DESIGN PATTERNS AND

LIVING ARCHITECTURE
NIKOS A. SALINGAROS

2017

REFERENCE: Nikos A. Salingaros, “Design Patterns and Living Architecture”,

Sustasis Press, Portland, Oregon, 2017. Buy the printed booklet from Levellers Press:
levellerspress.com/store/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=1206
The EBook is offered in various formats: Kindle, Nook, iBook, Google Play, and
Kobo from different sites around the world.

THIS ONLINE VERSION containing half the booklet — 32 out of 72 pages — is

made available free for student use. The remaining Chapters 7-10, the Afterword,
and the Appendix may be found online.

COPYRIGHT AND COMMERCIAL USE: This compilation is CC BY-SA

Nikos A. Salingaros, 2017. No commercial use of any kind is permitted unless
specific permission is granted in writing in advance. All drawings are by and ©
Nikos A. Salingaros.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: This booklet collects a series of ten essays originally

published online by Metropolis in 2015-2016. They incorporate revised material
from two earlier articles “Living Structure Comes From Patterns” published online
in e-architect in 2015. David Brussat helped to edit the early drafts. Thanks to
Metropolis Editors Susan S. Szenasy and Vanessa Quirk for encouraging this project
and for excellent help with final editing. An earlier version of the “Afterword” was
published online in ArchNewsNow in April 2015. The older article “Pattern
Language and Interactive Design” (2003) is reprinted here as an appendix.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 4
1. The 21st Century Needs Its Own Paradigm Shift in Architecture.
A cure for spatial design amnesia 5
The need for a new language 6
Designed monotony versus natural variety 8
2. Architecture For People, Not Machines.
How machines differ from organisms 10
Designing for organisms vs. machines 11
3. Living Structures Should Come From Living Patterns.
What is a living pattern? 13
Twelve living patterns help define human spaces 14
Table 1. Twelve living patterns for space. 14
4. How Do We Create Healing Spaces?
Space can liberate us from stress 18
Extracting patterns from observations 19
Table 2. How to observe a pattern in existing design. 20
Patterns as design constraints 20
5. Living Patterns and the Principle of Concavity.
Spaces that reassure our body 23
Space is experienced as positive when it is coherent 24
Living patterns enhance our lives and health 26
6. Why Do Some People Choose Oppressive Environments?
Our emotions validate adaptive design 28
Table 3. Criteria for adaptive design success. 29
Ceiling height and emotional wellbeing in rooms 30
7. Living Patterns As Tools of Adaptive Design.
Traditional design incorporates mental safety mechanisms 33

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 Table 4. Five patterns on gardens and parks. 33
Repetition does not make a pattern 34
Evaluating new patterns 35
8. Abandoning Hostile Design For a Living Architecture.
Living architecture relies upon emergence 37
Table 5. Conditions for emergence. 37
Intentionally hostile environments 39
9. On Cognitive Dissonance and the Architectural Canon.
When dominant culture lost its spatial sensibility 42
A teaching experiment with unexpected (and frightening) results 43
Table 6. The present-day process of choosing canonical buildings. 44
10. What Ancient Chinese Philosopher Mo-Tzu Can Teach Designers Today.
Precedent is useful when it can be verified independently 46
Architectural ritual shapes everyday life 47
Conclusion 50
Afterword: Health prompts a new approach 51
Appendix: Pattern Language and Interactive Design.
Introduction 54
Two contradictory models for urban interfaces 55
The design method in practice 56
Preserving what is most valuable 57
Emotional dimension of design 59
How patterns are displaced by anti-patterns 59
Anti-patterns that destroy urban interfaces 60
Table 7. Anti-patterns for urban interfaces. 61
Conclusion 61
Original dates of publication 63
References 64
Further readings, and a review of Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern
Language 71

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 Introduction

This collection of articles describes how to use design patterns to create better —
more emotionally-responsive and human — architectural environments. The pattern
concept was introduced by Christopher Alexander and his collaborators in 1977,
and has enjoyed wide success outside architectural culture. For various reasons, this
design method and its accompanying philosophy of adaptation have not yet entered
the architectural mainstream. Nor are design patterns taught at universities on a
regular basis, since academics correctly perceive them as representing the opposite
of formalistic design (and clearly privilege the second methodology).
This booklet has three rather ambitious aims:
• To educate practicing architects and the general public on why design patterns
are both useful and necessary.
• To explain how the pattern method applied to the built environment contains
the seeds for adaptive design.
• To establish the scientific validity for design patterns, while invalidating
methods based on fashion.
A promised new era of unprecedented design innovation has as its goal to create
a humane, healing environment for the user. Nevertheless, this aim conflicts with
the construction industry’s drive to finance self-indulgent expressions for architects’
egos and personal whims. As such, this booklet is bound to generate controversy
because it steps on many toes. Yet if our society wishes for a better future, it has to
make a number of necessary changes.
The essays refer to scientific results that are published elsewhere in more
technical language. Readers who wish for further detailed information, or to verify
the claims made here, can follow up the references. The breadth and depth of this
topic go far beyond visual design, to describe essential aspects of human life.
Patterns are actually one small portion of a body of research by a large number of
contributors spanning several decades.
Anyone eager to apply design patterns needs practical guidelines. The literature
is unfortunately scanty on this topic. A book chapter reprinted here as an Appendix
outlines how to use design patterns in practice. Even though design patterns were
first published in 1977, they have a penetrating lesson to teach contemporary
architecture. Design patterns were a remarkably prescient methodology that is only
now finding its most profound expression. They contain the seeds of a new,
adaptive approach to architecture.

