A building or a town will only be alive to the extent that it is governed by the timeless way

It is a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it

To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name

There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named

The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive

In order to define this quality in buildings and in towns, we must begin by understanding that every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there

These patterns of events are always interlocked which certain geometric patterns in the space. Indeed, as we shall see, each building and each town is ultimately made out of these patterns in the space, and out of nothing else: they are the atoms and the molecules from which a building or a town is made

The specific patters out of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked in inner conflict

The more living patterns there re in a place - a room, a building, or a town - the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name

And when a building has this fire, then it becomes part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself

To reach the quality without a name we must then build a living pattern without language as a gate

This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the seed

The people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done it for centuries, by using languages which I call pattern languages. A pattern language gives each person who uses it the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences

These pattern languages are not confined to villages and farm society. All acts of building are governed by a pattern language of some sort, and the patterns in the world are there, entirely because they are created by the pattern languages which people use

And, beyond that, it is not just the shape of towns and buildings which comes from pattern languages - it is their quality as well. Even the life and beauty of the most awe-inspiring great religious buildings came from the languages their builders used

But in our time the languages have broken down. Since they are no longer shared, the processes which keep them deep have broken down; and it is therefore virtually impossible for anybody, in our time, to make a building live

To work our way towards a shared and living language once again, we must first learn how to discover patterns which are deep, and capable of generating life

We may then gradually improve these patterns which we share, by testing them against experience: we can determine, very simply, whether these patterns make our surroundings live, or not, by recognizing how they make us feel

Once we have understood how to discover individual patterns which are alive, we may then make a language for ourselves for any building task we face. The structure of the language is created by the network of connections among individual patterns: and the language lives, or not, as a totality, to the degree these patterns form a whole

Then finally, from separate languages for different building tasks, we can create a larger structure still, a structure of structures, evolving constantly, which is the common language for a town. This is the gate

Once we have built the gate, we can pass through it to the practice of the timeless way

Now we shall begin to see in detail how the rich and complex order of a town can grow from thousands of creative acts. For once we have a common pattern language in our town, we shall all have the power to make our streets and buildings live, through our most ordinary acts. The language, like a seed, is the generic system which gives our millions of small acts the power to form a whole

Within this prcess, every individual act of building is a process which soace gets differentiated. It is not a process of addition, in which preformed parts are combined to create a whole, but a process of unfolding, like the evolution of an embryo, in which the whole precedes the parts, and actually gives birth to them, by splitting

The process of unfolding goes step by step, one pattern at a time. Each step brings just one pattern to life; and intensity of the result depends on the intensity of each one of these individual steps

From a sequence of these individual patterns, whole buildings with the character of nature will form themselves within your thoughts, as easily as sentences

In the same way, groups of people can conceive their larger public buildings, on the ground, by following a common pattern language, almost as if they had a single mind

Once the buildings are conceived like this, they can be built, directly, from a few simple marks made in the ground - again within a common language, but directly, and without the use of drawings

Next, several acts of building, each one done to repair and magnify the product of the previous acts, will slowly generate a larger and more complex whole than any single act can generate

Finally, within the framework of a common language, millions of individual acts of building with together generate a town which is alive, and whole, and unpredictable, without control. This is the slow emergence of the quality without a name, as if from nothing

And as the whole emerges, we shall see it take that ageless character which gives the timeless way its name. This character is a specific, morphological character, sharp and precise, which must come into being any time a building or a town becomes alive: it is the physical embodiment, in buildings, of the quality without a name

Indeed, this ageless character has nothing, in the end, to do with languages. The language, and the processes which stem from it, merely release the fundamental order which is native to use. They do not teach us, they only remind us of what we know already, and of what we shall discover time and time again, when we give up our ideas and opinions, and do exactly what emerges from ourselves

Chapter one. all that last stuff was from the table of contents

There is one timeless way of building

At the core of all successful acts of building and at the core of all successful processes of growth, there is one fundamental invariant feature, which is responsible for their success

This method simply frees us from all method

The more we learn to use this method, the more we find that what it does is not so much to teach us processes we did not know before, but rather opens up a process in us, which was part of us already

We are crippled by our fears

We must first go through the discipline which teaches us to let go of our fears

The power to make buildings beautiful lies in each of us already

Like every living process, it is a process which builds order out of nothing

We have so far beset ourselves with rules, and concepts, and ideas of what must be done to make a building or a town alive, that we have become afraid of what will happen naturally, and convinced that we must work within a "system" and with "methods" since without them our surroundings will come tumbling down in chaos

