base have not been made clear.
There have been many attempts to clarify the design
A Theory of Architecture Part 1: Pattern
Language vs. Form Language
00:00 - 23 March, 2014 by Nikos Salingaros
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2 languages: the pattern language, and the form language.
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Galleria di Diana in Venaria Royal Palace, an example of Classical architecture. The Classical Language is an
example of an "extremely successful form language". Image Courtesy of shutterstock.com
As you may have seen, ArchDaily has been publishing UNIFIED ARCHITECTURAL
THEORY, by the urbanist and controversial theorist Nikos A. Salingaros, in serial form.
However, in order to explain certain concepts in greater detail, we have decided to
pause this serialization and publish three excerpts from another of Salingaros books: A
THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE. The following excerpt, the first, explains the terms
Pattern Language (as well asantipatterns") and Form Language.
Design in architecture and urbanism is guided by two distinct complementary
languages: a pattern language, and a form language.
The pattern language contains rules for how human beings interact with built forms
a pattern language codifies practical solutions developed over millennia, which are
appropriate to local customs, society, and climate.
A form language, on the other hand, consists of geometrical rules for putting matter
together. It is visual and tectonic, traditionally arising from available materials and their
human uses rather than from images. Different form languages correspond to different
architectural traditions, or styles. The problem is that not all form languages are
adaptive to human sensibilities. Those that are not adaptive can never connect to a
pattern language. Every adaptive design method combines a pattern language with a
viable form language, otherwise it inevitably creates alien environments.
Architectural design is a highly complex undertaking. Heretofore, the processes at its
process, yet we still dont have a design method that can be used by students and
novices to achieve practical, meaningful, nourishing, human results.
In the absence of a design method and accompanying criteria for judging a design,
things have become very subjective, and therefore what is built today appears to be
influenced largely by fashion, forced tastes, and an individuals desire to garner
attention through novel and sometimes shocking expressions.
This Chapter puts forward a theory of architecture and urbanism based on two distinct
The pattern language codifies the interaction of human beings with their environment,
and determines how and where we naturally prefer to walk, sit, sleep, enter and move
through a building, enjoy a room or open space, and feel at ease or not in our garden.
The pattern language is a set of inherited tried-and-true solutions that optimize how the
built environment promotes human life and sense of wellbeing. It combines geometry
and social behavior patterns into a set of useful relationships, summarizing how built
form can accommodate human activities.
The importance of a pattern language for architecture was originally proposed by
Christopher Alexander and his associates. A fairly general pattern language was
discovered and presented by Alexander, who emphasized that, while many if not most
of the patterns in his pattern language are indeed universal, there actually exist an
infinite number of individual patterns that can be included in a pattern language. Each
pattern language reflects different modes of life, customs, and behavior, and is
appropriate to specific climates, geographies, cultures, and traditions. It is up to the
designer/architect to extract specific non-universal patterns as needed, by examining
the ways of life and tradition in a particular setting, and then to apply them to that
situation.
Living architecture is highly dependent on patterns, which shape buildings and spaces
accordingly. A pattern is a set of relationships, which can be realized using different
materials and geometries. Architects, however, confuse patterns with their
representation, i.e., what an arrangement looks like. Patterns are not material, though
we experience them with our senses. It is far more difficult to understand them
intellectually, and almost impossible to grasp patterns from within a world-view that
focuses exclusively on materials.
A pattern language for work environments can be put together by examining the
components of successful emotionally-comfortable work environments from different
cultures and periods around the world. A software developer today has many
requirements in common with a distant ancestor looking for a comfortable place to sit
and carve a bone or paint a piece of pottery. Being able to work in an emotionally-
supportive environment boosts morale and productivity, and cuts down on workplace
errors.
For several decades, however, architects and interior designers have insisted on
applying formal design rules to office environments. Such rules tend to give a standard
compromise that satisfies almost none of the fundamental requirements for a good
working environment. Their occupants usually characterize them as ranging from sterile
to oppressive. Here is a fundamental disconnect between what architects imagine office
space should look like, and the characteristics of the kind of space that users actually
require to be productive in.
In the theory of pattern languages actually developed more extensively in computer it can be connected to a form language and thus define an adaptive design method.
architecture than in buildings architecture the concept of antipattern plays a central It is imperative not to be fooled by a collection of antipatterns, otherwise our resulting
role. An antipattern shows how to do the opposite of the required solution. An design process will be non-adaptive, even though this may not be known at the
ineffective solution is often repeated because the same forces that gave rise to it in the beginning of the process. We will eventually see it in the non-adaptivity of the results, at
first place recur in other similar situations. Assuming that the futility and which time it will be too late to do anything about it (i.e., after an unnatural city such as
counterproductive nature of such a solution is evident (which is not always the case), its EUR, Milton Keynes, or la Dfense has been built).
occurrence can be studied to see what went wrong.