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 1. The 21st Century Needs Its Own Paradigm
Shift in Architecture

A cure for spatial design amnesia

For well above half a century, most new buildings delivered by architects to
owners have had extremely poor spaces, both inside and out.
I blame this sad state of affairs on the criteria used for the critical evaluation of
the built environment. Buildings that are expected to inspire other architects and
evolve new building practices are assessed in the design media as well as in
academia as the latest fashions in form. It’s hard to see them as major
advancements in the art and science of creating human habitation. Excited write-
ups and the latest round of design awards praise buildings seemingly intended to
induce the greatest level of personal anxiety by those who use them. All this merely
lays the ground for the next round of psychologically debilitating places. Such
failures, on the part of academic institutions and professional designers, would not
have been tolerated by architects operating in any other age of human history.

Figure 1.1. Non-adaptive double-loaded skyscraper corridor destroys urban space. Interior
spaces are not much better in this energy-wasting formalistic statement.

The early 20th century paradigm shift that came with replacing traditional ways
of building by modernist design methods was a wrenching experience; it replaced
centuries of cultural preference for humanly adaptive spaces, and imposed on us,
instead, an acceptance of psychologically damaging ones. To undo the last century’s
paradigm shift will be similarly traumatic for everyone involved in design and

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construction today. A whole set of practices and institutions need to be dismantled:
Architecture prizes awarded by august committees of practitioners, academics and
critics with long resumes, distinguished patrons smiling for photos next to
pasteboard images of buildings — these are easily dispensable, but no less necessary
to end than the decades of professional, academic, and critical myopia that have
buttressed the industry’s ability to tilt the architectural playing field against a more
healthy, humane way of building. The forces that validated deficient design would
be, and should be, discredited in a new paradigm shift — the sooner the better.
We need to begin again from zero.
We do not merely require a new architecture. Such an objective would be
immediately misinterpreted as simply a new design style. What is proposed here is
the foundation of a new kind of architecture: an entirely novel way to think about
and practice architecture, extending far beyond any superficial novelty of
appearance. Triggering a new paradigm shift, one that revalues the value of living
structures, won’t be easy. We recognize that a new shift in the way we evaluate the
built environment would be as destabilizing to today’s established order as the one
that occurred in the 1920s.
The 21st century solution is to re-discover and document the properties of
responsive spaces that adapt naturally to human needs. Fortunately, we have tools
that make this gigantic task much easier than before. The design patterns of
Christopher Alexander from 40 years ago provide pieces of the solution that we can
put together for a contemporary understanding of space (Alexander et al., 1977).
And there is an enormous amount of new material from current research that was
not available back then (Mehaffy & Salingaros, 2015).
But first, what can we do to motivate a paradigm shift? We cannot turn back the
clock. To misinterpret our program as merely returning to pre-war traditional
architecture is a mistake. Such an error is behind the most facile and intellectually
empty arguments against change, used to block progress in adaptive design. In fact,
we wish to leave the non-adaptive past behind us, and jump forward to a new,
adaptive architecture in which spaces and surfaces are exquisitely responsive to
human biology.
This movement is both motivated and justified by modern science, and has
nothing to do with fashion or design ideology. Resistance to introducing an
adaptive mode of design is extremely strong, because the cultural mainstream is
invested in what is, not what could be. People are frightened of abandoning
conventional ways of interpreting the world, even if those ways are demonstrably
false. Here, convention and familiarity trump truth and science. It has always been
thus with humankind.

The need for a new language

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 We require a new design language to describe the proposed paradigm shift
because today’s design language is simply incapable of expressing the elements of
“living” space. Our common language possesses neither the vocabulary nor the
syntax to do so. Otherwise, we are forced to reach back to words and expressions
from other topics, especially the romantic descriptions of the 19th century and
beyond, to explain contemporary scientific results. That would be inaccurate and
misleading. Furthermore, it risks condemning the whole effort to failure, from the
beginning, because it gives the false impression that we are going back to those
historical times instead of moving forward to a better future.
Already by 1977, when A Pattern Language was published (Alexander et al.,
1977), the cultural mainstream had brushed aside living space as an irrelevant
concept, and for this reason it was never assimilated. Consequently, there was no
need to describe it in words.
The notion that space could be “alive” was relevant only to an antique
worldview, which was considered valid until the 20th century. But the mass
consciousness of the population has changed radically since then. There was no
one within mainstream culture who was ready to assimilate this information in
1977. Even those individuals who recognized the tremendous potential for these
ideas were hesitant to adopt them, because they would have to re-organize their
mental structures in order to do so, and reject common cultural assumptions. The
implied hierarchical re-organization was too radical. Society was not ready to
abandon comfortable ways of thought.

Figure 1.2. Building footprints adapt to climate, flows, and other existing buildings.
Allowing each one to differ from the others helps to create usable urban space.

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 Is society more receptive today? I believe it is. We have become technological,
and ironically, advanced technology has revealed the inadequacies of the early
industrial model. It is now possible to take the language of contemporary
technology, and use it to describe a new kind of architecture.
Alexander recognized the need for a new language, which he addressed in his
book, The Timeless Way of Building (1979). In it he describes the “Quality Without A
Name” — the QWAN, as it is known in computer science — which for practical
purposes can, indeed, be named. It is the quality of a living environment. It
describes systemic harmony, organized complexity, and coherence in our
surroundings, and can be distinguished from crude mechanical principles that have
dominated design in the machine age. It is present in structures that make us feel
healthier whenever we are exposed to them. We receive sustenance from artifacts
and settings that possess this healing property, which reflects the processes of
biological reproduction and development. This healing process occurs in
environments whose positive emotional quality comes from innumerable mutually
reinforcing and psychologically nourishing interactions.
But this did not solve the problem. While Alexander’s Zen-like treatment of the
linguistic problem appealed to some — and continues to appeal to them very
strongly — mainstream architects did not embrace it. And so, unfortunately, that
opportunity was lost, and it was not picked up again until decades later by
pragmatic computer scientists. After 20 years, with The Nature of Order (2001-2005),
Alexander offered another solution, developed in great detail over four volumes, by
introducing the concept of “wholeness” and his “theory of centers” as part of a new
design vocabulary.

