McFilter

A Pattern Language for Pattern Languages

Many people I respect are big fans of Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" (online PDF copy). I've leafed through it myself and had added it to my to read pile from an urbanism/architecture perspective.

I was also interested in the format itself. A book of patterns rather than rules feels like a much better way to approach group endeavours. In particular it felt like a good way into writing a "handbook" for DoES Liverpool—here are the ways we've found to organise the work and running of the space; they're not set in stone, but some of the panelling on Chesterton's fence here was put there for a reason, and you'll need to explain how your proposed change takes that into account.

However, I wasn't sure what a pattern language looks like in practice. I wondered if there was a pattern language for writing pattern languages, but hadn't come across one.

I figured I'd just have to get round to reading "A Pattern Language" in order to have at least one example from which I could extrapolate.

Finally started doing that today, just to find that the first nine pages of that are an explanation of pattern languages and how to lay them out:

The elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.

For convenience and clarity, each pattern has the same format. First, there is a picture, which shows an archetypal example of that pattern. Second, after the picture, each pattern has an introductory paragraph, which sets the context for the pattern, by explaining how it helps to complete certain larger patterns. Then there are three diamonds to mark the beginning of the problem. After the diamonds there is a headline, in bold type. This headline gives the essence of the problem in one or two sentences. After the headline comes the body of the problem. This is the longest section. It describes the empirical background of the pattern, the evidence for its validity, the range of different ways the pattern can be manifested in a building, and so on. Then, again in bold type, like the headline, is the solution—the heart of the pattern—which describes the field of physical and social relationships which are required to solve the stated problem, in the stated context. This solution is always stated in the form of an instruction—so that you know exactly what you need to do, to build the pattern. Then, after the solution, there is a diagram, which shows the solution in the form of a diagram, with labels to indicate its main components.

After the diagram, another three diamonds, to show that the main body of the pattern is finished. And finally, after the diamonds there is a paragraph which ties the pattern to all those smaller patterns in the language, which are needed to complete this pattern, to embellish it, to fill it out.

There are two essential purposes behind this format. First, to present each pattern connected to other patterns, so that you grasp the collection of all 253 patterns as a whole, as a language, within which you can create an infinite variety of combinations. Second, to present the problem and solution of each pattern in such a way that you can judge it for yourself, and modify it, without losing the essence that is central to it.

Let us next understand the nature of the connection between patterns.

The patterns are ordered, beginning with the very largest, for regions and towns, then working down through neighborhoods, clusters of buildings, buildings, rooms and alcoves, ending finally with details of construction.

This order, which is presented as a straight linear sequence, is essential to the way the language works. It is presented, and explained more fully, in the next section. What is most important about this sequence, is that it is based on the connections between the patterns. Each pattern is connected to certain "larger" patterns which come above it in the language; and to certain "smaller" patterns which come below it in the language. The pattern helps to complete those larger patterns which are "above" it, and is itself completed by those smaller patterns which are "below" it.

[...]

You see then that the patterns are very much alive and evolving. In fact, if you like, each pattern may be looked upon as a hypothesis like one of the hypotheses of science. In this sense, each pattern represents our current best guess as to what arrangement of the physical environment will work to solve the problem presented. [...] But of course, no matter what [our indication of our certainty in each hypothesis] say, the patterns are still hypotheses, all 253 of them—and are therefore all tentative, all free to evolve under the impact of new experience and observation.

Blog All Dog-eared Pages: Boom Cities by Otto Saumarez Smith

I was initially drawn to reading Otto Saumarez Smith's Boom Cities (link to openlibrary.org) because of the chapter on Liverpool's post-war redevelopment proposed (and partially implemented) by the Shankland Report.

The rest was an interesting wider history in how British towns and cities were reconfigured in thrall to the car, but also how grand redevelopment projects are pursued by councillors to supposedly halt de-industrial decline with new buildings. Rather depressing to see nothing has been learnt from decades of that not working, and we're still throwing tens of millions of pounds at projects that might result in buildings that might then house some businesses or shops that might then employ some people and give them a livelihood.

Anyway; here are my dog-eared pages from reading it.

