Try free for 30 days

  • A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

  • Center for Environmental Structure Series
  • By: Christopher Alexander
  • Narrated by: Mike Fraser
  • Length: 29 hrs and 15 mins

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction cover art

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

By: Christopher Alexander
Narrated by: Mike Fraser
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $41.73

Buy Now for $41.73

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction.

After a 10-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely". The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language.

At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession), but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people.

At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages", which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building or any part of the built environment.

"Patterns", the units of this language, are answers 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 of the patterns in this pattern language are given. Each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things, that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature and human action, as much in 500 years as they are today.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©1977 Christopher Alexander (P)2021 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC

What listeners say about A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.