Designed monotony versus natural variety

Monotony and variety can apply to both the natural and the artificial
environments. In our artificial or built environment are two distinct classes of
object: copied and generated. A template, or set of design rules, that allows some
freedom of execution generates objects; it does not copy them. A copy is literally
stamped out. Designing and building in a generative process involves many steps,
each of which addresses a range of factors, introducing variety, just as in nature.
Variations are the result of environmental forces that differ from place to place and
in the same place at different times.
In The Nature of Order (2001–2005), Alexander emphasizes that traditional and
vernacular architecture is of this generative type. We see enormous variety and little
monotony in tribal settlements, in traditional urban fabric, in historical and
vernacular buildings, even in architecture designed according to rigorous classical
orders of ancient pedigree. The reason is that, as a natural function of their
production over and over again by humans, they adapt to the complexity of the
actual conditions in place.

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 With industrialization, our design paradigm underwent a drastic shift: from
generating form to copying form. This was the point of early mass production.
Identical copies, with their supposed high degree of simplicity and low cost, became
the norm and the primary objective of industrial design. But producing identical
copies means isolating design from local forces — indeed, any adaptive forces. The
industrial age came to insist on linear, monotonous alignment of identical copies
(Salingaros, 2011). This triggered monotony as society’s principal psychological
reaction to the ideals of repetition and mechanical alignment.
Monotony in our environment has profound consequences on our psyche. A
worldview that exalts visual monotony has taken over an earlier environment
shaped by the variety of natural forms. If industrial production tied to economic
growth and prosperity necessarily generates monotony, then design variety is sure to
be considered a drag on the operation of our economy. Indeed, this substitution of
monotony for variety now dominates our society, especially in fields that claim to
exalt creativity, including architecture.
Nature certainly shows little monotony (Salingaros, 2011). This might appear
surprising, since geological mechanisms follow the same basic tectonic forces to
produce change — erosion, pressure, glaciation, heat, plate shift, fracture, etc. —
while biological mechanisms follow the same basic organic principles to grow,
reproduce, and decay. Organisms use DNA to generate copies. One would expect
the results to be identical, but they are not. Everything in nature is “generated” but
is, in fact, never “copied”. Each example of an object or organism is created from
the same design template, yet the result differs slightly each time. Individual objects
and organisms differ because step-by-step generation creates small variations. Thus,
the positioning on the evolutionary timeline of each natural entity, be it a rock
formation or a salamander, is always complex, never monotonous.

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 2. Architecture For People, Not Machines

How machines differ from organisms

Throughout their lives, people are continually exposed to entirely distinct types
of architectural experiences. Explaining the difference comes down to the contrast
between the machine and the organism; these definitions are crucial for
understanding and judging architecture (Salingaros & Masden, 2008; 2015).
The crucial distinction between machines and organisms goes far beyond
architecture, of course, and is nicely clarified in the “Santiago School of Cognition”
(Hallowell, 2009). Let me summarize this important work by Humberto Maturana
and Francisco Varela here.
First, organisms evolve in a competitive and hostile natural setting. A living
organism is defined as a fairly self-contained entity that possesses mechanisms for
responding and adapting to its environment. Biological forces continuously
triggered by environmental factors help keep the organism alive, and determine the
living system’s behavior. A mobile organism decides where to move and where to
stay, using an exquisitely developed sensory system to navigate its surroundings.
Recurring physical situations that enhance the organism’s life define its living
patterns: the organism will seek those out of instinct. Conversely, the absence of
living patterns puts an organism on alert.
The organism senses external agents that influence its environment and could
interfere with the organism’s natural response-driven choices. Any departure from
living patterns triggers survival mechanisms. Forcing an organism to deviate from
its innate living patterns only results in disturbing the organism’s natural complex
functions and actions. It reacts to our interventions in unexpected ways —
unexpected, yet perfectly logical according to the organism’s own program for
survival. We might think that an animal or person would love cantilevered
overhangs, for example, yet those create alarm if you are underneath them. Our
design choices change the dynamics of the living structures the environment
contains, in ways we need to understand.

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 Figure 2.1. Traditional corridors employ natural light and numerous, visually-interesting
patterns to create a healing environment, giving us a positive feeling: “This space is so nice
that I should spend some time here instead of just walking through.”

In contrast to an organism, which responds to stimuli and thus is difficult to

control, a simple machine or inanimate entity is entirely subject to control from
external agents. It can be molded or changed in many different ways: it has no
intrinsic patterns that it prefers or falls back on. With rare exceptions, a machine
does not interact with its environment, and so transforming its immediate setting
has no effect.

Designing for organisms vs. machines

Designing for organisms is challenging: in adaptive design, we cannot control
intrinsic biological needs and sensitivities to the environment. We need to first
discover the organism’s repertoire of living patterns, and then develop design rules
for achieving them in practice. We must gather primary feedback in order to shape
an accommodating environment and determine whether a building adapts to its
users. Discoverable tools, such as design patterns, must be filed away and used to
help identify potential reactions to design before it is even built (Alexander et al.,
1977). It’s up to the designer to anticipate a user’s negative and positive responses.

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 Figure 2.2. Corridor built according to the logic of the machine affects human users by
generating negative emotions: “This space is dreary and depressing; I need to pass through it
as quickly as possible.”

In comparison, designing for machines is easy: this is the industrial approach to

form. Design thinking focuses primarily on cost, efficiency, and materials. It
requires no feedback. The architect quickly invents whatever shapes, spaces, and
surfaces are minimally sufficient for what one wants the machine to do, or what
one thinks the machine should be doing, and this is built without any questioning
or testing. It’s safest just to copy previous industrial typologies. Efficiency suppresses
emergence, lacks awareness of living structure, and certainly does not admit living
patterns into the design process.
The contemporary built environment tends to be dominated by monotonous
repetition of industrial typologies, interspersed with unique singular forms, yet
neither follows any adaptive logic. These pervasive practices represent the antitheses
of responsive environments anchored on living patterns. We create machines but
not organisms.
Following Maturana and Varela, design decisions come down to interference
and control versus feedback and learning. Does one wish to dominate the
environment and all it contains, or to acknowledge, respect, and accommodate its
living patterns? If we choose the latter, then we have to document and interpret the
effects that interventions in the built environment have on humans and nature.
Our design goal is then to support, through a material framework, the natural
patterns of living structure.

