Skip to content

Every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there.... These patterns of events are locked in with certain geometric patterns in the space. Indeed, each building and each town is ultimately made out of these patterns in the space, and out of nothing else; they [patterns in the space] are the atoms and molecules from which a building or a town is made.

— Christopher Alexander The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Cited in: Peter Coad (1992) "Object-oriented patterns." Communications of the ACM 35.9. p. 152
Work: The Timeless Way of Building, 1979
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Christopher Alexander

...every pattern we define must be formulated in the form of a rule which establishes a relationship between a context, a system of forces which arises in that context, and a configuration which allows these forces to resolve themselves in that context.

The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

All Christopher Alexander quotes →

More quotes by Christopher Alexander

Nothing which is not simple and direct can survive the slow transmision from person to person.

The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions. When it is at war with itself, and gives rise to forces which act to tear it down, it is unwhole. The more free it is of its own inner contradictions, the more whole and healthy and wholehearted it becomes.

The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

In my life as an architect, I found that the single thing which inhibits young professionals, new students most severely, is their acceptance of standards that are too low.

One begins to think with that new building block, rather than with littler pieces. And finally, the things which seem like elements dissolve, and leave a fabric of relationships behind, which is the stuff that actually repeats itself, and gives the structure to a building or a town.

The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

When we know those moments, when we smile, when we let go, when we are not on guard at all – these are the moments when our most important forces show themselves; whatever you are doing at such a moment, hold on to it, repeat it – for that certain smile is the best knowledge that we ever have of what our hidden forces are, and where they lie, and how they can be loosed.

The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

All Christopher Alexander quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Christopher Alexander (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.