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De Re Aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), was the first modern treatise on the theory and practice of architecture. Its importance for the subsequent history of architecture is incalculable, yet this is the first English translation based on the original, exceptionally eloquent Latin text on which Alberti's reputation as a theorist is founded.

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.

Written by Jeffrey Brown AIA, Tiltwallism is designed to be an introductory resource to architects and an inspiration to contractors, developers and structural consultants who have encountered the technology of Tilt Wall construction. The vast amount of trade and technical information available on the subject is interpreted in a formal treatment for the first time on a subject at the forefront of the architectural role in an era of lowered construction costs. Brown provides a full synthetic treatment of Tilt Wall construction by laying out the design opportunities in engaging in the architectural exploration of a low technology / low cost form of construction. He explains its history, methodology, and relationship to current architectural approaches to meaning. Brown writes in a balanced style targeted at both architects and academics that will also be accessible to non-architects and allied professionals. The title is richly illustrated in an effort to be useful to the many ancillary professions such as contractors, developers, and real estate brokers who are driving this increasingly prevalent approach to “investment” architecture.