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 3. Living Structures Should Come From
Living Patterns

What is a living pattern?

Patterns describe essential relationships among the elements of systems, and
provide a unique and useful tool for handling and organizing complexity. This
truth, embodied for centuries in the practice of creating human habitation, has in
recent years been dissected and catalogued by science. Computer researchers have
adopted the pattern method both to understand and to manipulate complexity.
Advances in our knowledge of how patterns reflect the ordered complexity of
nature has led to breakthroughs in computer technology that continue to fuel
economic growth and development not just in industry but in every realm of our
society (Leitner, 2015; Mehaffy & Salingaros, 2015).
Patterns of behavior, and of practice in any field of human endeavor, evolve over
time with constant repetition, each repetition embedded in and learning from its
predecessors. Any pattern arising from such evolutionary selection over generations
is irreducible; that is, it cannot be understood in terms of simpler components. It is
not a multiplication of a prior component but an accretion to its complexity. It
grows ever more subtle, ever more useful, and comes closer and closer to reflecting
how nature works: It is a living pattern. Such a pattern can be combined with
others into a system that reflects an ever-higher level of useful relationships
(Salingaros, 2005: Chapter 8).
We rely on techniques akin to genetic programming to discover evolved
solutions as general methods for manipulating complexity without destroying its
order. By examining an enormous number of possible small variations, a pattern is
selected as the optimal configuration, the one that provides the most useful
feedback. Direct simulated evolution is computationally very intensive, so the
results, once obtained, are worth documenting in a pattern format.

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 Figure 3.1. Space that exists “out there” will be used only reluctantly by human beings,
because of deep psychological reasons. Contrary to what one hears and reads today about the
spaces of “modernity” and “post-modernity”, there are still only two types of urban space:
human versus inhuman.

Twelve living patterns help define human spaces

The key question in architecture is how to design a space that feels reassuring on
at least an unconscious level. Incredibly, we have been producing hostile, anxiety-
inducing spaces or dreary, depressing spaces for decades, at least as judged by their
users. A dozen living patterns selected from Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern
Language (Alexander et al., 1977) can help architects get beyond this deplorable
practice. The following pattern summaries are my own, and they focus on spatial
aspects. The reader is urged to consult the original, lengthier version of each
numbered pattern, which includes research material giving detailed arguments
and/or scientific validation for the patterns.

Table 1. Twelve living patterns for space:

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 Pattern 61: Small Public Squares. Build public squares with a width of
approximately 60 feet. Their length can vary. The walls enclosing the space,
whether partially or wholly surrounding it, should make us feel as if we are in a
large open public room.
Pattern 106: Positive Outdoor Space. The built structures partially surrounding an
outdoor space, be it rectangular or circular, must define, in its wall elements, a
concave perimeter boundary, making the space itself convex overall.
Pattern 115: Courtyards Which Live. The best courtyards have many entry points, a
view to the streets beyond, and enclosing walls that are fenestrated, not blank.
These are used most often.
Pattern 124: Activity Pockets. The success of urban space depends on what can
occur along its boundaries. A space will be lively only if there are pockets of activity
all around its inner edges.
Pattern 167: Six-Foot Balcony. The minimum depth of social space for a balcony is
six feet, preferably with its space partly enclosed, either canopied, protected from
nearby observers by side screens, or partly recessed into the facade. Recessed
balconies provide an excellent sense of enclosure. But if balconies are narrower
than six feet (going out), are totally exposed or entirely cantilevered, they are rarely
used.
Pattern 179: Alcoves. To heighten the sense of intimacy indoors, build a useful
smaller space within a larger space, partially enclosed with concave boundaries and
a lower ceiling. Its width and depth could both be approximately six feet.
Pattern 180: Window Place. A concave boundary can incorporate windows.
Examples range from (small) a window seat where the wall is deepened to create a
space around the window, to (medium) a bay window where windows wrap around
an extruded portion of the space, to (large) a glazed alcove where windows partially
wrap around a room.
Pattern 183: Workspace Enclosure. The best place for working has no more than
50 to 75 percent of its perimeter enclosed by walls or windows. A workspace needs
at least 60 square feet of floor area for each person.
Pattern 188: Bed Alcove. Give the bed its own partial enclosure. The space should
feel comfortable, not too small, with a lower ceiling than the main part of the
bedroom.
Pattern 190: Ceiling Height Variety. Give a building’s rooms different ceiling
heights to enhance comfort at every scale of activity. High ceilings contribute to
formality, low ceilings to informality, with the lowest height for the greater intimacy
of alcoves.
Pattern 191: The Shape of Indoor Space. Indoor space should be roughly
rectangular in plan with straight, vertical walls for practicality, but with concave

15
wall portions where possible, and a roughly symmetrical vaulted ceiling. One-sided,
sloped ceilings and sharp, slanted, or re-entrant angles in walls generate discomfort.
Pattern 203: Child Caves. Create small “cave-like” spaces in a house, or outside,
for children to experience and play in.

Reading these living patterns should evoke a sense of human space that envelops
and nourishes us; it goes far beyond strict mechanical utility. This is a primal,
biological sense of space, freed from often-irrelevant architectural accretions. It is
what architects have long sought, but few have actually grasped. The hard,
empirical facts encoded in patterns nonetheless lead us towards understanding the
elusive properties of “living” spaces, which exist on a higher level than we are used
to thinking about.

Figure 3.2. Morphing a tall building’s footprint and shape to create a semi-enclosed urban
space saves what was psychologically unusable exterior space. The usable interior volume
nevertheless remains the same.