In a world which is healthy, whole, alive, and self-maintaining, people themselves can be alive, and self-creating

It is never twice the same, because it always takes its shape from the particular place in which it occurs

A system has this quality when it is at one with itself; it lacks it when it is divided

Most men are not fully true to their own inner natures or fully "real". In fact, for many people, the effort to become true to themselves is the central problem of life. When you meet a person who is true to himself, you feel at once that he is "more real" than other people are

A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradications

Really like it for yourself

It is perfectly possible to make a thing which has the quality which has no name, and still let it reflect your personality

The quality without a name: "alive," "whole," "comfortable," "free," "exact," "egoless," "eternal"

The search which we make for this quality, in our lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive

In our lives, this quality without a name is the most precious thing we ever have

This wild freedom, this passion, comes into our lives in the instant we let go

It is when all our foces can move freely in us

We ourselves are, like our works, the products of our own creation

We are only free, and have the quality without a name in us, when we give up the images which guide our lives

Our letting go is stifled, all the time, so long as we have ideas and opinions about ourselves, which make us hug too tightly to our images of how to live, and bottle up these forces

Until one does let go, it is impossible to be alive

Each of us lives most fully "on the wire", in the face of death, daring to do the very thing which fear prevents us from

Nothing to keep, nothing to lose. No possessions, no security, no concern about possessions, and no concern about security: in this mood it is possible to do exactly what makes sense, and nothing else: there are no hidden fears, no morals, no rules, no undercurrent of constraint, no subtle sense of concern for the form of what the people round about you are doing, and above all no conern for what you are yourself, no subtle fear of other people's ridicule, no subtle train of fears which can connect the smallest triviality with bankruptcy and loss of love and loss of friends and death, no ties, no suits, no outward elements of majesty at all. Only the laughter and the rain

It happens when our inner forces are resolved

There are no other unexpected forces lurking underground. He acts according to the nature of the situations he is in, without distorting them

We cannot be aware of these most precious moments when they are actually happening. In fact, the conscious effort to attain this quality, or to be free, or to be anything, the glance which this creates, will always spoil it

It is when we forget ourselves completely

We must seek it, for our own sakes, in our surroundings, simply in order that we can ourselves become alive

The life and soul of a place, all of our experiences there, depend on the patterns of events which we experience there

It is the ways of being which exist in our world, that make it possible for us to be alive

The overall character of our lives is given by those events which keep on recurring over and over again

My life is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again

When I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can't

Each town, each neighborhood, each building, has a particular set of these patterns of events according to its prevailing culture

A person can modify his immediate situations

It is not possible to go beyond the bounds of the collection of events and pattern of events which our culture makes available to us

Our world has a structure, in the simple fact that certain patterns of events keep repeating, and account, essentially, for much the greater part of the events which happen here

The world has a structure, just because these patterns of events which repeat themselves are always anchored in the space

The action and the space are indivisible. The action is supported by this kind of space. The space supports this kind of action

Beyond its elements each building is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements

The world is also made of certain fundamental "atoms"

People are phototropic so it is often comfortable to place yourself where the light is

The more living patterns there are in a thing - a room, a building, or a town - the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has this self-maintaining fire, which is the quality without a name

The quality without a name appears when an entire system of patterns, interdependent at many levels, is all stable and alive

When a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety, created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself

Each pattern is a generic solution to some system of forces in the world. But the forces are never quite the same. Since the exact configuration of the surroundings at any one place and time is always unique, the configuration of the forces which the system is subject to is also unique—no other system of forces is ever subject to exactly the same configuration of forces. If the system is responsible to the forces it is subject to, it follows that the system too, must be unique; it cannot be exactly like any other, even though it is roughly similar. That is not an accidental consequence of the uniqueness of each system: it is an essential aspect of the life and wholeness of each part

There is a character in natural things which is created by the fact that they are reconciled, exactly, to the inner forces

This character will happen anywhere, where a part of the world is so well reconciled to its own inner forces that it is true to its own nature

Nature is true to its own nature. They are perfectly reconciled with their own inner forces

The character of nature can't arise without the presence and the consciousness of death

