There have been many attempts to clarify the design
A Theory of Architecture Part 1: Pattern process, yet we still dont have a design method that can be used by students and Language vs. Form Language novices to achieve practical, meaningful, nourishing, human results. 00:00 - 23 March, 2014 by Nikos Salingaros In the absence of a design method and accompanying criteria for judging a design, Bookmarked things have become very subjective, and therefore what is built today appears to be influenced largely by fashion, forced tastes, and an individuals desire to garner Li attention through novel and sometimes shocking expressions. 8 ke This Chapter puts forward a theory of architecture and urbanism based on two distinct 7 2 languages: the pattern language, and the form language. The pattern language codifies the interaction of human beings with their environment, and determines how and where we naturally prefer to walk, sit, sleep, enter and move through a building, enjoy a room or open space, and feel at ease or not in our garden. The pattern language is a set of inherited tried-and-true solutions that optimize how the Bookmark this picture! built environment promotes human life and sense of wellbeing. It combines geometry and social behavior patterns into a set of useful relationships, summarizing how built form can accommodate human activities. The importance of a pattern language for architecture was originally proposed by Christopher Alexander and his associates. A fairly general pattern language was discovered and presented by Alexander, who emphasized that, while many if not most of the patterns in his pattern language are indeed universal, there actually exist an infinite number of individual patterns that can be included in a pattern language. Each pattern language reflects different modes of life, customs, and behavior, and is appropriate to specific climates, geographies, cultures, and traditions. It is up to the designer/architect to extract specific non-universal patterns as needed, by examining the ways of life and tradition in a particular setting, and then to apply them to that Galleria di Diana in Venaria Royal Palace, an example of Classical architecture. The Classical Language is an situation. example of an "extremely successful form language". Image Courtesy of shutterstock.com Living architecture is highly dependent on patterns, which shape buildings and spaces accordingly. A pattern is a set of relationships, which can be realized using different As you may have seen, ArchDaily has been publishing UNIFIED ARCHITECTURAL materials and geometries. Architects, however, confuse patterns with their THEORY, by the urbanist and controversial theorist Nikos A. Salingaros, in serial form. representation, i.e., what an arrangement looks like. Patterns are not material, though However, in order to explain certain concepts in greater detail, we have decided to we experience them with our senses. It is far more difficult to understand them pause this serialization and publish three excerpts from another of Salingaros books: A intellectually, and almost impossible to grasp patterns from within a world-view that THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE. The following excerpt, the first, explains the terms focuses exclusively on materials. Pattern Language (as well asantipatterns") and Form Language. A pattern language for work environments can be put together by examining the Design in architecture and urbanism is guided by two distinct complementary components of successful emotionally-comfortable work environments from different languages: a pattern language, and a form language. cultures and periods around the world. A software developer today has many The pattern language contains rules for how human beings interact with built forms requirements in common with a distant ancestor looking for a comfortable place to sit a pattern language codifies practical solutions developed over millennia, which are and carve a bone or paint a piece of pottery. Being able to work in an emotionally- appropriate to local customs, society, and climate. supportive environment boosts morale and productivity, and cuts down on workplace A form language, on the other hand, consists of geometrical rules for putting matter errors. together. It is visual and tectonic, traditionally arising from available materials and their For several decades, however, architects and interior designers have insisted on human uses rather than from images. Different form languages correspond to different applying formal design rules to office environments. Such rules tend to give a standard architectural traditions, or styles. The problem is that not all form languages are compromise that satisfies almost none of the fundamental requirements for a good adaptive to human sensibilities. Those that are not adaptive can never connect to a working environment. Their occupants usually characterize them as ranging from sterile pattern language. Every adaptive design method combines a pattern language with a to oppressive. Here is a fundamental disconnect between what architects imagine office viable form language, otherwise it inevitably creates alien environments. space should look like, and the characteristics of the kind of space that users actually Architectural design is a highly complex undertaking. Heretofore, the processes at its require to be productive in. In the theory of pattern languages actually developed more extensively in computer it can be connected to a form language and thus define an adaptive design method. architecture than in buildings architecture the concept of antipattern plays a central It is imperative not to be fooled by a collection of antipatterns, otherwise our resulting role. An antipattern shows how to do the opposite of the required solution. An design process will be non-adaptive, even though this may not be known at the ineffective solution is often repeated because the same forces that gave rise to it in the beginning of the process. We will eventually see it in the non-adaptivity of the results, at first place recur in other similar situations. Assuming