Levels of scale

[Eliezer Israel]

Classifying patterns by level of scale (assuming that a pattern could apply to more than one)

How is this for levels of scale?  

Add? Remove? Rename?

Country

Region

City

Neighborhood

House Cluster

House

Room

Object

Detail

[Eliezer Israel]

Something makes me want to add "Planet".

[Eliezer Israel]

Thinking 

"Building Cluster" and "Building" are better than "House cluster" and "house", for obvious reasons.

Wondering if there's something in between building and room - particularly for lage buildings. 

[Ward Cunningham]

Seems to assume we're doing residential, maybe even a specific kind of residential?

[Michael Mehaffy]

Ward - Good point.   It seems to me that the scale could just be relational, and implied by the links.  So a smaller scale is a lower hyperlink, a larger scale is an upper hyperlink.  

Lev, this reminds me of our discussion of ontologies.  I was suggesting that the ontology here is in effect self-organizing, not structured by the managers of the repository -- just as, say, Wikipedia is.  So again, the scale is not sorted (as it was in the book, admittedly) but arises from the relational structure.

And the really exciting frontier for me (down the road, I know) is to include other kinds of patterns in addition to spatial design configurations e.g. process patterns, economic patterns, etc...  These might be scale-free -- which implies another kind of challenge.  (Are they upper, or lower?? etc...)

As I say, one step at a time... but we might have in mind that larger goal as we walk forward...

Cheers, m

--
Michael Mehaffy

Structura Naturalis Inc.

742 SW Vista Ave., #42

Portland, OR 97205

(503) 250-4449
www.tectics.com

[Theo Armour]

Lev:

 

What is it they say about patterns?

 

Is it "There's nothing certain about patterns but death and taxonomies"?

 

For example: On Tuesdays, I would like to gather my patterns according to the principles of Feng Shui, on Wednesdays I think using the Library of Congress Catalog is appropriate whereas on Friday let's have a go with Building Information Management (BIM).

 

The issue with classifying things is that failure is ubiquitous.

 

There's always another better way.

 

OK, so let's embrace failure. [very in with SF VCs.]

 

Camus says Sisyphus can be happy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

 

All you need to do is supply me with some ready-made taxonomies and the ability to write my owntologies

 

Give us switchable taxonomies,   [ << by being able to change the left menu in your demo.]

 

And we can all fail blissfully…

 

Theo

[Eliezer Israel]

Looking to the user experience is what drove me to focus on scale.  The scope of material here is quite wide, but the interest of any given user is likely more narrow. 

Practically focused, they're interested in one place.  If they're a home owner, it's a house.  If they're a building owner, a building.  If they're on a city council, it's a city, etc. 

Answering this (perceived? imagined?) need, one mockup I put together started by asked "My place is ..."  http://placepatterns.org/prototype1/Place.html

In asking about scale, I'm following that idea. 

[Nikos Salingaros]

Dear all,

There are more scales as you get to smaller dimensions, so there are
intermediate ones between room, object, and detail. I have worked out
much of this with scaling laws, but the usual simple classification
misses the entire point of an increasing number of scales as their
size goes down.

Cheers,
Nikos

[Ward Cunningham]

The potential home owner has a lot to learn from urban panning level patterns, especially when choosing the part of town they'd prefer to live.

Many years ago when my now grown children were young we chose to buy a new house for our family. The area we chose was "alive" in a pattern language sense. My real estate agent suggested that I wasn't "stuck up" enough to pay the premium for a sprawling mini-mansion. I didn't bother to explain to her that I looked at space a completely different way. Thank you APL.

Best regards. -- Ward

[Eliezer Israel]

I'd like to understand this.  Can you illustrate with an example, Nikos?

