공간의 패턴들에 대한 크리스토퍼 알렉산더의 견해

Christopher Alexander on patterns of space:¹

These patterns of events are always interlocked with 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.

On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeating endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations…. And each of these elements has a specific pattern of events associated with it…. But this picture of space does not explain how - or why - these elements associate themselves with definite and quite specific patterns of events.

If the elements are different every lime that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or a town: these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate “atomic” constituents of space. Since every church is different, the so-called element we call “church” is not constant at all…. Beyond its elements each building is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements…. At first sight, it seems as though these patterns of relationships are separate from the elements…. When we look closer, we realize that these relationships are not extra, but necessary to the elements, indeed a part of them…. When we look closer still, we realize that even this view is still not very accurate. For it is not merely true that the relationships are attached to the elements: the fact is that the elements themselves are patterns of relationships…. Each one of these patterns is a morphological law, which establishes a set of relationships in space.

$X \rightarrow r(A, B, …)$ means “within a context of type $X$, the parts $A, B, …$ are related by the relationship $r$.”

(See also Category theory)

Further, each pattern in the space has a pattern of events associated within it…. Of course, the pattern of space, does not “cause” the pattern of events…. But there is a fundamental inner connection between each pattern of events, and the pattern of space in which it happens. For the pattern in the space is, precisely, the precondition, the requirement, which allows the pattern of events to happen.

And, what is most remarkable of all, the number of the patterns out of which a building or a town is made is rather small…. In short, the patterns have enormous power and depth; they have the power to create an almost endless variety, they are so deep, so general, that they can combine in millions upon millions of different ways, to such an extent, that when we walk through Paris we are mainly overwhelmed by the variety; and the fact that there are these deep invariants, lying behind the vast variety, and generating it, is really an amazing shock.

Footnotes

1. Chapter 5 “Patterns of space”, The timeless way of building ↩