Quotes from book
The Timeless Way of Building

Name: The Timeless Way of Building
Author: Christopher Alexander

Christopher Alexander

The Timeless Way of Building is a 1979 book by Christopher Alexander that proposes a new theory of architecture that relies on the understanding and configuration of design patterns. Although it came out later, it is essentially the introduction to A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment, providing the philosophical background to the Center for Environmental Structure series.

“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations… It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur …. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”

Christopher Alexander book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152)
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

“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 book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992) " Object-oriented patterns http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse503/04sp/readings/designpattern.pdf." Communications of the ACM 35.9. p. 152
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)