Recurring themes run throughout the above spatial pattern summaries, such as
partial enclosure balanced between too little and too much, and the need for
concave boundaries to create convex space — Alexander called it “positive” space.
We need a new methodology for adaptive design, to re-awaken our lost spatial
sensitivity and focus once again on creating “reassuring” spaces. These are vital for
health and comfort in the built environment. If an architect expresses repulsion at
the supposed “sentimentality” of these patterns, that is merely evidence of
ideological conditioning to reject healing spaces.

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 Closely related to biophilic design patterns, spatial design patterns also enjoy
scientific support (Browning et al., 2014; Kellert et al., 2008; Ryan et al., 2014;
Salingaros, 2015). First, the inherited memory from our ancestral evolutionary
environment certainly includes clearings, tree canopies, and caves as prototypes.
Those settings provided a reassuring sense of enclosure at the right dimension.
Second, neurological responses that were developed for our general survival long
ago act now to interpret a space’s geometry as either friendly or hostile. Adaptive
design relies on these two qualities of what made us human.

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 4. How do we create healing spaces?

Space can liberate us from stress

An environment that embodies living structure allows us to live life fully. We are
encouraged, not inhibited by architecture. Freed from anxiety and feelings of
unease induced by hostile buildings, spaces, and surfaces, our positive emotions
blossom in our subconscious.
A building designed with sufficient attention paid to the natural rhythms of
human neurobiology can result in conscious joy. Think of how the tectonics of the
human body, our physical appearance, can trigger sexual excitement — or not.
There are many examples of physical form, properly attuned to natural structure
that can evoke a human response everywhere along the continuum of conscious to
subconscious emotion (Salingaros, 2015).
Christopher Alexander and others have put considerable effort into cataloguing
design patterns that resonate with and actualize our humanity (Alexander et al.,
1977). Living patterns free us from environmental stresses, which come from an
incoherent geometry of objects and spaces. Architecture’s capacity to protect us
from stress liberates us to be more fully human, and keeps us healthy in the long
term.

Figure 4.1. A traditional courtyard is full of overlapping living patterns. Those combined
give the subliminal message: “Linger here for pure enjoyment, and use this setting to catalyze
interactions with other living beings.”

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 Living patterns underlay all successfully evolved design solutions. Generations of
humans have built up their surroundings by trial and error, discovered
configurations that made them feel healthy, both physiologically and
psychologically. Living patterns arose through the evolution of built form, a long
process of selection arising from thousands of experiments. The choice of a healthy
architectural solution over other possibilities uses feedback to identify a state of
increased wellbeing leading to long-term health. This process is the same as in
genetic programming, where “software” evolves after millions of iterations, with
variants continually selected and re-selected so the result performs the required task
optimally (Leitner, 2015).
Most living patterns documented by Alexander in A Pattern Language (Alexander
et al., 1977) were derived from looking at solutions that unify the user within his or
her immediate environment. Their main criterion for selection was the healing
experienced when a pattern is successfully applied to identify useful limits to a
design. The mind-set in which this phenomenon is recognized and appreciated
considers human beings interacting with their surroundings strongly enough to
affect their health. A living pattern is meaningless, however, in a mind-set that
treats buildings as sculptural objects that don’t naturally interact with their users or
their surroundings.
Successfully evolved design solutions lie embedded in traditional architectures.
The functional correctness of living patterns, considered as a set of design
constraints, depends on their widespread occurrence globally. The proof is in their
re-discovery among people isolated from each other in geographically separated
societies. Everything else in those cultures may be totally different, but since the
human body is more or less the same all over the world, socio-geometric solutions
for a particular design problem ought to obey identical constraints. And they do!
The sense of wellbeing generated by a living socio-geometric pattern is shared across
distinct times and cultures.

Extracting patterns from observations

Since life-enhancing patterns recur in traditional buildings, some people assume
that a living pattern is merely a design solution that has been used repeatedly. But
that’s not necessarily so. Many repeating design typologies are expedient for some
purposes, but do not enhance human life in any way. A design template may be
widely adopted because it’s cheap or industrially efficient, or because it serves the
interests of some group — but it doesn’t lead to a healing environment for its users.
It’s not a living pattern. In fact in many cases, it could actually degrade the living
qualities of the environment.
An enlightened approach to healthy design therefore requires a catalogue of
tested living patterns for handy reference. Such a list would help to avoid confusing
them with repeating inhuman typologies that are not alive (called “anti-patterns”).

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One list exists in A Pattern Language (Alexander et al., 1977). Yet how do we
document other living patterns from existing buildings and urban fabric? Extracting
patterns from traditional practice and deriving totally new patterns both require
sensitivity and judgment (Salingaros, 2005: Chapter 8).

Table 2. How to observe a pattern in existing design:

1. Living patterns usually work together as a group: they are rarely isolated.
2. When patterns appear in a weak form, we need to find the strongest example.
3. Patterns organize complexity and are not found in simplistic environments.

The complexity of the best, most humanly adapted living configurations, which
solve more than one design problem simultaneously, is high. A setting that has
positive effects on the user’s wellbeing probably has several patterns working
together to satisfy a combination of system dynamics (some of which are not
obvious). So a researcher trying to document patterns must first disentangle them
from one another. As in most scientific research, you first detect known patterns.
What is left contains the new patterns. This discovery process is necessarily
sequential, and cannot be achieved all at once.
Then, you may discover a set of similar but distinct solutions to a specific design
problem whose common features identify them as possible living patterns. Suppose
each related application shows undeniable healing effects on the user. But which
particular constraint is the archetypal pattern? A choice among several variations of
a common theme must be made. The optimal living pattern is the most
“wonderful” — the one that works best, that gives the most healing feedback, and
makes a user wish to experience its implementation as much as possible. Obviously,
this living pattern will be difficult to locate. An architect must learn to identify
patterns, and then design a solution that takes advantage of the mutual adaptivity
arising from the ordered complexity common to living patterns.
An archetypal living pattern must deliver the strongest and most positive effect
on human health and comfort for that particular circumstance. That way, it can
reproduce the same healing effect when built into something new. Competing
forces of expediency, fashion, short-term economy, or misguided architectural codes
and zoning laws are likely to dilute a pattern in many of its applications. Finding a
living pattern requires looking for the best possible built example, like a collector
searching for the very finest seashell or antique coin specimen. This process of
discovery presupposes experience, and a highly tuned sensitivity to healing
environments.