that the futility and which time it will be too late to do anything about it (i.e., after an unnatural city such as counterproductive nature of such a solution is evident (which is not always the case), its EUR, Milton Keynes, or la Dfense has been built). occurrence can be studied to see what went wrong. Antipatterns do not comprise a pattern language, just as a collection of mistakes do not comprise a coherent body of knowledge. It is therefore not appropriate to talk of a language of antipatterns, but simply a collection of antipatterns. Nevertheless, antipatterns could (and often do) substitute for, and displace a genuine pattern language, with very negative consequences. Documenting an antipattern can save future designs from the same mistakes by identifying a problematic solution before it is adopted. However, knowing the antipattern does not automatically indicate the pattern, since the solution space is not one- dimensional. Doing the opposite of the antipattern will not give the pattern, precisely because there can be many different opposites going out in many different directions in the solution space. Pattern languages have evolved, and, as with all evolved systems, they have developed an extraordinary degree of organized complexity. It is not possible to understand all this complexity, let alone replace it by a design method based on deliberately simplified rules. And yet, that has been the basic assumption of twentieth-century architects: that we can simply replace all the evolved architectural solutions of the past with a few rules that someone has made up (and which dont even have the benefit of experimental verification). The form language, on the other hand, is strictly geometrical. It is defined by the elements of form as constituted by the floors, the walls, the ceiling, the partitions, and all the architectural components or articulations, which together represent a particular form and style of building.A form language is a repertoire of forms and surface elements that can be combined to build any building, and so it represents more than just a superficial style. The form language depends on an inherited vocabulary of all the components used in the assembly of a building; rules for how they can be combined; and how different levels of scale can arise from the smaller components. It is a particular and practical conception of tectonic and surface geometry. One extremely successful form language, the Classical Language, relies on a wide range of variations of the Classical style of building based on Greco-Roman ancestry. After centuries of Classical buildings, even with varied and successful adaptations to local climates, conditions, and uses, the Classical form language remains intact. Every traditional architecture has its own form language. It has evolved from many different influences of lifestyle, traditions, and practical concerns acting together to define the geometry that structures take as the most natural visual expressions of a particular culture. A form language is a set of evolved geometries on many different scales (i.e., ornamental, building, urban) that people of a particular culture identify with, and are comfortable with. It is highly dependent on traditional and local materials at least that was the case before the global introduction of nonspecific industrial materials. My present aim is to be able to discern whether a pattern language is genuine, so that Pattern Language and Form Language. The following excerpt will establish how A Theory of Architecture Part 2: The Adaptive these languages can combine to form the Adaptive Design Method. Design Method Proposition: An adaptive design method arises out of a complementary pair 00:00 - 30 March, 2014 by Nikos Salingaros consisting of a pattern language and a form language. Bookmarked I have indicated very briefly what a pattern language and a form language are; we still need to understand what an adaptive design method refers to. Out of many Li ke 9 contemporary approaches to design, there are very few that result in structures and 4 environments that are adapted both to physical human use, as well as to human sensibilities. In the past, the opposite was true. Human use is straightforward to understand: the physical dimensions and geometry have to accommodate the human body and its movement. By accommodating human sensibilities, I mean that environments should make human Bookmark this picture! beings feel at ease; make them feel psychologically comfortable so that persons can carry out whatever functions they have to unselfconsciously, without being disturbed by the built environment in any way. This imposes a strong constraint on the design process to adapt to the many factors (both known and unknown) that will influence the user on many levels, including emotion. An adaptive design method should accommodate all these criteria, and this Chapter shows how this may be accomplished. A major source of confusion is that a design method could adapt to a style, but not to human use and sense of wellbeing. For example, it might adapt to (conform to) a set of predetermined geometrical prototypes, such as cubes and rectangular slabs. It takes on that particular form language. Minimalist modernism has a clearly-defined geometrical goal; i.e., its peculiar crystalline form language. It is successful on its own terms while at the same time ignoring, or not trying to accommodate, human patterns of use and the sensory response to built form and surface. This is the reason why minimalist modernism is incompatible with Alexanders Pattern Language. In this Chapter, I will use the term adaptive to refer strictly to fitting the built environment to human beings, and not to abstract ideas or geometries. Since there exist an infinite number of patterns that can contribute to a pattern language, and an infinite number of form languages, there are of course an infinite number of adaptive design methods that combine two languages. Each adaptive design method is unique. The crucial point is that there are also an infinite number of design methods that act against adaptive design by