Page 10

In arguing that modernism and preservation were entangled, Boom Cities provides a more nuanced protrayal of a subject that has often been treated with a demonising vehemence—exemplified by the crass cliché that planners did more damage to cities than the Luftwaffe.

Page 12

Modernism, which has been the key to unlocking this moment in all previous accounts, is here implicitly downgraded as an explanatory tool. Although much of the planning of the 1960s is clearly related to the international, historical, and theoretical cluster of ideas that comes under the title of modernism, it is also shot through with many features that are more commonly understood as postmodern.

Page 16

It was common to point out that the decentralizing and suburbanizing effects engendered by the automobile had overtaken the cholera and over-crowding engendered by railways as the primary ill of cities. Terence Bendixson pushed the comparison further, seeing Colin Buchanan's seminal Traffic in Towns as providing a role analagous to the reforming reports of the nineteenth century[...]

Page 18

The Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, certainly read, or misread, the report as a call for radical reconstruction:

It is fundamental to the whole report that it accepts the motor vehicle as a brilliant and beneficial invention. It is in no sense restricting the motor car. All it says is that we must use our motor cars to the maximum, and yet be sensible and keep some good environmental areas. We have to face the fact, whether we like it or not, that we have built our towns in entirely the wrong way for motor traffic. We want an entirely different type of town.

Page 38

Unlike his predecessor as Minister, Aneurin Bevan (a disciple of American urbanist Lewis Mumford), Macmillan displayed little curiosity about architectural aesthetics, and was criticized for being interested in quantity at the expense of quality. The one qualitative statement on architectural matters to be found in his diaries from this period deals with a trip to Sheffield and the gestating plans for the premier megastructural 'streets in the sky' estate, Park Hill: 'The architect seemed very good. Some new flats (on the hill) should be very good.'

Page 46

The bold scale of modernist solutions was a central element of what Tories took from modernism, as modernist planning would provide ever greater sites for profitable redevelopment. The engagement with modernism went further than this, though: it was used to give form to the future envisaged by the Conservatives through the mantras of prosperity and affluence. Modernism, despite its early connection with the socialism of the Bauhaus, is clearly as amenable to as broad a range of political symbolic meanings as any other style of architecture.

Page 54

Replacing this generic Victorian city was to be an archetypal modern one, with its central pedestrian precinct and shopping area, encircled by a bus and service road. Adjoining this central core is a ring of development for parking, offices, high-density housing (at the anti-suburban density of 100 persons per acre), and civic and entertainment zones. Encircling the whole inner area is an urban motorway in a loop. Here was a replicable vision for a Macmillanite urban utopia.

Page 55

Even the then unbuilt megastructural project St John's Precinct in Liverpool is included and commended for showing the possibility of redevelopment 'planned as essentially one great building in which all the different uses are inter-related and form part of the same architectural concept'. This was a project at the forefront of planning thought, and was praised in 1963 by Peter Hall as displaying a 'sophistication of the principle' of vertical segregation. It was also, perhaps better explaining its inclusion, the result of a public-private partnership between Liverpool's Conservative-controlled city council and Ravenseft Properties Ltd.

Page 61

For Leicester, the JUPG [Joint Urban Planning Group] advocated a public transport solution, and a type of rhetoric that had been largely absent from discussions about traffic in the early 1960s finally reached the agenda: 'A public transport solution would, incidentally, give a better service to the young, the old and many of the disabled. It must seriously be doubted whether a town which provides badly for these substantial groups can be called really civilised'.

Page 77

If Lancashire remained an area of 'old and decaying towns and of general dereliction, young people (including the vitally needed skilled workers and University graduates) would be attracted to other parts of the country, and industrialists would be unwilling to consider moving into Lancashire'. The shopping centre, it was envisioned, would provide the amenities desired for these two vital groups.

[...]