Lev

[Nikos Salingaros]

Hello Eliezer,

Here is a lecture that discusses this topic, and I'll be glad to
provide further details to anyone interested. I obtained this result
with Bruce West, but another West (Geoffrey) uses it without ever
referring to our original paper.

http://math.utsa.edu/ftp/salingar.old/Universal.html

Cheers,
Nikos

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Eliezer Israel

[Yodan Rofe]

As I told Lev, I see this as important mainly to facilitate people's entry into the writing and reading of patterns - therefore the scales should be named to correspond to generally understood entities - even if they are not precise.

Yodan

--

Dr. Yodan Rofe` - Senior Lecturer
Desert Architecture and Urban Planning - J. Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sde Boqer Campus, Israel 84990
Tel. 972-8-6596884  Fax. 972-8-6596881
http://www.bgu.ac.il/CDAUP/yodan-rofe.html

[Michael Mehaffy]

Of course the original guide to pattern taxonomy is provided already by Towns, Buildings, Construction.  Each of these could be subdivided into smaller groups (of three, if we want to be neat about it) - say

Towns:  1) Town and Country, 2) Urban Center, 3) Small Town

Buildings:  1) Institutional/Commercial,  2) Housing,  3) Pavilions/Other

Construction: 1) Landscape, 2) Building Exteriors, 3) Building Interiors

And so on...

But there will inevitably be patterns that straddle.  For example, here in the Pacific Northwest we have a regional pattern "Dark Rich Colors."  It goes something like this:   "People often assume that in the cool, overcast Northwest, bright pastel colors will compensate the best and create a cheerier atmosphere.  In fact, the result is that such colors look dingy and depressing.  Rich dark colors actually create the warmest and most pleasant surroundings in this climate."

But as you can readily appreciate, this pattern will straddle many outdoor scales (though not into indoor ones). 

So I think we can accept that, and just peg the pattern in the highest place where it will apply -- in the case of the 3x3 taxonomy above, Construction-Landscape....

Cheers, m

[Eliezer Israel]

What I've gone with, at least for round one, is to break down the scale into 8 or 10 divisions, including one odd one - 'universal' - for your case below, Michael.
When a pattern is created, the author can choose one or many scales that it falls into.

I think it's a reasonable place to start.

In general, with software systems, I anticipate many cycles of user feedback and revision.

[Michael Mehaffy]

Sounds like a good work plan.  I like the idea of trying things out and letting them evolve -- again, the "hanging folders" idea...  And as much as possible, letting the ontology self-organize too...

Cheers, m

[Ward Cunningham]

Maybe it could be user editable. 

Best regards -- Ward

Sent from my mobile

503-432-5682

[Theo Armour]

>> Maybe it could be user editable. <<< Ward

 

If the scales are "tags" in WordPress, then Ward's idea is very doable as WordPress Tags allows for any number of tags.

 

 

>> letting the ontology self-organize too <<< Michael

 

It will be easy to have several sets of tags. Looking at the statistics of the page hits will easily tell you which ontology is preferred.

 

 

***

 

Patternlanguage.com further breaks down the three major categories (Towns, Buildings, Construction) into 36 sub-categories. Here are the first ten that are used:

 

Regions instead of countries

Regional policies

Major structures which define the city

Communities and neighborhoods

Community networks

Character of local environments

Local centers

Housing

Work

Local road and path network

 

What about using something like these?

 

I note that titles – being facts – are not copyrightable. Anybody can write "Gone With The Wind."

 

A benefit of using these in some way is that these 'tags' are based on and come out of the research that produced the patterns themselves. They have been peer reviewed at least in some sense.

 

Theo

 

From: pattern-rep...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pattern-rep...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ward Cunningham
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 4:16 PM
To: pattern-rep...@googlegroups.com
Cc: pattern-rep...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Levels of scale

 

Maybe it could be user editable. 

Best regards -- Ward

[Eliezer Israel]

I like tagging/folksonomies for things like culture, climate, and geography.

I pause on loosening the reigns entirely on scale because of what is lost - the interelationsions between the scales (and, honestly, the ability to put it on a single line with two nice little 'beginning' and 'end' sliders.)