Places that show Patterns

[Eliezer Israel]

I need a bit of help from the community here:

I'm looking for places that show patterns.  In particular, I'm interested in places that show more than one pattern. 

I'm starting with a subset of patterns.  So far, I have this subset, but I'm open to adding up to another 10 or so.  Let me know what your favorites are: 

Site Repair

Common Areas at the Heart

Arcades

Alcoves

Old People Everywhere

Gradient of Intimacy

Window Place

Work Community

Building Complex

Structure follows Social Spaces

Indoor Sunlight

So - please send along places that are good examples of patterns - images, location, name (if apropros), and any credit due.

If there's anyone else who you feel should be involved in the conversation - direct them to http://groups.google.com/group/pattern-repository-user.  This is an open group.  

(You can see who else is here in the same place.)

Thank you all for your help along the way - I hope to have something interesting to show you in the next week or so.

[Michael Mehaffy]

Lev,

Just about any good place will likely have multiple patterns from the book - and thousands of other patterns too.  (I could give you some from my apartment here -- light on two sides, etc.)

But what you describe sounds like a direction I have been heading... I have been working on creating "place patterns," in effect master patterns, calibrated to a particular place.  Then a language is created around that master pattern and its sub-patterns -- which are still entirely linkable to other outside patterns, but coordinated more completely within this working language.  

This addresses a criticism of patterns that Chris himself has made, that they're not specific enough.

You can see an example I did in a pilot project with my students at ASU -- and note that the sub-patterns were NOT just spatial patterns, but also process tools, economic tools, and other kinds of patterns.  I think this is an important frontier to work on.  (Maybe later! But you might want to look now and think about it...)

http://mehaffy.posterous.com/unlocking-development-potential-on-the-phoeni-63169

Cheers, m

--
Michael Mehaffy

Structura Naturalis Inc.

742 SW Vista Ave., #42

Portland, OR 97205

(503) 250-4449
www.tectics.com

[Theo Armour]

Michael

 

>> Unlocking Development Potential…

 

Yummy!

 

It even has the three dots. Yay!

What is the license on the document?  Can we morph it completely or just Fair Use it?

 

Thank you for sharing this…

 

Theo

[Michael Mehaffy]

Thanks Theo - actually I haven't looked into that - I should have!  I would think that attribution only would be fine - just for the students.  Anyway, we can ask for forgiveness rather than permission, I think. 

Cheers, m

[Eliezer Israel]

Maybe I should ask this as a question, firstly.

I'm picturing (and building) a website where people (practitioners, lay folk) can present, collaborate on, and reference patterns of building.  

I had thought (assumed?) that having examples - actually places - connected to the patterns would be a key piece of this. 

Am I on target here? 

Trying to interpret the relative silence. 

[Eliezer Israel]

Perhaps a different angle on the question as well - this inspired by one of Theo's comments on the development list.

If we're connecting a pattern and place - what would you want to say about that connection?  It could be as simple as 'this place implements this pattern' or it could get more nuance - how well? in what way? with what variation?  what adaption to context?  

Putting the question simply:

If we include places, should we have just a place-to-pattern connection, or add these levels of nuance?

[Bob Theis]

Lev, 

Having examples is essential to communicating how patterns work, and the only reason I'm not shipping you examples is that I'm over my eyeballs getting another group project in gear. 

The whole point of a pattern language is that it is not recipes to follow, but useful insights and possible  responses to a given context, but it doesn't seem necessary to get nuanced about that connection. Not yet anyway. 

' This context has this pattern. '  seems connection enough for now. 

Bob

[Michael Mehaffy]

Yes, and the photos of specific examples communicate a lot of contextual and tacit information -- the "ambiguity" that is essential to any network structure, and any useful linguistic model of the world -- which is what APL is, ultimately.

(The authors of APL said the photos were surprisingly important -- maybe especially for the built environment, where things could get unwieldy and complex too quickly otherwise.

When the user applies it to their specific context, that is when the "recipe" part can kick in -- what Chris has referred to as "sequences."  But they are either not patterns, or (as I am looking into) a special class of pattern that has to be kept distinct from the others.  Specifically, patterns of process...  (This is the idea of "place patterns" - will see how it goes...)

Cheers, m