Pattern Language - Origin

Origin

Christopher Alexander, an architect and author, coined the term pattern language. He used it to refer to common problems of the design and construction of buildings and towns and how they should be solved. The solutions proposed in the book include suggestions related to how cities and towns should be structured to where windows should be placed in a room.

The framework and philosophy of the "pattern language" approach was initially popularized in the book A Pattern Language that was written by Christopher Alexander and five colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure in Berkeley, California in the late 1970s. While A Pattern Language contains 253 "patterns" from the first pattern, "Independent Regions" (the most general) to the last, "Things from Your Life", Alexander's book The Timeless Way of Building goes into more depth about the motivation and purpose of the work. The following definitions of "pattern" and "pattern language" are paraphrased from "A Pattern Language":

"A pattern is a careful description of a perennial solution to a recurring problem within a building context, describing one of the configurations that brings life to a building.

Each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use the solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice."

A pattern language is a network of patterns that call upon one another. Patterns help us remember insights and knowledge about design and can be used in combination to create solutions.

Since the original publications, thinking in terms of patterns and pattern languages has been applied to other fields, including software design, user interface design, classroom curriculum, and social change.