producing structures which are not suitable to human needs. In the absence of an accepted term for design that ignores human needs, I will call such actions non-adaptive design. Post-industrial design is not fundamentally adaptive. Its form language (or rather, set of Image of Torre David in Venezuela, an unfinished skyscraper that has become a (modified/adapted) slum related form languages) produces structures that are often hostile to human settlement. "The human need to make a building adapt through form, surface, and ornament is innate. Everyday people who own and build their own homes definitely apply a pattern language (albeit unknowingly) sensibilities. Studies by environmental psychologists have confirmed physiological because they want their dwellings to be as comfortable as possible. Here we have an adaptive design reactions such as the onset of anxiety and signals of body stress in such environments. method, which, were it not for the miserable conditions of life represented by the overcrowded slums of the I want to look for systemic causes of this non-adaptivity. For reasons already discussed world, is an excellent example for architecture schools to study". Image Iwan Baan in Chapter 6, minimalism effectively precludes the use of patterns, both visual and Alexandrine patterns. That means that patterns of human activity cannot be As you may have seen, ArchDaily has been publishingUNIFIED ARCHITECTURAL accommodated within its design canon, thus characterizing it as non-adaptive. To THEORY, by the urbanist and controversial theorist Nikos A. Salingaros, in serial form. proudly proclaim such a design method as functional is a mockery of the term, but it is However, in order to explain certain concepts in greater detail, we have decided to admittedly a remarkably effective propaganda ploy that helps in its proliferation. pause this serialization and publish three excerpts from another of Salingaros books: A Architectural form languages survive because they often acquire non-architectural THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE. The previous excerpt explained the difference between meaning, after which they can ignore the need to be adaptive to human needs. In that case, a form language is no longer part of an adaptive design method; it becomes split in these cases, but the geometry is not (sending a mixed message of attractive from its complementary pattern language. Instead of expressing an adaptive tectonic materials in a hostile setting). Another failed example is found in recent traditional- culture, the form language becomes a set of visual symbols that operate under the looking mansions isolated in American suburbia. They use a form language (that guise of moral principles (and thus become emotionally loaded). Using that form happens to be irrelevant to the site) but no urban pattern language, so those buildings language then becomes an end in itself, detached from human life. This architecture remain disconnected. They have a great image, but no functionality on the urban scale. has little to do with buildings that accommodate human beings, or with tectonics, but is a It is only the correct pairing of pattern language with form language that results in an statement using a formal visual vocabulary. Such an architecture has its own purpose, adaptive design. disguised with moral precepts that together define a completely different world-view for The architecture of squatter settlements is an interesting case of genuinely adaptive those who accept them. application. Those slum dwellers use a form language that is determined by available An adaptive design method requires the union of a pattern language with a form scrap materials to build their own houses. Residents are preoccupied with basic language. If either the pattern language or the form language is flawed, then the design survival, and have no wish to copy elements of a form language that was generated method will fail to create adaptive structures. For example, high-rise towers set in vast outside their immediate circumstances. There are simply no resources available to open spaces satisfy neither a viable form language nor a pattern language they are make an architectural statement, although ornament and surface decoration appear on iconic design failures that get repeated because architects make a lot of money building the most modest structures because they are felt to be essential. The human need to them. One may claim to employ a pattern language together with a primitive form make a building adapt through form, surface, and ornament is innate. Everyday people language to create structures barely suitable for human habitation and use, such as who own and build their own homes definitely apply a pattern language (albeit contemporary buildings that try to use Alexandrine patterns. Those buildings may unknowingly) because they want their dwellings to be as comfortable as possible. Here partially satisfy some functional patterns, but the more they stick exclusively to a we have an adaptive design method, which, were it not for the miserable conditions of minimalist or high-tech form language, they more they will feel dead and alienating, so life represented by the overcrowded slums of the world, is an excellent example for that their users are uncomfortable. architecture schools to study. Bookmark this picture! As the above examples make clear, an adaptive design method provides the means of creation, but not the product. It gives one the framework and tools for creative expression. It still requires a talented architect or sensitive non-architect to use the language to design a building. Working with a complete, richly-expressive language makes that task immeasurably easier. Great architects can use an existing form language in an innovative manner to create new architectural expressions, or they can Nikos Salingaros invent their own form language. (A pattern language, however, cannot be invented: it has to be discovered). A primitive form language severely reduces architectural Two instances of partial success come to mind. In the mixed example of central Tel