It is perplexing that the response towards solving, or even just to addressing, labour-market failure focused so much on programmes for the provision of consumer goods and an improved aesthetic environment. Perhaps the central reason that these ill-suited weapons were grasped to combat deindustrialzation was that, in a mixed economy, redevelopment was one of the few areas in which local authorities could rely on private investment. With Macmillan, or for that matter his successors, unable to countenance the level of dirigisme that would have been welcomed by the many councillors on the delegation, most vocally represented by Liverpool's Jack Braddock, redevelopment was the only area where the councillors could make a suitably dramatic show of tackling the issue.

Page 102

In 1963 Peter Hall was already praising Shankland's plan of September 1962 for the St. John's Precinct, suggesting that it showed a 'sophistication of the principle' of vertical segregation. It was boasted of the plan that if 'realised this would be one of the largest pedestrian precincts outside of Venice.'

Page 104

Shankland's rhetoric at Liverpool echoes the foundational belief behind the political planning philosophy of the early 1960s that continuous economic growth would provide the basis for uninterrupted social progress. The optimism was self-consciously purposive at Liverpool, and was part of a campaign to achieve what Shankland saw as his 'first job': banishing this 'smell of defeat' caused by forty years of economic decline.

Claims of being the biggest or first at something - check; economic growth as saviour - check; boosterism and fake-it-till-you-make-it winning out over the substance of doing the work - check. Sixty years on, and we're still trying the same playbook as if it didn't fail then.

Page 105

'For 20 years', The Times commented, 'the centre of Liverpool has been like the belly of some mangy stuffed animal in a Victorian museum. Great bald patches caused by bombing serve as temporary car parks [...]'

Page 113

The travails experience by Shankland's plans for Liverpool are too large a subject to do justice to here. The motorway achieved central government backing in 1965, but only parts were completed. It soon became apparent that financial optimism had been spectacularly misplaced. Areas of dereliction were as often the occasion for Shankland's attention as were caused by it. Nevertheless, with very little of the plan realised, and what was built by private capital being shoddy, the Liberal Party took power of Liverpool Council in 1973 on a wave of resentment over planning blight.

Page 122

It was hoped that the right kind of cities would provide a culturally rich environment which would act as a dam against the enormous changes in society that were sweeping through Britain due to rising affluence, consumerism, the motor car, and television. [Shankland's] plans aspired to preserve traditional urban communities, which 'people will not want to escape from—either by means of the motor car, the bottle or T.V.' Shankland's approach was informed by a politically aware outlook that was meliorist and modernizing, but was simultaneously fearful about the changes affecting British society.

Page 124

We were handling the difficult combination of a revolutionary architecture rooted in a new technology on the one hand, and on the other an historically unprecedented concern for the world we had inherited. For Brett there was, at least initially, no cognitive dissonance in attempting to hold on to both modernism and British traditions; indeed they were mutually reinforcing. Modernist solutions were seen by Brett as the only way to achieve other, more nuanced desiderata.

Page 136

The Architectural Review even eschews the radical implications behind the label SPUR [the Society for the Promotion of Urban Renewal], preferring instead 'the Environmentalists': '"rebuild", "renew," "re-create," are words I avoid in this context, since they imply varying degrees of condescension to places many of which are thick with character, guarded by the wry affection of many people, and short only on imaginative leadership.'

Page 140

Taking as his cue Buchanan's study of Norwich, Brett argued that for the half dozen or so historic cities which 'represent our version of the European urban tradition at its best' radials should stop before the core, 'ending normally in a ring of multi-storey car parks linked by some sort of inner circular road', while inside the core there should be a total ban on commuters' and visitors' cars. He suggested, as Konrad Smigielski had for Leicester, that an electric rickshaw service should be developed to serve 'elderly people and invalids and heavily laden shoppers'. This all pretty much foreshadows the approach Brett would apply at York four years later. The article is also interesting for warning of the risk of 'regeneration degenerating into eviction and class war', in the same year that Ruth Glass coined the term 'gentrification'.

Page 167

Worse than such aesthetic worries were fears about what was happening in city-centre redevelopment, that it just wasn't good enough, a widely felt sentiment. Crossman lamented, 'As I go round the country...I am getting used to being shown the most magnificent plans in the council offices and then feeling a sense of anti-climax when I walk outside and see the actual buildings going up.'