Antipatterns do not comprise a pattern language, just as a collection of mistakes do not
comprise a coherent body of knowledge. It is therefore not appropriate to talk of a
language of antipatterns, but simply a collection of antipatterns. Nevertheless,
antipatterns could (and often do) substitute for, and displace a genuine pattern
language, with very negative consequences.
Documenting an antipattern can save future designs from the same mistakes by
identifying a problematic solution before it is adopted. However, knowing the antipattern
does not automatically indicate the pattern, since the solution space is not one-
dimensional. Doing the opposite of the antipattern will not give the pattern, precisely
because there can be many different opposites going out in many different directions
in the solution space.
Pattern languages have evolved, and, as with all evolved systems, they have developed
an extraordinary degree of organized complexity. It is not possible to understand all this
complexity, let alone replace it by a design method based on deliberately simplified
rules. And yet, that has been the basic assumption of twentieth-century architects: that
we can simply replace all the evolved architectural solutions of the past with a few rules
that someone has made up (and which dont even have the benefit of experimental
verification).
The form language, on the other hand, is strictly geometrical. It is defined by the
elements of form as constituted by the floors, the walls, the ceiling, the partitions, and all
the architectural components or articulations, which together represent a particular form
and style of building.A form language is a repertoire of forms and surface elements
that can be combined to build any building, and so it represents more than just a
superficial style.
The form language depends on an inherited vocabulary of all the components used in
the assembly of a building; rules for how they can be combined; and how different levels
of scale can arise from the smaller components. It is a particular and practical
conception of tectonic and surface geometry. One extremely successful form language,
the Classical Language, relies on a wide range of variations of the Classical style of
building based on Greco-Roman ancestry.
After centuries of Classical buildings, even with varied and successful adaptations to
local climates, conditions, and uses, the Classical form language remains intact. Every
traditional architecture has its own form language. It has evolved from many different
influences of lifestyle, traditions, and practical concerns acting together to define the
geometry that structures take as the most natural visual expressions of a particular
culture. A form language is a set of evolved geometries on many different scales (i.e.,
ornamental, building, urban) that people of a particular culture identify with, and are
comfortable with. It is highly dependent on traditional and local materials at least that
was the case before the global introduction of nonspecific industrial materials.
My present aim is to be able to discern whether a pattern language is genuine, so that

A Theory of Architecture Part 2: The Adaptive
Design Method
00:00 - 30 March, 2014 by Nikos Salingaros
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4 environments that are adapted both to physical human use, as well as to human
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Image of Torre David in Venezuela, an unfinished skyscraper that has become a (modified/adapted) slum
settlement. "The human need to make a building adapt through form, surface, and ornament is innate.
Everyday people who own and build their own homes definitely apply a pattern language (albeit unknowingly)
because they want their dwellings to be as comfortable as possible. Here we have an adaptive design
method, which, were it not for the miserable conditions of life represented by the overcrowded slums of the
world, is an excellent example for architecture schools to study". Image Iwan Baan
As you may have seen, ArchDaily has been publishingUNIFIED ARCHITECTURAL
THEORY, by the urbanist and controversial theorist Nikos A. Salingaros, in serial form.
However, in order to explain certain concepts in greater detail, we have decided to
pause this serialization and publish three excerpts from another of Salingaros books: A
THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE. The previous excerpt explained the difference between
Pattern Language and Form Language. The following excerpt will establish how
these languages can combine to form the Adaptive Design Method.
Proposition: An adaptive design method arises out of a complementary pair
consisting of a pattern language and a form language.
I have indicated very briefly what a pattern language and a form language are; we still
need to understand what an adaptive design method refers to. Out of many
contemporary approaches to design, there are very few that result in structures and
sensibilities. In the past, the opposite was true. Human use is straightforward to
understand: the physical dimensions and geometry have to accommodate the human
body and its movement.
By accommodating human sensibilities, I mean that environments should make human
beings feel at ease; make them feel psychologically comfortable so that persons can
carry out whatever functions they have to unselfconsciously, without being disturbed by
the built environment in any way. This imposes a strong constraint on the design
process to adapt to the many factors (both known and unknown) that will influence the
user on many levels, including emotion. An adaptive design method should
accommodate all these criteria, and this Chapter shows how this may be accomplished.
