The 1977 book "A Pattern Language" was a landmark in the design world, introducing a methodology that has since become remarkably widespread and effective across many fields. Among them is software, where "design patterns" have since become an industry standard. Important spinoffs include peer-to-peer collaboration technologies like wiki - the basis of Wikipedia and related innovations - as well as Agile Methodology. Yet curiously, the one field where pattern methodology has lagged most conspicuously is the one where it began, the built environment. In part, the popular appeal of the 1977 book served to "freeze" the initial set of patterns, greatly slowing further peer-to-peer development in environmental design - contrary to the original authors' stated aims. As one remedy, we present here - in one of many more hoped-for future companion volumes to the original classic book - a new collection of 80 patterns for a new era of urban challenges, including rapid urbanization, slum upgrading, sustainable urbanism, [CUT: "new"] urban technologies, and new tools and strategies to meet these and other challenges. This new collection comes as a contribution to a five-year collaboration with UN-Habitat on implementation of the "New Urban Agenda," a framework document adopted by consensus by all 193 countries of the United Nations. However, there remains an urgent need to implement its humane aspirations, using tools and strategies grounded in research evidence, but also subject to revision, addition and refinement with new findings from new collaborators. This volume aims to meet that need - together with the launch of an online companion pattern "repository", available at npl.wiki. Both initiatives were developed in collaboration with Ward Cunningham, wiki inventor, and pioneer of pattern languages of programming as well as Agile Methodology. Both are meant to expand the capacity of pattern languages in support of a hopeful new era of open-source, human-centered, life-enriching technology.

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, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-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 five hundred years as they are today.

This book presents a holistic integral sustainable design and planning method embedded in the hypothesis of biophilia, our innate connection to nature, used as a platform to chart a biophilic pattern language framework. In A Biophilic Pattern Language for Cities, the author positioned the innate human-nature connection as critical in biophilic design and sustainable city planning solutions.

Inspired by the vision and framework outlined in Christopher Alexander's classic 1977 book, A Pattern Language, Schuler presents a pattern language containing 136 patterns designed to meet these challenges. Using this approach, Schuler proposes a new model of social change that integrates theory and practice by showing how information and communication (whether face-to-face, broadcast, or Internet-based) can be used to address urgent social and environmental problems collaboratively. Each of the patterns that form the pattern language (which was developed collaboratively with nearly 100 contributors) is presented consistently; each describes a problem and its context, a discussion, and a solution. The pattern language begins with the most general patterns ("Theory") and proceeds to the most specific ("Tactics"). Each pattern is a template for research as well as action and is linked to other patterns, thus forming a single coherent whole.

What accounts for the persistence and spread of "commoning," the irrepressible desire of people to collaborate and share to meet everyday needs? How are the more successful projects governed? And why are so many people embracing the commons as a powerful strategy for building a fair, humane and Earth-respecting social order? In more than fifty original essays, Patterns of Commoning addresses these questions and probes the inner complexities of this timeless social paradigm. The book surveys some of the most notable, inspiring commons around the world, from alternative currencies and open design and manufacturing, to centuries-old community forests and co-learning commons - and dozens of others. David Bollier (www.bollier.org) is an American author, activist and independent scholar who has studied the commons for nearly twenty years. Silke Helfrich (commonsblog.wordpress.com) is a German author and independent activist of the commons who blogs at www.commonsblog.de, and cofounder of the Commons-Institut in Germany. With Michel Bauwens, Bollier and Helfrich are cofounders of the Common Strategies Group. For more information, go to the book's website, Patterns of Commoning (www.patternsofcommoning.org)

This introductory volume to Alexander's other works, A Pattern of Language and The Oregon Experiment, explains concepts fundamental to his original approaches to the theory and application of architecture.