Page 169

To put it rather broadly, in the early 1960s city-centre plans had been created for the beneficiaries or future beneficiaries of affluence, people who, like the architects themselves, were envisaged as 'young professionals, likely to have a taste for Mediterranean holidays, French food and Scandinavian design'. This was linked to the Croslandite ideal that a more equitable and 'civilized' society could be built on the basis of increased economic growth. Planners focused on the needs of those emerging into affluence, with very little concept that some would be left behind. There was an element of wish fulfillment in all this, as it was exactly in those cities which were being left relatively behind in the move towards mass affluence that the planners most resoundingly celebrated the new world, so that Walter Bor could say of Liverpool, 'Car ownership is rising, travel is becoming more popular, new patterns of recreation are emerging.' Well yes, but significantly less than in the rest of England and on shaky foundations. Before what has been called the 'rediscovery of poverty' in the later 1960s, planning discourse mirrored political discourse in that it tended to ignore problems of poverty. There is a presumption that all would eventually share in the fruits of growth.

Page 171

Cycling, on the other hand, is treated blithely, if at all. Buchanan mentions techno-gizmos such as jetpacks, hovercraft, helicopters, and conveyor belts as 'possible substitutes for the motor car', but the bicycle was forgotten and the possibility of cycle tracks dismissed as 'very expensive, and probably impracticable'. Cycles receive similarly scant, on non-existent, treatment in the other planning manuals or overviews of the period. At Hook, it was felt that 'In view of the considerable possibility that non-powered bicycles will virtually disappear except for their use by children, only a limited system of independent cycle tracks is proposed.' Geoffrey Jellicoe wrote that cycling was 'an anachronism in the modern world'. This was all despite the fact that, in a survey of six towns near London in 1957, 35 per cent of the journeys to work were by bicycle, while even in the new town of Crawley, where no provision whatsoever had been made for cyclists, it was found that 25 per cent of journeys were made by this means.

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 21st 2024 Edition

• You Can't Make Friends With The Rockstars.

  By telling the story of an "evolved" Zuckerberg that's "unapologetic," the media whitewashes a man who has continually acted with disregard for society and exploited hundreds of millions of people in pursuit of eternal growth. By claiming he's "evolving" or "changing" or "growing" or anything like that, writers are actively working to forgive Zuckerberg, all without ever explaining what it is they're forgiving him for, because those analyses almost never happen.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates & Jon Stewart: Understanding the Humiliation of Oppression. Really insightful interview. I should add some of Ta-Nehisi Coates' books to my reading list.
• Adam Curtis: The Map No Longer Matches the Terrain. I've cooled a bit on Adam Curtis over the years, because he seems to create entertaining pointing-out-what's-wrong without any suggestion of how to fix things, or anywhere for that indignation to go; however, this is a great interview.
• Dan Olson at XOXO Festival 2024 on the creative process and envy. Lots of this rings true for me.

Interesting Things on the Internet: September 23rd 2024 Edition

• The Art of Taking It Slow. I don't agree with all of this—index gears are much better than friction levers, and I never got on with adjusting side-pull brakes—but cycling is definitely about comfort, enjoyment and fun.
• Coming home.

  there’s all this hype about making everything easier and faster, about how we can eliminate all the work involved in the making of words and images. But no one arguing for this seems to have asked what’s left when the work is gone. What is the experience of asking for something to appear and then instantly receiving it? What changes between the thought and the manifestation? I fear that nothing changes, that nothing is changed in such a making, least of all ourselves.

• (1970) Huey P. Newton, “The Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements”. Excellent speech looking to build solidarity between the black liberation, gay and feminist movements. We need more of this sort of approach today.

Interesting Things on the Internet: September 9th 2024 Edition

• Signal Is More Than Encrypted Messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, It’s Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong. Excellent interview covering lots of what's wrong with surveillance capitalism and what we need (more folk) to do in order to build a better alternative.
• Solar will get too cheap to connect to the power grid.

  In the UK in 2024, I can go online and buy a solar panel with the same dimensions as a fence panel, for only double the cost. In five years, the cost of solar will have halved again.