A major source of confusion is that a design method could adapt to a style, but not to
human use and sense of wellbeing. For example, it might adapt to (conform to) a set of
predetermined geometrical prototypes, such as cubes and rectangular slabs. It takes on
that particular form language. Minimalist modernism has a clearly-defined geometrical
goal; i.e., its peculiar crystalline form language. It is successful on its own terms while at
the same time ignoring, or not trying to accommodate, human patterns of use and the
sensory response to built form and surface. This is the reason why minimalist
modernism is incompatible with Alexanders Pattern Language. In this Chapter, I will
use the term adaptive to refer strictly to fitting the built environment to human beings,
and not to abstract ideas or geometries.
Since there exist an infinite number of patterns that can contribute to a pattern
language, and an infinite number of form languages, there are of course an infinite
number of adaptive design methods that combine two languages. Each adaptive design
method is unique. The crucial point is that there are also an infinite number of design
methods that act against adaptive design by producing structures which are not suitable
to human needs. In the absence of an accepted term for design that ignores human
needs, I will call such actions non-adaptive design.
Post-industrial design is not fundamentally adaptive. Its form language (or rather, set of
related form languages) produces structures that are often hostile to human
sensibilities. Studies by environmental psychologists have confirmed physiological
reactions such as the onset of anxiety and signals of body stress in such environments.
I want to look for systemic causes of this non-adaptivity. For reasons already discussed
in Chapter 6, minimalism effectively precludes the use of patterns, both visual and
Alexandrine patterns. That means that patterns of human activity cannot be
accommodated within its design canon, thus characterizing it as non-adaptive. To
proudly proclaim such a design method as functional is a mockery of the term, but it is
admittedly a remarkably effective propaganda ploy that helps in its proliferation.
Architectural form languages survive because they often acquire non-architectural
meaning, after which they can ignore the need to be adaptive to human needs. In that
case, a form language is no longer part of an adaptive design method; it becomes split
from its complementary pattern language. Instead of expressing an adaptive tectonic
culture, the form language becomes a set of visual symbols that operate under the
guise of moral principles (and thus become emotionally loaded). Using that form
language then becomes an end in itself, detached from human life. This architecture
has little to do with buildings that accommodate human beings, or with tectonics, but is a
statement using a formal visual vocabulary. Such an architecture has its own purpose,
disguised with moral precepts that together define a completely different world-view for
those who accept them.
An adaptive design method requires the union of a pattern language with a form
language. If either the pattern language or the form language is flawed, then the design
method will fail to create adaptive structures. For example, high-rise towers set in vast
open spaces satisfy neither a viable form language nor a pattern language they are
iconic design failures that get repeated because architects make a lot of money building
them. One may claim to employ a pattern language together with a primitive form
language to create structures barely suitable for human habitation and use, such as
contemporary buildings that try to use Alexandrine patterns. Those buildings may
partially satisfy some functional patterns, but the more they stick exclusively to a
minimalist or high-tech form language, they more they will feel dead and alienating, so
that their users are uncomfortable.
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Nikos Salingaros
Two instances of partial success come to mind. In the mixed example of central Tel
Aviv, an early modernist form language is tied to a traditional European urban pattern
language, as laid out by Sir Patrick Geddes, with successful results. The buildings do
not connect so much on an architectural scale, yet they do connect well on the urban
scale to create a lively environment. Other illustrative examples with mixed success
include dwellings built by alternative counterculture architects soon after the Pattern
Language appeared. They satisfy all the patterns, but they look somewhat chaotic and
unbalanced far from satisfying Alexanders original intent of ordered geometrical
coherence. The reason is that their builders had no form language to draw upon. These
buildings were built within a culture that did not wish to refer to any tradition, and did not
have the capacity to create a new form language (the multicolored psychedelic art of
that culture was never applied to architecture in a way that would help the geometry).
In the opposite instance, one can use antipatterns together with a form language to
damage both built and natural environments. Twentieth-century buildings were built
using a distorted version of the Classical form language that are inhuman either
because of scale, megalomania, or the desire to intimidate. They may look nice from a
distance, but are hostile in actual use. This is a characteristic of Fascist architecture.
Some modernist architects were also very fond of employing parts of a form language of
rich, detailed materials, but to intentionally create alien forms. The surfaces are adaptive
in these cases, but the geometry is not (sending a mixed message of attractive
materials in a hostile setting). Another failed example is found in recent traditional-
looking mansions isolated in American suburbia. They use a form language (that
happens to be irrelevant to the site) but no urban pattern language, so those buildings
remain disconnected. They have a great image, but no functionality on the urban scale.