Patterns as design constraints

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 Living patterns contribute to successful design solutions. But an architect cannot
just pop a living pattern into a building design and expect it to work without any
relation to a coherent organizing principle. Inserting living patterns into a
rambling, incoherent building will not fix its rambling, incoherent design. While
living patterns reinforce each other, they do need to be embedded in an
interrelated web of adaptive structure. They are not a quick fix-it for bad design.
Alexander’s The Nature of Order (Alexander, 2001-2005) correctly understands
such patterns as constraints in a sophisticated system of computational design. You
choose from among an infinite number of generated options that satisfy an
interrelated group of patterns. All of these solutions are adaptive. The more
constraints you impose, the narrower the set of good solutions. The design process
may include adaptive constraints such as climate, site, orientation, interaction with
the environment and surrounding structures, etc.

Figure 4.2. A modernist courtyard is deficient in living patterns. Its visceral message is:
“Perform whatever function you have to do here — walk through, drink your coffee, talk with
someone — with industrial efficiency, then get out.”

Mainstream practice and training claim to reject design constraints of any sort.
Architects are intoxicated with the absolute power to control human lives by
determining the shape and dimensions of the spaces in which people live and work.
They expect to indulge themselves freely, exerting personal will on the
environment. Not surprisingly, they react to the idea of living patterns with
apprehension: patterns threaten the limitless freedom to design promised in
architecture school.

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 Nevertheless, the most paradoxical (and most embarrassing) aspect of
conventional design is never mentioned. The creative freedom permitted in
contemporary architecture is dictated by trendsetters, power brokers, and
influential critics, and is therefore severely constrained: infinitely more than the
constraints implied by living patterns. For decades architects have been allowed to
create anything except what has the qualities of living structure. This restriction is
socialized into architectural education and in media coverage of architecture.
Indeed, the architect is encouraged to violate living patterns, producing buildings
whose primary result is a violation of nature.

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 5. Living Patterns and the Principle of
Concavity

Spaces that reassure our body

A well-designed space offers psychological “reassurance” to us, its users. We find
such healthy characteristics predominantly in traditional places. Of course, we can
perform an action in any volume barely large enough to contain it. But it should be
our goal to design spaces that make us comfortable enough to enact our roles in life
without feeling anxiety caused by strict geometry. A successful space, then, is
shaped in such a way that it “reassures” our body and mind — not necessarily with
its aesthetics, but the medical/psychological response it elicits.
We have all experienced the sense of emotional elation inside a truly great
space. That elation has little to do with the room’s size. Yet many Modernist
architects seem strangely uninterested in the factors that are responsible for this
effect. But we have evidence that the rules for designing such spaces can be
discovered, and then tested. Some environments possessing modest dimensions
invite us to linger there, yet other spaces of similar shape and size somehow disturb
us. Some geometric components and features, which we might not notice until they
are brought to our attention, make all the difference in the world to the adaptive
quality of spaces that contain human activity.

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 Figure 5.1. Interior of the Café Landtmann in Vienna, a favorite hangout of both
Gustav Mahler and Sigmund Freud, and a wonderful space for creative conversations.

Spaces that nourish human emotions with built geometries can be documented
as living patterns (Alexander et al., 1977), but much of this research remains to be
done. Architects trained in conventional methods tend to resist design solutions
that employ living patterns. Why? Mostly because they tend to value appearance
above utility. They don’t want to be told that their designs might displease or even
hurt users’ sensibilities. That would imply failure. So they ignore feedback and
insist on judging design exclusively by abstract aesthetics. For them, design patterns
are anathema.

Space is experienced as positive when it is coherent

We find spaces that embrace us gently inviting. Such spaces, formed from
concave boundaries, embody the “principle of concavity”, which tells us that we
prefer surfaces that enclose us in a more or less organic manner.
Experiments in psychology document that we have a built-in aversion to sharp
objects, especially to those that point at us. Most of us prefer rounded moldings to
angular moldings in window frames and sills. At the next architectural scale, walls
that are not vertical and ceilings that are neither symmetric nor horizontal, and re-
entrant walls and ceilings bulging towards us instead of yielding outward cause
alarm. Emotional discomfort can be triggered by protruding design details meant
for purely aesthetic effect — undoing real or apparent structural utility of elements
such as columns, pilasters, or beams.
If we are to use urban space with pleasure and make us feel reassured, it must be
partly surrounded by an enveloping perimeter. It cannot just be leftover space
between stand-alone “look-at-me” buildings. In those leftover spaces, we tend to feel
exposed and threatened because the nodes and paths they contain are not defined
coherently (Alexander et al., 1977: Pattern 106; Salingaros, 2005: Chapter 2). Such
exterior space lacks internal connectivity and fails to fit into the expectations
formed by our instinctive judgment of space. This expectation is built up over
generations, passed down to us by previous users of the built environment as well
as originating in our own experiences.
Many showcase 20th and early 21st Century buildings tend to be surrounded by
lots of open space that is never used. Hard plazas and green areas designed around
the buildings violate all the living patterns for urban space; therefore those areas
tend to be unpopulated, hence they are wasted spaces. Sometimes vast in
dimension, these spaces tend to be too open; part of them may be semi-enclosed
but threatened by an overhanging roof that creates a feeling of alarm.
For decades, architectural space has been compromised by mistaken
assumptions (anti-patterns). Furthermore, the industrialized world continues to

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create formally striking places that skimp on essential human values. Whether
cramped, splintered, or so vast as to engulf human scale, those environments are
ultimately useless. The proper connected intimacy of space, offering the
psychological protection essential for inviting people to use it, is absent.
Urban space is not two-dimensional. It is not simply a ground plan. Additional
geometrical elements are needed to complete the sense of a three-dimensional
enveloping boundary. Those elements work in the vertical dimension, and arise
from the scales of architecture, not urbanism. Much depends on whether the
details of the surrounding walls transmit messages that are either psychologically
friendly or hostile to those who visit the open space. Mirrored or transparent
curtain-wall façades diminish the visual sense of enclosure of a public space, making
it less informative, less interesting, less friendly, less functional. On the other hand
permeable solid façades showing organized complexity (as defined by their aligned
symmetric doors, windows, and other details) improve the functionality of an urban
space.

