{"id":3231,"date":"2015-05-06T13:34:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T18:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=3231"},"modified":"2015-05-07T16:02:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T21:02:38","slug":"whats-pattern-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/whats-pattern-language\/","title":{"rendered":"So What’s Pattern Language? Mining design patterns from nature."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This is a good introductory description, excerpted from an email, w\/ a little edit. \u00a0The abstract and link are for a paper on “Guiding Patterns of Natural Design:Mining Living Quality” for an\u00a0upcoming Pattern Language of Programming conference. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Alexander’s 15 Principle Elements\u00a0of Wholeness – adaptation by TKWA archt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Oh, it’s sort of magic..<\/h3>\n

the hope of course:<\/p>\n

is that this emergence of a sound new way to communicate “wholeness in design”
\nleads to the world ‘transformation to living design’ everyone<\/em><\/span> is so eagerly awaiting…<\/p>\n

Pattern language is a new way of communicating design concepts, created by Christopher Alexander, an architect whose ideas came out of the same 60’s\/70’s architecture community as mine did, only starting a decade earlier, and he became a wonderful architectural\u00a0design teacher.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, his idea for how to ‘encode’ principles of ‘wholeness’ for\u00a0architectural design elements was fairly successful, resulting in\u00a0a series of books beginning with “A Pattern Language” in 1977, and experiments in urban design as recorded in “A New Theory of Urban Design” 1987, and in attracting a significant\u00a0following.Then his methodology for defining ‘design<\/span> patterns<\/span><\/strong>‘ did the magical thing… of being picked up and translated for use in other fields, a real technology transfer, actually representing\u00a0the encoding of a set of\u00a0rather ancient and wonderful architectural design principles, for other uses, i.e. “real<\/span> magic<\/span><\/strong>“!\u00a0 Where it had an amazing impact was on computer programming, becoming the basis of “object oriented design<\/strong><\/span>“, as a way of letting programmers communicate and understand their own design objectives, for both the wholes and parts of their programs.\u00a0\u00a0 Till the late 80’s when this new approach to defining design purposes took hold, programmers really had no good way to define the ‘parts<\/strong><\/span>‘ of computer programs, or how they needed to work together to make a ‘whole<\/strong><\/span>‘.<\/p>\n

So having a way to define “working units of desig<\/span>n<\/strong>” seems to me at least to be a big part of why modern programming became so successful, like maybe the other real secret behind the communication power of the internet other than micro-chips. \u00a0Pattern language lets programmers break computer programs into intelligible workable parts, representing real whole purposes and intentions. \u00a0 It was Alexander’s\u00a0loving way of describing the pieces of designs that did that, understanding and portraying design as a search for “living quality<\/strong><\/span>“. \u00a0 And it\u00a0caught on.\u00a0 It provides a model for describing<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. versatile solutions for common problems<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. as a balance of the forces they resolve<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Of course, one of the “forces<\/strong><\/span>” is whether we are creating a “living world<\/strong><\/span>” or an “inhuman world<\/strong><\/span>“, and whether the designs we make can become\u00a0at home in our\u00a0environment, to bring\u00a0us and the earth living quality, or not. \u00a0That was the issue he was obsessed with from the start.\u00a0 So, like I said, a sign of magic.<\/p>\n

    What’s more of course, is that his method of defining “design patterns” and my pattern science for understanding “natural systems” are awfully close cousins. \u00a0You might say they’re much the same thing in several ways, except his focus was on the patterns of\u00a0wholeness for purposeful\u00a0design and my focus was on patterns of wholeness in naturally occurring designs. \u00a0His “search model” for design patterns was “living quality” and mine was for “what makes life lively”, asked as a physicist who happened to have an education in design too. \u00a0 \u00a0So when I was introduced to his work as it had later matured (I really wasn’t “in the loop” or didn’t “get it” before) and\u00a0I\u00a0saw how it was being used by non-architects, I finally recognized\u00a0the connection and now have lots to do! \u00a0 It’s such a pleasure.<\/p>\n

    The work is to begin translating between the pattern language I developed for myself for naturally occurring designs, and the one that is becoming the common approach of many professions and communities based on Alexander’s approach, and do what I can to contribute to adding to the versatility of that common approach.<\/p>\n

    ____________<\/p>\n

    Part of my approach is summarized in the following brief\u00a0for one of the papers I’m working on. \u00a0You can follow the link to\u00a0the early draft – fyi. \u00a0 \u00a0The paper discusses\u00a0some of the ways to mine deeper understanding of our intentional design patterns, \u00a0by learning how to study naturally occurring ones of similar kinds, that naturally display the organized\u00a0complexity and coherence we admire and need so much, we call by reference “living quality”.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0___________<\/p>\n

    ABSTRACT: A \u201cdesign pattern\u201d is generally understood as both a \u201csimplifying ideal\u201d for solving a problem that commonly reoccurs in various situations.\u00a0 It is then also something to refer to like a reference book, of workable design variations, linked to all the places the recurrent problem arises.\u00a0\u00a0 So, design patterns are not exactly \u2018instructions\u2019 but \u2018guides\u2019.\u00a0 We also find key design patterns in nature, as recurrent natural solutions for common\u00a0 problems. Features like “cell walls” or the “homes” \u201cnests\u201d or “dens” people and animals build, both define separations between inside and out, as well as access to the outside controlled from inside. Learning to recognize such recurrent patterns of natural design lets us look deeper into both their separate internal designs and external roles and relationships, as sources of the living qualities of natural designs. The practical examples to be discussed demonstrate how to use a model design pattern meant for one circumstance, to search for related natural design patterns in other circumstances. It\u2019s for gaining a deeper understanding of 1) the model pattern and its potential features and roles, 2) the artful complexity of natural designs , and 3) their sources of living quality. The model pattern might be called \u201cvehicle\u201d perhaps, and you might study various instances where versions of \u201cvehicle\u201d occur naturally as a life pattern, to see what they have to teach you.
    \nLink to     draft paper<\/a> for PLoP conference.<\/p>\n

    ____________<\/span><\/p>\n

    jlh<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is a good introductory description, excerpted from an email, w\/ a little edit. \u00a0The abstract and link are for a paper on “Guiding Patterns of Natural Design:Mining Living Quality” for an\u00a0upcoming Pattern Language of Programming conference. \u00a0 Oh, it’s sort of magic.. the hope of course: is that this emergence of a sound new … Continue reading So What’s Pattern Language? Mining design patterns from nature.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,35,12,13,14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-patterns","category-pattern-language","category-scitheory","category-stories","category-syn9","category-trans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3231"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3256,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231\/revisions\/3256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}