expression. With a flawed form language, new or old, even the greatest architect has Aviv, an early modernist form language is tied to a traditional European urban pattern trouble making something useful and adaptive. language, as laid out by Sir Patrick Geddes, with successful results. The buildings do not connect so much on an architectural scale, yet they do connect well on the urban scale to create a lively environment. Other illustrative examples with mixed success include dwellings built by alternative counterculture architects soon after the Pattern Language appeared. They satisfy all the patterns, but they look somewhat chaotic and unbalanced far from satisfying Alexanders original intent of ordered geometrical coherence. The reason is that their builders had no form language to draw upon. These buildings were built within a culture that did not wish to refer to any tradition, and did not have the capacity to create a new form language (the multicolored psychedelic art of that culture was never applied to architecture in a way that would help the geometry). In the opposite instance, one can use antipatterns together with a form language to damage both built and natural environments. Twentieth-century buildings were built using a distorted version of the Classical form language that are inhuman either because of scale, megalomania, or the desire to intimidate. They may look nice from a distance, but are hostile in actual use. This is a characteristic of Fascist architecture. Some modernist architects were also very fond of employing parts of a form language of rich, detailed materials, but to intentionally create alien forms. The surfaces are adaptive human thought sets a rather high threshold for the complexity that any language has to A Theory of Architecture Part 3: Why Primitive be able to express through combinatoric groupings. Form Languages Spread Turning now to architecture, a viable form language is also characterized by its high 00:00 - 6 April, 2014 by Nikos Salingaros degree of internal complexity. Furthermore, the complexity of different form languages Bookmarked has to be comparable, because each form language shares a commonality with other form languages on a general meta-linguistic level. A primitive form language severely Li limits architectonic expression to crude or inarticulate statements. 4 ke So, while each form language may be distinct in its components, it is not really a 1 8 complete form language unless it possesses a complex internal structure. The exact details of this structure must necessarily parallel the internal structure of any other fully- developed language, and in particular, that of a pattern language. Roughly, these properties can be described as combinatorial, connective, and hierarchical features, which we see in our own written and spoken language. Bookmark this picture! A form language that adapts to human beings contains and codifies certain very specific geometrical properties such as fractal structure, connectivity, coherence, and scaling (as discussed in the previous Chapters of this book). Again, a form language that does not contain these mathematical properties is a primitive form language, or non-language, because it is too sparse to define a rich language of forms. There exists a range of form languages, from non-languages, to primitive form languages, increasing in complexity of combinatoric expression up to genuine form languages. This argument is borne out by the enormous number of distinct form languages developed independently by different peoples around the world. It is reasonable to claim that for each spoken language, there is also a form language that those people use to build and to shape their environment. The means of verbal expression and accumulated "the architectural establishment continues to ignore indigenous building cultures and the human value of what culture defining a literary tradition has a parallel in an ornamental tradition and material they represent. For example, traditional building and urban geometry in sub-Saharan Africa is now revealed to culture, which includes a form language that is an expression of inventiveness in be essentially fractal, thus revising our customary (and totally erroneous) conception of those cultures as geometry and tectonics. Each traditional form language is distinct, yet possesses a mathematically under-developed." Image of El Molo Hut, Lake Turkana, Kenya.. Image Courtesy of shutterstock.com comparably high degree of organized complexity in terms of visual vocabulary and combinatoric possibilities. Erasing a form language erases the culture that created it. It As you may have seen, ArchDaily has been publishingUNIFIED ARCHITECTURAL is no different than erasing a cultures literature, or its musical heritage. THEORY, by the urbanist and controversial theorist Nikos A. Salingaros, in serial form. It is only in recent years that the mathematical sophistication of traditional form However, in order to explain certain concepts in greater detail, we have decided to languages has begun to be documented. Mathematicians and ethnologists are doing pause this serialization and publish three excerpts from another of Salingaros books: A this work, while the architectural establishment continues to ignore indigenous building THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE.The first excerpt explained the difference between cultures and the human value of what they represent. For example, traditional building Pattern Language and Form Language, while the second established how these and urban geometry in sub-Saharan Africa is now revealed to be essentially fractal, thus languages can combine to form the Adaptive Design Method. The following, final, revising our customary (and totally erroneous) conception of those cultures as excerpt distinguishes between viable, complex form languages that have evolved over mathematically under-developed fractals were re-discovered in the West only very time and primitive, non-languages that have come to dominate the 20th century due to recently. Loosely (and deprecatingly) classed together as vernacular architectures, this