Figure 5.2. The humanity — and consequently the frequency of use — of urban space
depend upon the user’s experience of organized complexity on the surrounding façades.

Like a framed picture, every useful and satisfying urban space reaches visual
completion at a certain height off the ground. A roof cornice, for example, on
facing buildings adds a horizontal lip to the built perimeter of urban space, creating
a degree of concavity that enhances the feeling of enclosure (Salingaros, 2005:
Chapter 2). Yet such framing edges are dismissed as inessential because their
original function is not understood; yet they play a major supportive role in the
definition of reassuring urban space through the principle of concavity.

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 In Volume 3 of The Nature of Order (2005) Christopher Alexander introduces
the concept of “hulls” (as in the concave hull of a boat) in public space. This
reinforces the idea of coherent public space that promotes the sensation of being in
a giant outdoor room, a room without a ceiling. Alexander also describes the
process of designing indoor rooms whose volume and boundaries offer the qualities
necessary to induce psychological wellbeing. Altogether, we possess a set of
powerful tools for creating coherent living space, interior or exterior, defined by the
characteristics of its enveloping and sheltering boundary.

Living patterns enhance our lives and health

Humans have used patterns for millennia, extending biology to shape the built
environment. But living patterns as studied relationships among design elements
may seem irrelevant when interpreted, as they often are, in the framework of a
purely formal, sculptural architecture.
Living patterns have immediate consequences for human health and life. They
are not simply a matter of individual preference. The relationships embodied in
living patterns help create an environment with healing properties. Faster healing
after surgery, for instance, depends on exposure to natural environments, and
buildings that have the right mathematical qualities mimic this effect. The
backstory became evident with research on the concept of biophilia and evidence-
based design that arose from it (Browning et al., 2014; Kellert et al., 2008; Mehaffy
& Salingaros, 2015: Chapters 11 & 12; Ryan et al., 2014; Salingaros, 2015).
Patterns not directly linked to biology may still be interactive or social, acting
together on different scales in a way that mimics nature.
To read the design framework of 253 socio-geometric patterns (Alexander et al.,
1977) is to immediately feel the patterns, especially the biophilic ones, to be true in
a visceral sense. Living patterns make design a more participatory, vernacular, even
democratic process, working to push back against the myth of the “genius” (and
often authoritarian) architect.
Some patterns rely on experiential psychology, driving humans to feel
comfortable instead of uncomfortable in different types of settings. Others relate to
our visual and spoken communication with passersby, be these sight lines,
proximity, and other factors that promote or discourage interaction. Human
contact is required for the wellbeing of adults, and especially, at either end of
lifespan, for both the emotional formation of children and emotional health of the
elderly.
The pattern format recommends a set of design constraints; relationships that
narrow the specific expression of any given design solution. This constraining
specificity enables the transmission of such healing knowledge from one culture,
historical time and place to another (Salingaros, 2005: Chapter 8).

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 Patterns are an adaptive design tool — already available, developed previously by
someone else. Their documentation saves architects an enormous amount of work.
They need not rethink everything to implement a new project. The flexibility of
living patterns means that what is re-used is only the most relevant structural
relationship, conveyed as an evidence-based proposition. A living pattern does not
merely copy an image from the past but implements the latest upgrade. In this
sense, living patterns are tools of evolutionary, adaptive design (Leitner, 2015;
Mehaffy & Salingaros, 2015: Chapter 18).

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 6. Why Do Some People Choose Oppressive
Environments?

Our emotions validate adaptive design

The act of building, a man-made transformation of the natural environment, is
an imposition on nature, necessary for human habitation. The process of
assembling architectural and urban form, along with its underlying geometry, can
differ radically: either it is inspired by and sympathetic to natural processes, or it is
deliberately opposed to them. The difference between natural and artificial is
fundamental. Architecture and planning that use unnatural geometric
methodologies will inevitably conflict with nature. Often, forms that rely upon
visual innovation as their sole inspiration reap acclaim for their architects.
Unfortunately, structures that conflict with the processes of nature are ultimately
unsustainable.
Traditional design approaches are utilitarian. Their processes and forms arose
over generations by selection among natural alternatives, hence they are more
sustainable. The most effective designs use evolved energy-saving solutions for
building — factoring in local climate, local materials, and knowledge of local
customs. Taking this more scientific approach, we can solve, dependably, problems
of sustainability and human health.
Some environments soothe and heal; others induce anxiety and illness.
When people complain that our built environment makes them feel
uncomfortable, they are dismissed as “old-fashioned” or “unappreciative of
contemporary design”. But ordinary people’s reactions are in fact correct. Only
architects and other design professionals, after years of conditioning in architecture
school and practice, are able to override deeper biological instincts telling them that
a structure is hostile (Salingaros, 2014). Architects have long used formal criteria to
design and build structures that do not accommodate human sensibilities. They
treat criticism by the public as proof that their designs succeed in provocation,
which they equate with originality.
The root cause of profound disagreement on architecture between trained
architects and the public boils down to whether or not a design embodies living
structure (Mehaffy & Salingaros, 2011). Reconciliation on this point is impossible.
Living structure is the antithesis of provocative. Like it or not, the search for
innovation through provocation renounces life-enhancing environments. And
those architects who insist that better education will teach the public to love the
same buildings they love do not understand human nature.