All of it is going to pass

This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the seed

The quality of life cannot be made, only generated

When a thing is made, it has the will of the maker in it. But when it is generated, freely, by the operation of egoless rules, acting on the reality of the situation, and giving birth, or their own accord... the brush stroke becomes beautiful, when it is visible only as the end product of a process — when the force of the process takes over the cramped will of the maker. The maker lets go of his will, and lets the process take over

Any thing which lives can only be achieved as the end product of a process, whose force takes over and replaces the willful act of creation

Image a system of simple rules, not complicated, patiently applied, until they gradually form a thing. The thing may be formed gradually and built all at once, or built gradually over time — but it is formed, essentially, by a process no more complicated than the process by which the Samoans shape their canoe

Here there is no mastery of unnameable creative processes: only the patience of a craftsman, chipping away slowly; the mastery of what is made does not lie in the depths of some impenetrable ego; it lies, instead, in the simple mastery of the steps in the process, and in the definition of these steps

The same thing, exactly, is true of a living organism. An organism cannot be made. It cannot be conceived, by a willful act of creation, and then built, according to the blueprint of the creator. It is far too complex, far too subtle, to be born from a bolt of lightning in the creator's mind. It has a thousand billion cells, each one adapted perfectly to its conditions — and this can only happen because the organism is not 'made' but generated by a process which allows the gradual adaptation of these cells to happen hour by hour

A pattern language gives each person who uses it, the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary langauage gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences

Life cannot be made, only generated by a process

The patterns, which repeat themselves, come simply from the fact that all the people have a common lanaguage, and that each one of them uses this commonn language whenn he makes a thing

Wherever there are two areas of color, side by side, there is a hairline of a different third color, between them

Every room must have daylight on at least two sides

The source of life which you create lies in the power of the language which you have

The whole emerges by itself and is continually repaired. Each person in a town knows that his own small acts help to create and to maintain the whole. Each person feels tied into society, and proud because of it

The users, whose direct experience once formed the languages, non longer have enough contact to influcence them. This is almost bound to happen, as soon as the task of building passes out of the hands of the people who are most directly concerned, and into the hands of people who are not doing it for themselves, but instead for others

So long as I build for myself, the patterns I use will be simple, and human. and full of feeling, because I understand my situation. But as soonn as a few people begin to build for "the many," their patterns about what is needed become abstract; no matter how well meaning they are, their ideas gradually get out of touch with reality, because they are not faced daily with the liviing examples of what the patterns say

In the past, each act planning or design was thought of as a self-contained, and original response to the demands of local situation

Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution

If you can't draw a diagram of it, it isn't a pattern

A pattern only works, fully, when it deals with all the forces that are actually present in the situation

We must rely on feelings more than intellect

What is good

Patterns made from thought, without feeling, lack empirical reality entirely

If a pattern does not help you to feel good, there is very little chance that it is a good pattern

If you feel better in the places where the pattern exists, then the pattern is a good one

The scientific accuracy of the patterns can only come from direct assessment of people's feelings, not from arguments or discussions

Once a person is willing to take his feelings seriously, and pay attention to them, and exclude opinions and ideas, then his perception of a pattern can approach the quality without a name

Feelings liberate the world from the imprisioning effect of concepts and opinions

It is reality itself which makes the difference

It is in the end only when our feelings are erfectly in touch with the reality of forces, that we begin to see the patterns which are capable of generating life

This is hard because so often people choose to put their own opinions forward, in place of reality

A pattern which is real makes no judgements about the legitimacy of the forces in the situation

The only way that a pattern can actually help to make a situation genuinely more alive is by recognizing all the forces which actually exist, and then finding a world in which these forces can slide past each other

A living language must be the shared vision of a group of people, very specific to their culture, able to capture their hopes and dreams, containing many childhood memories, and special local ways of doing things. He. This is working now

Then it becomes a piece of nature

You must make the language first, because it is the structure and the content of the language which determine the design

As each person makes up his own language for himself, the language begins to be a living one

Here we go still working

Is this working?

What is good?

