sitting and walking areas in profusion as there would be few or no moving vehicles.  I see local artistic endeavors. Local health nodes where one can get preventive things done within a few steps of home. I see Internet nodes so there is some separation between home and cyber-work.

In essence I see some entrepreneurial initiative to defy the present in the name of a future we have not even envisioned yet.

The US is way behind in such discussions. That’s too bad. But it can be remedied.

More on Pattern Language:

See the brief at http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/ and then read in sequence:

Part OnePart TwoPart ThreePart Four,, Part FivePart SixPart SevenPart EightPart NinePart TenPart ElevenPart TwelvePart ThirteenPart Fourteen

Christopher Alexander Has The Right Approach to The Car

Texting To Death http://ow.ly/ln2R

At present, 36 states do not ban texting while driving; 14 states do, including California, Alaska, Louisiana and New Jersey. New York lawmakers have sent a bill to Governor Paterson.

COMMENT

Having been an opponent of the car for fifty years or so, I am sensitive to the fact that the car is not going away. Oil is not going away. But rather than feel defeated, I want to center down on ways that the car is a positive threat to each of us. And to rev up my advocacy for car-free living areas where work, play and recreation in every sense are all integrated. I do not think we have begun to think this through.

Christopher Alexander Has The Right Approach to The Car

Pattern Language Posts on Automobiles

More on Pattern Language:

See the brief at Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language

Summaries of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language with reference to the Obama Agenda

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four,, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen

Finding Christopher Alexander — Why He Matters

Inner Directed Design — A Nod To Christopher Alexander http://ow.ly/lkUS

SALIENT QUOTE:

Christopher Alexander ends by saying,

“Do not be tricked into believing that modern décor must be slick or psychedelic, or “natural” or “modern art” or “plants” or anything else that current taste-makers claim. It is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life – the things you care for, the things that tell your story.”

How to Fix the U.S. Auto Industry

A comment posted here:

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

This would make sense if the underlying premise was correct.. The idea that we can continue — under a greenish umbrella — as we have in the past is a fallacy.

The massive success of the clunker program is an eerie indication that truth is not getting through.

Our recession will only recur if we do not move from 0ur concept of metrosprawl to the creation of human settlements based on principles articulated by Christopher Alexander in A Pattern Language.

See http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/

Settlements dense enough to enable flourishing businesses, car-free enough to get pre-diabetics back on their feet.

The era of a growth (sic) economy is over. Henceforth growth needs to be measured by increases in the value of services to human beings in the form of enhanced living options, expanding educational opportunities and a move away from a culture of celebritization and conspicuous consumption.

Much of the logic of what we need was articulated by Thorstein Veblen a century ago.

See http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/2006/09/24/thorstein-veblen-on-the-web/

It is appealing to think we can market our way to renewed prosperity. Sadly our prosperity for many decades has been built on the elements like the acceptance of a legal and extralegal pharmaculture, the growth of a prison industrial complex, and a callous disregard for elementary education.

The answer is still blowing in the wind.

More on Pattern Language:

See the brief at http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/ and then read in sequence:

Part OnePart TwoPart ThreePart Four,, Part FivePart SixPart SevenPart EightPart NinePart TenPart ElevenPart TwelvePart ThirteenPart Fourteen

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