A Pattern Language

The 253 patterns that Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein drew up at Berkeley's Center for Environmental Structure cover towns, buildings and construction, each pairing a design problem with a discussion, an illustration and a solution. The patterns run from the largest scale to the smallest, from whole regions and cities through neighborhoods, gardens, buildings and rooms down to built-in furniture and doorknobs, and they refer to one another by number, so the whole works as a network. The authors treat every pattern as a hypothesis rather than a rule. Their premise is that most of the world's wonderful places were made by people, not architects, and they intend the language for ordinary people shaping homes, streets and communities.

Patrick Collison names it among the books on his Bookshelf page.