their iconic simplicity (and despite their non-adaptive characteristics). vast body of diverse and complex styles, geometries, and ways of understanding space Independently of their technological achievements, all groups of human beings have and structure shames the poverty of contemporary architectural styles. Traditional form developed a richly complex spoken language. Differences arise in specificities, in the languages are rich, complete, and technically (not industrially) advanced. In terms of breadth of vocabulary for concepts important to that culture, and in their transition to a richness and underlying substance, which are crucially important to life, contemporary written language, but those do not affect the general richness of the language. Every form languages promoted by the Western architectural design magazines would seem languages internal structure has to obey general principles that are common to all to represent an evolutionary regression. languages. A primitive language or non-language, by contrast, is characterized by the Separate from preserving traditional form languages for their informational and cultural reduction or absence of such internal complexity and structure. The complexity of value, the inevitable evolution of form languages makes possible entirely innovative architectural expressions. Such an evolution is possible only if a form language retains the high level of its internal complexity. Traditional form languages around the world transformed from a medium for transmitting commercial information to an instrument of were dismissed as primitive by Western colonial and economic powers, and were social change and control. Its first target was cultural traditions that blocked the replaced by variants of Neo-Classical or Beaux-Arts form languages. Cultural consumption of inferior new industrial products. These inhibitions were overcome by colonialism in architecture comes about by destroying languages that are thousands of making individuals ashamed of their instinctive preferences, labeling them as years old, as an affirmation of superiority and power. backward, and thereby opening up the public to market influence. Thus, form The linguistic analogy makes it difficult to understand why a primitive form language languages that threatened the supremacy of the post-industrial aesthetic of glass, steel, would ever survive, let alone dominate another more evolved form language. Why and concrete slabs were stigmatized by the architectural critics. This style based on a maintain a system in use that severely limits ones expression? The reason we do this is specific industrial look could not be sold to the world until traditional form languages that every form language has extra-linguistic attributes that help in its proliferation. Once were eliminated. The way the built environment looked anywhere in the world would invented, the limited visual vocabulary of a primitive form language may be copied henceforth be controlled by the advertising media; all traditional form languages unthinkingly by more and more persons. Unlike a true language, which survives through condemned to extinction in the interest of Western industrial and ideological dominance. its linguistic utility, a form language can survive strictly through its iconic properties (and not its linguistic ones). Indeed, constant repetition through visual copying is the key to its transmission, promotion, and acceptance by an increasing number of architects. We know of biological entities that split from more complex organisms so as to propagate freely and with enormous success: they are the viruses. Because of its nature, the virus can exist in an inert, easily-transmittable form such as a powder. This is possible because a virus is a biologically simple structure with very low informational overhead. In the propagation of architectural images, the media play a key role, showing and praising carefully selected structures and urban projects (and ignoring everything else). Our architectural schools and press have also done a very effective job of promoting primitive form languages while unwittingly suppressing true form languages. Familiarity makes people overlook a form languages linguistic deficiencies. Someone who has been raised in the twentieth century and has been taught through association that beautiful objects have no hierarchical organization will then apply this rule subconsciously to design a building or a city. Even though people might find such environments intellectually acceptable, they can never overcome the negative sensations that such an architecture brings into play. Why did this occur only at the beginning of the twentieth century and not before? I believe that it had to do with radical social changes spurred by population pressure and political oppression so that for the first time, many people saw a chance of radical social improvement through technology. They were willing to sacrifice adaptive design in exchange for the (false) promise of a better future offered by industrialization. Prior to that, people on all socioeconomic levels shaped their environment as far as they could to provide physical comfort and emotional wellbeing. Another contributing factor was the creation of a new communications network formed by the convergence of telephone, telegraph, newspapers, magazines, and film. The new media tied the world together as never before, yet also made possible the rapid proliferation of advertising and political propaganda. The spread of modernism, combining visually simple images with the promise of a new utopian world, could never have occurred were it not for the new media. Advertising created the desire for industrial products that we didnt really need. Just as in the case of internet computer viruses, which could not exist before the internet, primitive architectural form languages could spread only through the first architectural picture magazines. At the same time, advertising favors the transmission of simplistic messages, slogans, images, and ideas. As a result of its tremendous power to shape peoples minds, advertising quickly