Languages evolve one pattern at a time

The evolution and development of a pattern language never ends

The language is the genetic system which gives our millions of small acts the power to form a whole

It is essential that the people shape their surroundings for themselves

Since the patterns are patterns of action, and the action will not happen unless the patterns are felt, and created, and maintained by the people whose action goes into the patterns, there is no way the living town can be built by professionals, for other people to live in

The living town can only be created by a process in which patterns are created and maintained by the people who are a part of them

It is a flux of millions upon millions of these tiny acts, each one in the hands of the person who knows it best, best able to adapt it to the local circumstance

A room, a building, or a neighborhood is not made by a single act of building, in a single day. It is the temporary end-result of a thousand different acts, extended over time, and done by unrelated people

When an organism grows from a seed, the process of its growth is guided by the genetic materials

An organism, which seems at first sight like a static thing, is in fact a constant flux of processes

A town or building also is a constant flux of processes

It is the pattern language which, like the genes distributed throughout the cells, makes certain that there is this structure, this invariant permanency, in the flux of things, so that the building or the town stays while

The flux in which the town gives birth to new activities, maintains its old ones, modifies them, changes them, is guided by the common pattern language, just as the slow flux of a flower, while it is alive, is governed by the seed within it

Each pattern language in the larger language, can, because it is connected to the entire language, help all the other patterns to emerge

Each pattern in a language is linked to the patterns above and below it

The process of life is marked by the continuous creation of wholes from parts. In an organism, cells cooperate to form organs and the body as a whole. In a society the individual actions of people cooperate to form institutions and larger wholes... and in a town a pattern language is a source of life, above all, because it helps to generate the wholes, from the cooperation of the individual acts

It is impossible to form anything which has the character of nature by adding performed parts

It is only possible to make a place which is alive by a process in which each part is modified by its position in the whole

the whole gives birth to its parts

Descisions fit only the larger decisions which come before it

A sequence of patterns must meet three simple conditions: 1. if pattern A is above pattern B in the network of the language, then I must take A before I take B. 2. I must take all the patterns immediately above A, as close together in sequence as I can. 3. I must take all the patterns immediately below the pattern A, as close together in sequence as I can

The more a sequence of patterns meets these three conditions, the more coherent a person's image is

In nature, a thing is always born, and developed, as a whole

When a pattern lanugage is properly used, it allows the person who uses it to make places which are a part of nature

When the order of the patterns in the language is correct, the differentiating process allows the design to unfold as smoothly as an opening flower

Ask yourself how this pattern would look if it were already in the place where you are wanting it. Close your eyes, and image the pattern in place

What would it be like, if this was the most wonderful ____ in the world?

When you insist, and genuinely form the pattern, and go all the way with it, it generates a character

It is only when you pay attention, in the full belief that every room you make can be as beautiful as the most beautiful light-filled room which you have ever seen - then you are serious enough. At that moment it will happen. All it requires is the will

Do not consciously try to create the pattern. If you do this, the images and ideas in your mind will distort it, will begin to take over, and the pattern itself will never make its way into the world: instead there will be a 'design.' Get rid of the ideas which come into your mind. Get rid of pictures you have seen in magazines, friends' houses... insist on the pattern, and nothing else

You must let go of your control and let the pattern do the work. Have confidence in the basis for them

Your design will only come alive if you can let go of the fear that everything will not work out

You cannot create a pattern at full intensity, so long as you are worrying and thinking about other patters, which you will have to deal with later in the sequence

As soon as you begin to compromise the patterns for another, there is no life left in them

Within the sequence which the language defines, you can focus on each pattern by itself, one at a time, certain that those patterns which come later in the sequence will fit into the design which has evolved so far. You can pay full attention to each pattern; you can let it have its full intensity. Then you can give each pattern just that strange intensity which makes the pattern live

From a sequence of these individual patterns, whole buildings with the character of nature will form themselves within your thoughts, as easily as sentences

Work with your eyes close, image how the patterns will be, in their best, most natural, most simple form,'as the building comes to life

All in all, the design took about a week of continuous on-and-off thought

I never made a drawing of the building. The design was done completely in my midn

Only in the fluidity of your mind can you conceive a whole. As the design unfolds, and the new patterns are brought into play, according to the order of the langugage, the entire design has to shift and resettle itself in your mind with every new pattern. Each nenw pattern in the sequence transforms the whole design created by the previous patterns—it transforms it as a whole, it shakes it up, and realigns it

It is only in the mind's eye, eyes shut, not on paper, that a building can be born out of the vividness of actual experience

Each part in the design is formed by its position in the whole

It is a primitive process. The primitive farmer spends no time "designing" his house. He thinks breifly where and how to build it, and then sets about building it

You aren't controlling it. You are only the medium in which the patterns come to life, and of their own accord give birth to something new

No building is ever perfect

The process of design, in the mind's eye, or on the site, is an attempt to simulate in advance, the feeling and events which will emerge in the real building, and to create a configuration which is in repose with respect to these events

