Patterns as enabling emergence of a quality without a name

Polyhedral Pattern Language: Software facilitation of emergence, representation and transformation of psycho-social organization (Part #16)

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With respect to the challenges of governance, much has necessarily been made of issues relating to the tangibles (food, health, etc) on which economists so readily focus, and to the intangibles manifest over time (freedom of information, freedom of religion, etc) which are also a focus of politics. And, in the attention given to the pattern language of Christopher Alexander (discussed above), the focus has been on the process of design that the methodology enables in whatever domain. Little attention is given to his declared, and extensively described, purpose of using such patterns to enable the emergence of what he describes as the "quality without a name" (Timeless Way of Building, 1979).

In A Pattern Language (1977), in that spirit, Alexander has done much to clarify what would here be termed the elven pathways fundamental to providing a subtle sense of a desirable "place to be" or a "sense of place" -- of feeling "at home".

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, but it cannot be named... every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that happen there. These patterns are always interlocked with certain geometric patterns in the space... To reach the quality without a name we must then build a living pattern language as a gate. (pp ix-xi)

Industrialized society has however come to recognize aspects of its importance under the term "quality time" or in the increasing difficulty for top corporations to retain valuable executives. But the point was made long ago by the realization that "man cannot live by bread alone". This perspective is further discussed elsewhere (Walking Elven Pathways: enactivating the pattern that connects, 2006).

The merit of Alexander's achievement has been to create a qualitative bridge between the technical considerations of architecture, so evident in discussion of tensegrity, and the qualitative purpose of the spaces so created. This might be said to go beyond the "heuristic" workspace of the mind which Schroeder's work seeks to enable. Put succinctly, what is the quality characteristic of the space associated with any particular pattern and the manner in which it is embodied and lived?

Curiously, at best, the architectual aesthetic is very sensitive to the qualities of space created. It is in this sense that the use of strategic confifgurations of pillars can be fruitfully revisited. Associated with those pillars, for example, are the spaces between those pillars and the tension associated with the relation of those spaces to the pillars that define them. It might be argued that it is the purpose of the strategic pillars to create desirable "places to be". Were the spaces to be filled, extending the bounding pillars into a wall, "sides" are then created in ways that were noted as problematic in the earlier study.

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