It is only the correct pairing of pattern language with form language that results in an
adaptive design.
The architecture of squatter settlements is an interesting case of genuinely adaptive
application. Those slum dwellers use a form language that is determined by available
scrap materials to build their own houses. Residents are preoccupied with basic
survival, and have no wish to copy elements of a form language that was generated
outside their immediate circumstances. There are simply no resources available to
make an architectural statement, although ornament and surface decoration appear on
the most modest structures because they are felt to be essential. The human need to
make a building adapt through form, surface, and ornament is innate. Everyday people
who own and build their own homes definitely apply a pattern language (albeit
unknowingly) because they want their dwellings to be as comfortable as possible. Here
we have an adaptive design method, which, were it not for the miserable conditions of
life represented by the overcrowded slums of the world, is an excellent example for
architecture schools to study.
As the above examples make clear, an adaptive design method provides the means of
creation, but not the product. It gives one the framework and tools for creative
expression. It still requires a talented architect or sensitive non-architect to use the
language to design a building. Working with a complete, richly-expressive language
makes that task immeasurably easier. Great architects can use an existing form
language in an innovative manner to create new architectural expressions, or they can
invent their own form language. (A pattern language, however, cannot be invented: it
has to be discovered). A primitive form language severely reduces architectural
expression. With a flawed form language, new or old, even the greatest architect has
trouble making something useful and adaptive.

A Theory of Architecture Part 3: Why Primitive
Form Languages Spread
00:00 - 6 April, 2014 by Nikos Salingaros
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8 complete form language unless it possesses a complex internal structure. The exact
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"the architectural establishment continues to ignore indigenous building cultures and the human value of what
they represent. For example, traditional building and urban geometry in sub-Saharan Africa is now revealed to
be essentially fractal, thus revising our customary (and totally erroneous) conception of those cultures as
mathematically under-developed." Image of El Molo Hut, Lake Turkana, Kenya.. Image Courtesy of
shutterstock.com
As you may have seen, ArchDaily has been publishingUNIFIED ARCHITECTURAL
THEORY, by the urbanist and controversial theorist Nikos A. Salingaros, in serial form.
However, in order to explain certain concepts in greater detail, we have decided to
pause this serialization and publish three excerpts from another of Salingaros books: A
THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE.The first excerpt explained the difference between
Pattern Language and Form Language, while the second established how these and urban geometry in sub-Saharan Africa is now revealed to be essentially fractal, thus
languages can combine to form the Adaptive Design Method. The following, final,
excerpt distinguishes between viable, complex form languages that have evolved over
time and primitive, non-languages that have come to dominate the 20th century due to
their iconic simplicity (and despite their non-adaptive characteristics).
Independently of their technological achievements, all groups of human beings have
developed a richly complex spoken language. Differences arise in specificities, in the
breadth of vocabulary for concepts important to that culture, and in their transition to a
written language, but those do not affect the general richness of the language. Every
languages internal structure has to obey general principles that are common to all
languages. A primitive language or non-language, by contrast, is characterized by the
reduction or absence of such internal complexity and structure. The complexity of
human thought sets a rather high threshold for the complexity that any language has to
be able to express through combinatoric groupings.
Turning now to architecture, a viable form language is also characterized by its high
degree of internal complexity. Furthermore, the complexity of different form languages
has to be comparable, because each form language shares a commonality with other
form languages on a general meta-linguistic level. A primitive form language severely
limits architectonic expression to crude or inarticulate statements.
So, while each form language may be distinct in its components, it is not really a
details of this structure must necessarily parallel the internal structure of any other fully-
developed language, and in particular, that of a pattern language. Roughly, these
properties can be described as combinatorial, connective, and hierarchical features,
which we see in our own written and spoken language.
A form language that adapts to human beings contains and codifies certain very
specific geometrical properties such as fractal structure, connectivity, coherence, and
scaling (as discussed in the previous Chapters of this book). Again, a form language
that does not contain these mathematical properties is a primitive form language, or
non-language, because it is too sparse to define a rich language of forms. There
exists a range of form languages, from non-languages, to primitive form languages,
increasing in complexity of combinatoric expression up to genuine form languages.
This argument is borne out by the enormous number of distinct form languages
developed independently by different peoples around the world. It is reasonable to claim
that for each spoken language, there is also a form language that those people use to
build and to shape their environment. The means of verbal expression and accumulated
culture defining a literary tradition has a parallel in an ornamental tradition and material
culture, which includes a form language that is an expression of inventiveness in
geometry and tectonics. Each traditional form language is distinct, yet possesses a
comparably high degree of organized complexity in terms of visual vocabulary and
combinatoric possibilities. Erasing a form language erases the culture that created it. It
is no different than erasing a cultures literature, or its musical heritage.