  We need to electrify more things. We need more manufacturing that takes advantage of spiky energy gluts; making things when the sun shines, or overnight when the wind blows.
• Some bullet-points about regulation.

  In Britain now, for instance, the actual government of the sixth largest economy on earth – a nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN security council – has no mechanism to stop executives from pumping shit into rivers while routing profits off-shore.

  I have a half-theory that larger organisations are plausible deniability generators, which allow blame to be avoided and dissipated; this feels like a related structure.

Blog All Dog-eared Pages: Christopher Frayling on Craftsmanship towards a new Bauhaus

When I read On Craftsmanship Towards A New Bauhaus (OpenLibrary link) by Christopher Frayling it didn't really connect with me. However, reading through my dog-eared notes here a few months after finishing it I find myself nodding along and reacting favourably to them.

The agility of small firms staffed with skilled workers mated with CNC tools chimes with some of the flexibility the workers of the Lucas Plan were advocating. And the calls for more focus on the Bauhaus' interfacing with industry/industrial methods and encouraging more production over manifestos is reassuring, given my—and the collective our—areas of exploration in DoES Liverpool.

Page 58

The central thesis helps to explain why we are so much better at setting up quangos and professional organisations, than we are at remedying the historical and contemporary mismatch between design and (what's left of) manufacturing industry.

Page 68

However, I believe that sensible arguments in support of the crafts in education and society - arguments for the benefit of educators, civil servants, grant-givers of all descriptions, sponsors, and society at large - are in danger of being confused with less sensible arguments, based as they are on a mixture of sentiment, bad history, and a misunderstanding of the lessons of the Arts and Crafts Movement. And it is of crucial importance to separate the two. There are hard-edged arguments, but it's not always easy to dismiss the popular connotations of the crafts. We have to live with them: the crafts as folksy, alternative, rural occupations associated with a homecoming vision of the future, and also with a nostalgia masquerading as history.

Page 80

It was not necessarily a matter of protecting skills, as Morris thought, but rather of protecting the measure of control the craftspeople exercised over their work - in their own time, ,to their own pace, perhaps with their own machinery.

Page 81

Here in 'the middle Italy', in small workshop-based activities, there are craft industries as diverse as shoes, ceramic tiles, textiles, and furniture. In these a huge variety of craft goods is produced through the cooperation of networks of small firms each employing around ten craftsmen. The thing that has made this possible is the development of numerically controlled machine tools or robots - but robots harnessed to the ever-changing needs of small batch or short-run production. These small interconnected firms have proved themselves relatively immune to economic crises of over-production at a time when large, inflexible, highly-automated, deskilled firms are going to the wall. By any definition this success is related to skilled craftsmanship; so it may not be a question in the near future of 'industry versus craft' but of 'craft with industry', of a product hand-built with just a little assistance from robots. Industries of a few people, creating local networks with new kinds of tools, maybe linking with larger networks...

Page 88

It was, as Gropius later added, a question of the crafts shedding their 'traditional nature' and becoming instead 'research work for industrial production, speculative experiments in laboratory-workshops where the preparatory work of evolving and perfecting new type-forms will be done'. This was the 'turn' which so impressed Herbert Read in Art and Industry. And yet almost every British book about the Bauhaus still prefers to interpret the manifesto as a plea for the skills of yesterday [...]

Page 131

Another [problem with the Bauhaus] was that nearly all the workshop Masters were artists rather than designers, so they were much stronger on writing manifestos about industry and producing wonderful visual aids, especially Paul Klee's, than on practical results.

Page 133

The Bauhaus did indeed produce some iconic objects. But the real research, on which industry depended, was of course happening elsewhere - in engineering, and materials science and chemicals and technology, and in the research and development sections of big businesses.

Page 134

In this world of flux, the staff and students of our new Bauhaus will by definition have a strong belief in the future, just as their forbears did in their manifestos and slogans. Not as any kind of feel-good factor, on in an uncontroversial or unchallenging way, but they will believe that doing something about it, and making a difference, is a worthwhile thing to attempt.

