Why Did Patterns Fail?

Some modern architecture is ill-fitting for humans because it puts meaning ahead of purpose, using a building to portray an idea. But some is rotten in the same way digital paintings were terrible in the early days of graphic design on personal computers. Back then, it was almost always just showing off what could be achieved with the medium. Some architecture suffers from the same lack of artistic value because it lacks meaning. It’s devoid of why and only full of a sense of ‘look-at-what-I-can-do’. We see other examples of this in some launch titles for gaming consoles and in the physical world with such examples as sport utility vehicles with no comprehensible reason to exist other than as status symbols. This type of artefact is the output of entities with a point to prove rather than the desire to fulfil an authentic need.

Christopher Alexander put this type of architecture, the type which he claimed[NoO2-02] was generated from a different process of structure destroying transformations, into a different class[NoO3-05], and his approach to building attempted to rectify it. By a series of steps of extraction, he took the architectural process back into the hands of those with a personal, not just financial, stake in the outcome. People who knew deep down if their requirements were satisfied.

This is how he became a rebel. His actions disturbed the status quo. Few architects of the establishment outwardly supported his ideas. Teachers working with the framework of the modernist school of thought and locked into its rewards worked to hinder his impact. But just at the same time as he was cast out from architecture’s mainstream, he was dragged onto the centre stage of many groups outside of it.

During the early days of the software design pattern movement, it’s possible Christopher Alexander was better known in this particular field than he had ever been as an architect. Thousands of developers referred to him or made things with an eye to the design pattern approach. Beyond software, there was a general interest in patterns to capture solutions that were otherwise difficult to adapt to new terrain.

However, in every domain, establishments would protect themselves, even when the ideas took hold. In every system, change was detected, and feedback mechanisms would push the new ideas out or wrap them up like a pearl in safe material, neutralising them and ruining their potential.

Not all establishments react the same way. They do not all start from the same place. Most systems centre around protecting those in power and the structure that gave them their seat. Even without an official hierarchy, a hidden structure will defend itself. The establishments that Christopher Alexander came up against tended to originate from Western world values, where individualism was protected over familial values or societal norms. As you study the history of his troubles, a pattern emerges of him running up against politics and profiteering. In every project, the local people, those he built for, were never the problem. The problems were most often found in the ego of an external entity.