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 Figure 6.1. A tall concave ceiling enhances activities taking place in this grand room, but
few people consciously attribute the positive ambience to the geometry.

We could change our design criteria and adopt a set of mechanisms and
relationships, such as design patterns, shared by all “living” creations (Alexander et
al., 1977). If the design of a city, a neighborhood, a plaza, a building, a room, or a
window shares these living qualities, then we can be fairly sure the built structure
will work well for its users. That would solve the problem.

Table 3. Criteria for adaptive design success:

1. The basis for judgment is both practical and psychological.
2. Created forms and spaces are adapted to the human function they aim to
accommodate.
3. The forms and spaces make people feel secure rather than stressed.
4. This complex network of sensations acts subconsciously.
5. Body signals tell the truth, especially when they contradict the user’s
expressed opinion.

A positive emotional reaction is not usually noticed because it is largely

instinctive. It aligns with human neurobiological response, which leads to a healthy
state. On the other hand, a negative reaction to an unnatural form and space
triggers shock and anxiety. Our body is warning us of danger in the environment.

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 Yet in most contemporary architecture, innovation is based strictly on visual
appeal. By rejecting practices based on science and utility, architects have opened a
deep and perilous gulf between innovation that celebrates an abstract image and
innovation that provides a healing environment. To force the public to put up with
dysfunctional, unhealthy design solutions is not an accomplishment that architects
should be proud of. Therefore, design professionals must break out of their
conventional thinking and embrace living patterns in their work if they want to
help reconstitute what every human deserves: a healing environment (Salingaros,
2015).
Design rules that arise from the study of biological form, and also from
traditional and vernacular architectures, produce a human-scaled environment.
Most of the world continues to build its modest houses and complex urban fabric
according to adaptive, intuitive rules. The vitality of traditional cities the world over
is due to unwritten patterns. Self-building, or vernacular building, which lies
outside the officially-sanctioned architectural paradigm, nevertheless has the
possibility of variation to adapt it to human needs. The problem is how to get the
profession to accept what the rest of humanity is doing, and identify the essential
qualities of a healthy built environment.

Ceiling height and emotional wellbeing in rooms

So far we have not sufficiently reflected on architects’ responsibility for how they
influence the emotional lives and long-term health of their fellow human beings. In
fact the 20th century industrial paradigm does not take into account the inevitable
reactions of the natural system in general, and the human actors in particular.
Denying human nature (and the very mechanism of life) becomes an essential
precondition for shielding inhuman environments against legitimate criticism. The
architectural media ignore scientific results that point to adaptive design errors in
buildings that architects have been in the habit of erecting during several decades.
How can a more subtle attention to the malleability of built form create living
space? Psychology suggests strong constraints on the shape of ceilings as they define
the experience of indoor space. We tend to feel more at ease under a domed ceiling
rather than a flat ceiling. Depending on the dimensions, a dome or vault gives a
comfortable sense of being enveloped in the space. Variations of ceiling geometry
and curvature cause major changes in user wellbeing (Alexander et al., 1977:
Patterns 190 & 191, see Section 3, Living Structures Should Come From Living
Patterns). Flat, horizontal ceilings have a generally neutral effect on users. Symmetric
pitched ceilings are also acceptable: they approximate the perceived enveloping
effect of a cylindrical vault.
Departures from vaulted, symmetric, and flat horizontal ceilings generate a
feeling of unease. Flat slanted mono-pitched ceilings sloping only to one side could
make us feel anxious — their lack of bilateral symmetry pulls us horizontally. Then,
anxiety definitely increases under a ceiling that drops downward in the middle. A

30
sagging ceiling perceived as “coming down” on our head produces considerable
alarm. This ominous effect is felt with a ceiling whose center hangs, such as a
catenary sheet that is experienced from below as convex, or a symmetric negative
pitched ceiling angled downwardly.

Figure 6.2. Although it looks perfectly fine in a model or rendering, a heavy convex ceiling
creates an ominous sensation so that people experiencing this space don’t enjoy it.

For the standard flat horizontal ceiling, the floor-to-ceiling height is very
important for shaping our psychological response. Traditional ceiling heights
originally followed sensible, commonly agreed upon standards. For example, in the
East people sit on the floor, so domestic ceilings tend to be lower. Rooms in owner-
built dwellings in Europe were sized to satisfy the psychological comfort of their
occupants, and ranged from 2.6 m to 3.3 m (8 feet, 6 inches to 10 feet, 10 inches).
These dimensions were established as minimum standards in many European
municipal building codes. For those who could afford them, even more generous
residential ceilings prevailed before World War II, with many measuring 3.50 m to
3.66 m (11 feet, 6 inches to 12 feet) or more.
Ideally, rooms should have ceiling heights that vary according to function and
intended degree of public use or private intimacy. Several discourses are devoted to
this crucial topic (Alexander et al., 1977; Salingaros, 2005), broadly defined.
Practical results for design come from a more general investigation of how living
patterns help to define a psychologically secure space.
Le Corbusier’s monomaniacal insistence on ceilings that he could touch, which
he justified with a mystical numerical system that has since been debunked as
nonsensical (Salingaros, 2012), set a floor-to-ceiling height of 2.26 m (7 feet, 5

31
inches) that violated French building standards, which were waived for him by the
housing minister himself. We are still stuck with those low ceilings today!
Construction in the 20th and early 21st centuries, fueled by opportunism and
extreme cost cutting, squashed people under oppressive ceiling heights of 2.13 m to
2.44 m (7 to 8 feet), turning dimensions below historically minimum limits into
present-day standards. This violation was reinforced by an industrial design
aesthetic. User reaction based on human feelings was no longer recognized by the
industry after commercial motives were accepted as a priority.

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