Blog All Dog-eared Pages: The Care Manifesto by The Care Collective

The Care Manifesto by The Care Collective (on OpenLibrary)

Page 5

In this manifesto we therefore use the term 'care' to capaciously embrace familial care, the hands-on care that workers carry out in care homes and hospitals and that teachers do in schools, and the everyday services provided by other essential workers. But it means as well the care of activists in constructing libraries of things, co-operative alternatives and solidarity economies, and the political policies that keep housing costs down, slash fossil fuel use and expand green spaces. Care is our individual and common ability to provide the political, social, material and emotional conditions that allow the vast majority of people and living creatures on this planet to thrive — along with the planet itself.

Page 42

[...] if the neoliberal defunding and undermining of care has led to paranoid and chauvinist caring imaginaries — looking after 'our own' — adequate resources, time and labour would make people feel secure enough to care for, about and with strangers as much as kin.

Page 43

Promiscuous care argues that caring for migrants and refugees should carry the same significance that our culture places on caring for our own, and urges us to care about the fate of those children forcibly separated from their families at the US border and placed in detention centres, as if they were kin. It recognises that we all have the capacity to care, not just mothers and not just women, and that all our lives are improved when we care and are cared for, and when we care together.

Page 46

As we showed in the previous chapter, such forms of support are often spontaneous and generated from down to up, but they also require structural support to be consistent and survive over time. Second, caring communities need public space: space that is co-owned by everyone, is held in common and is not commandeered by private interests.

Page 52

We need both community spaces and shared resources.

Page 57

To be clear, what 'caring communities' does not mean is using people's spare time to plug the caring gaps left wide open by neoliberalism. It means ending neoliberalism in order to expand people's capacities to care. To be truly democratic will involve forms of municipal care that put an end to corporate abuse, generate co-operatives and replace outsourcing with insourcing.

Page 76

As the feminist economist Nancy Folbre puts it, we should be thinking of 'invisible hearts', not 'invisible hands', when it comes to how care often is, and indeed should be, organised.

Interesting Things on the Internet: August 12th 2024 Edition

• Do not adjust your reality: how slick Team GB played its part in dividing Britain.

  Medals are key to this. Medals are public money, goodwill, merch, the maintaining of the illusion that this success represents something other than simply itself. This is the basic contradiction in a national high-performance culture.

  Gold medals have been stockpiled. But these golds are the work of those involved in winning them. Victory without context means nothing more broadly. The only societal value in a medal is where it expresses a physical culture, is the final evidence of a working system, of public access, fertilising the soil, encouraging participation, seeing what grows.

• How Norway’s public broadcaster overhauled its climate coverage

  But “the important societal debates now revolve around how to adapt to, or brake, global warming,” the guidelines declared. “Our coverage should primarily be about how action is being taken, not if action is necessary.”

Music for Mass (Bike Rides)

Russell has written about some of his recent ambient explorations and thoughts about performances of them.

Listening to some of the work reminds me of the music we had to one of the JoyRides a while back. The ethereal soundtrack to a night ride through the woods in Croxteth, adding to the other-worldly experience of cycling through the woods with just the lights from the bikes.

It's something that Danny (who organises the JoyRides) has experimented with more too. There was the time we added a projector to put crazy patterns onto the trees as we rode the Loop Line; and he and I have also talked about the overlapping soundscapes when, once or twice, we've had two soundsystems running at the same time at the front and back of a ride, and how they blend (or interfere) in the middle.

We're also always wondering about having lots of small speakers on many bikes, rather than one or two big soundsystems trying to cover the whole ride. What if we leant into that more, and gave each speaker something different to play? That would solve the perennial problem of trying to wirelessly sync so many speakers, and the "piece" would morph and adapt as riders moved around the pack.

So if you ever fancy coming for a ride Russell...

Interesting Things on the Internet: June 24th 2024 Edition

• A Transcender Manifesto – for a world beyond Capitalism. A seed. Dil, who wrote this, is a regular visitor to DoES Liverpool. It echoes lots of my thinking.
• I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again. Wondering how I could get all the local innovation and regeneration folk to read, and more importantly understand, this before the grifters move onto it.