Pattern language

Today Joke Robaard (a colleague artist) asked me if I planned to put this book from Christopher Alexander in my suitcase.

It’s new to me, but sounds very interesting. I haven’t packed yet, so maybe to take with me together with ….. (max 23 kg!)

In a series of books published between 1964 and 1987 Christopher Alexander, an urban planner and architect, has inspired object oriented programmers with his idea of a pattern language, which originally catalogued solutions to common problems faced by any community or individual creating livable structures such as a town or a house. His approach might also help technical communicators polish and perfect our own standard rhetorical structures (such as the procedure, user guide, or reference), viewed as common ways of answering frequent, if virtual questions from our users. Alexander’s way of describing age-old patterns such as neighbourhoods, streets, paths, and homes may give us a model for creating our own set of patterns in technical communication, whether or not we adopt some of the eager elaborations offered by folks in the object oriented design world.