In a life which is truly lived, there are no moments which are "in between" or "out of life"—every moment is lived fully

When I eat, I eat; when I drink, I drink; when I walk, I walk

Every square inch of it has some valuable purpose, and is able to support some moment inn a person's life which is truly lives; and for this reason every part of it is whole, and every place between two wholes is also whole

This process fills the gaps, the small things that are wrong are gradually corrected, and finally, the whole is so smooth and relaxed, that it will seem as though it had been there forever. It has no roughness about it, it simply lies there stretched out in time

There are non gaps between the parts, because each gap is just as much a part itself

The timeless way is not complete, and will not fully generate the quality without a name, until we leave the gate behind

We must give up our ideas and opinions, and do exactly what emerges from ourselves

We can only make a building live when we are egoless

The beauty, the quality in it which touches us, the thing which makes it live, is, above all, that it is carefree, that it is innocent

This innocence will only come about when people honestly forget themselves

Places that are made with an outward glance cannot reach the quality without a name and are not innocent

People who made them simply do not care what people think of them. They are not defiant. They still care at least enough to be defiant

They don't care what other people think; and they also do not care about the fact that they don't care. It means nothing to them. They only do exactly what they have to do to take care of their situation

To make a building egoless, like this. the builder must let go of all his willful images, and start with a void

You must start with nothing in your mind

You are able to do this only when you no longer fear that nothing will happen, and you can therefore afford to let go of your images

Once you learn that the pattern language and the site together, will genuinely generate form inside your mind, from nothing, you can trust yourself to let go of your images entirely

For a person who is unfree, the languages seem like mere information, because he feels that he must be in control, that he must inject the creative impulse, that he must supply the image which controls the design. But once a person can relax, and let the forces in the situation act through him as if he were a medium, then he sees that the language, with very little help, is able to do almost all the work, and that the building shapes itself

A person who is free, and egoless, starts with a void, and lets the language generate the necessary forms, out of this void

A man who is not afraid to die, is free to live because he is open to what happens next, and is not always killing it by trying to control it

I can work within the order of the language, without worrying about the patterns which are coming later, because I am sure that, no matter what happens, I will always be able to find a way of bringing them into the design. when I come to them

I don't care what shape the finished building or its details have—provided only they are natural

If a building which I make turns out bulging and twisted it will be no less free than the willow tree

It is only the extent to which you yourself become ordinary and natural, that in the end determines how natural, and free, and whole the building can become

You can only make a building live when you are free enough to reject even the very patterns which are helping you

Once a person has freed himself to such an extent, that he can see the forces as they really are, and make a building which is shaped by them alone, and nnot affected or distorted by his images—he is then free enough to make the building without patterns at all—because the knowledge which the patterns contain, the knowledge of the way the forces really act, is his

The pattern in a living language are based on fundamental realities. which everyone already knows ,in his innermost self. And you forget it only because our society has filled your mind with other distoring images. The language onnly shows you what you yourself already know. The language is able to awaken you to your ownn innermost feelings, and to what is true. Gradually, by following the language you feel free to escape from the artificial images which society has impsoed upon you. And, as you escape from these images, and the need to manufacture things according to these images, you are able to come more into touch with the simple reality of things, and thereby become egoless and free

The language frees you to be yourself, because it gives you permission to do what is natural, and shows you your innermost feelings about building while the world is trying to suppress them

The first things—the innermost secret likes and dislikes we have—are fundamental. We give them up, and try to be important, and clever—because we are afraid that people will laugh at us. A language will allow this inner thing, which carries feelings, to guide your acts

The patters have taught you to be receptive to what is real

It is the use of pattern languages which will allow you to come back to that part of yourself which has always been there, and is there now, but is obscured by images and ideas and theories, which make it impossible for you to be yourself, or act as nature does

You no longer value these inner impules. You curb them, because you think that someone else knows better. You are perhaps afraid that people may laugh at you for being so ordinary

It is utterly ordinary. It is what is in you already. Your first, most primitive impuleses are right, and will lead you to do the right thing, if you will only let yourself

There is no skill required. It is only a question of whether you will allow yourself to be ordinary, and to do what comes naturally to you, and what seems most sensible, to your heart, always to your heart, not to the images which false learnings has coated on your mind

To act as nature does is the most ordinary thing in the world. It is as ordinary as a simple act of slicing strawberries