It is only in recent years that the mathematical sophistication of traditional form
languages has begun to be documented. Mathematicians and ethnologists are doing
this work, while the architectural establishment continues to ignore indigenous building
cultures and the human value of what they represent. For example, traditional building
revising our customary (and totally erroneous) conception of those cultures as
mathematically under-developed fractals were re-discovered in the West only very
recently. Loosely (and deprecatingly) classed together as vernacular architectures, this
vast body of diverse and complex styles, geometries, and ways of understanding space
and structure shames the poverty of contemporary architectural styles. Traditional form
languages are rich, complete, and technically (not industrially) advanced. In terms of
richness and underlying substance, which are crucially important to life, contemporary
form languages promoted by the Western architectural design magazines would seem
to represent an evolutionary regression.
Separate from preserving traditional form languages for their informational and cultural
value, the inevitable evolution of form languages makes possible entirely innovative
architectural expressions. Such an evolution is possible only if a form language retains
the high level of its internal complexity. Traditional form languages around the world transformed from a medium for transmitting commercial information to an instrument of
were dismissed as primitive by Western colonial and economic powers, and were social change and control. Its first target was cultural traditions that blocked the
replaced by variants of Neo-Classical or Beaux-Arts form languages. Cultural consumption of inferior new industrial products. These inhibitions were overcome by
colonialism in architecture comes about by destroying languages that are thousands of making individuals ashamed of their instinctive preferences, labeling them as
years old, as an affirmation of superiority and power. backward, and thereby opening up the public to market influence. Thus, form
The linguistic analogy makes it difficult to understand why a primitive form language languages that threatened the supremacy of the post-industrial aesthetic of glass, steel,
would ever survive, let alone dominate another more evolved form language. Why and concrete slabs were stigmatized by the architectural critics. This style based on a
maintain a system in use that severely limits ones expression? The reason we do this is specific industrial look could not be sold to the world until traditional form languages
that every form language has extra-linguistic attributes that help in its proliferation. Once were eliminated. The way the built environment looked anywhere in the world would
invented, the limited visual vocabulary of a primitive form language may be copied henceforth be controlled by the advertising media; all traditional form languages
unthinkingly by more and more persons. Unlike a true language, which survives through condemned to extinction in the interest of Western industrial and ideological dominance.
its linguistic utility, a form language can survive strictly through its iconic properties (and
not its linguistic ones). Indeed, constant repetition through visual copying is the key to its
transmission, promotion, and acceptance by an increasing number of architects.
We know of biological entities that split from more complex organisms so as to
propagate freely and with enormous success: they are the viruses. Because of its
nature, the virus can exist in an inert, easily-transmittable form such as a powder. This
is possible because a virus is a biologically simple structure with very low informational
overhead.
In the propagation of architectural images, the media play a key role, showing and
praising carefully selected structures and urban projects (and ignoring everything else).
Our architectural schools and press have also done a very effective job of promoting
primitive form languages while unwittingly suppressing true form languages. Familiarity
makes people overlook a form languages linguistic deficiencies.
Someone who has been raised in the twentieth century and has been taught through
association that beautiful objects have no hierarchical organization will then apply this
rule subconsciously to design a building or a city. Even though people might find such
environments intellectually acceptable, they can never overcome the negative
sensations that such an architecture brings into play.
Why did this occur only at the beginning of the twentieth century and not before? I
believe that it had to do with radical social changes spurred by population pressure and
political oppression so that for the first time, many people saw a chance of radical social
improvement through technology. They were willing to sacrifice adaptive design in
exchange for the (false) promise of a better future offered by industrialization. Prior to
that, people on all socioeconomic levels shaped their environment as far as they could
to provide physical comfort and emotional wellbeing.
Another contributing factor was the creation of a new communications network formed
by the convergence of telephone, telegraph, newspapers, magazines, and film. The new
media tied the world together as never before, yet also made possible the rapid
proliferation of advertising and political propaganda. The spread of modernism,
combining visually simple images with the promise of a new utopian world, could never
have occurred were it not for the new media. Advertising created the desire for industrial
products that we didnt really need. Just as in the case of internet computer viruses,
which could not exist before the internet, primitive architectural form languages could
spread only through the first architectural picture magazines. At the same time,
advertising favors the transmission of simplistic messages, slogans, images, and ideas.
As a result of its tremendous power to shape peoples minds, advertising quickly