General talk about software patterns

["Richard P. Gabriel" <rpg AT dreamsongs.com>]

FYI:

I plan to attend:

UC's Berkeley Center for New Media and the Art, Technology, and Culture 
Colloquium Present: 

The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth
Christopher Alexander, Architect

Monday, May 2, 7:30-9pm
Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley 
Free and open to the public

*Also a Special Tour of the Berkeley Rose Garden based on Alexander's 
Principles led by Maggie Moore Alexander on Tuesday, May 3, 1-2:30pm

--------------------------------------------------------------- 
In his first West Coast public lecture in 10 years, Alexander will 
demonstrate that what he has been talking about for many years is feasible on 
a large scale. The methods for designing and building that are spelled out 
theoretically and practically applied in The Nature of Order, Timeless Way of 
Building, A Pattern Language, and other Center for Environmental Structure 
publications, are applied to the Eishin campus built near Tokyo, Japan from 
1982 to 1985 - a project of 29 buildings on 20 acres of land, about nine city 
blocks.

The care and finesse that Alexander has been describing to us throughout his 
career was applied to this large project, which came in on time and less 
expensively than a standard construction budget would have allowed. At the 
beginning of the talk, Alexander will show an extensive range of images about 
the project, the methods of construction that were used, the involvement of 
students and faculty, and the overall development of a full-scale environment 
of a rather lovely kind.

Alexander will then talk on themes related to the way these buildings were 
made and are used and what it would mean if these principles could be applied 
to creating environments everywhere and society in general. What would that 
take? First is the recognition of what is described in Battle as system B - 
the method of production that is now prevalent throughout the world, which is 
centered on the profit motive, and supported by institutions and governments. 
Then we need an understanding of system A, the system which built the Eishin 
campus, despite system B. It was a very rough road, with many painful, 
arduous, and sometimes seemingly hopeless battles. But along the way, 
Alexander and his colleagues learned that it could be possible for these two 
systems to become working partners, using the best of both to achieve 
something that is impossible now. The most important message of Battle is the 
vision of a way forward, that we could choose together, to build a society 
and an environment of such a kind that we would be fulfilled in living there.

--------------------------------------------------------------- 
For nearly 40 years Christopher Alexander has challenged the architectural 
establishment, sometimes uncomfortably, to pay more attention to the human 
beings at the center of design. To do so he has combined top-flight 
scientific training, award-winning architectural research, patient 
observation and testing throughout his building projects, and a radical but 
profoundly influential set of ideas that have extended far beyond the realm 
of architecture.

In 1963, Alexander became Professor of Architecture at the University of 
California, Berkeley, and taught there continuously for 38 years, becoming 
Professor Emeritus in 2001. He also founded the Center for Environmental 
Structure, published hundreds of papers and several dozen books, and built 
more than 300 buildings around the world. In 2002 he moved back to England, 
where he now lives and works.

Alexander is widely recognized as the father of the pattern language movement 
in computer science, which has led to important innovations such as Wiki, and 
new kinds of Object-Oriented Programming. He is the recipient of the first 
medal for research ever given by the American Institute of Architects, and he 
has been honored repeatedly for his buildings in many parts of the world. He 
was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 for 
his contributions to architecture, including his groundbreaking work on how 
the built environment affects the lives of people.

---------------------------------------------------------------

UC's Berkeley Center for New Media and the Art, Technology, and Culture 
Colloquium present: 

Finding Christopher Alexander's Fifteen Fundamental Properties in the 
Berkeley Rose Garden

Maggie Moore Alexander

Tuesday, May 3, 1-2:30pm
Berkeley Rose Garden, 1201 Euclid Avenue, Berkeley
Free and open to the public

---------------------------------------------------------------

This field trip to the Berkeley Rose Garden proposes to hunt for these 
properties in a lovely space where the man-made joins with nature, so that we 
may know them first hand. Knowing them, we can begin to identify them in our 
everyday surroundings, and all of us can use them to create our own healthy 
living environments. This little workshop is for people who wish to use 
Alexander’s work on a personal level to enhance their well-being and heal the 
environments in which they live. We don’t have to be architects to make a 
difference. We can all make change in small ways that have profound effects 
on our lives.


--------------------------------------------------------------- 
Maggie Moore Alexander has been working with Christopher Alexander since 
2003. Prior to that she was a consultant for 27 years, working with clients 
to develop support systems for people in organizations that were undergoing 
change on a grand scale.  She now  supports projects of the Center for 
Environmental Structure, and her special interest is in developing language 
and experiences that make Alexander’s ideas accessible, emotionally and 
practically, to a wide range of audiences. 


ATC Director: Ken Goldberg 
BCNM Assoc. Director: Susan Miller 
ATC Assoc. Director: Greg Niemeyer 
Curated with ATC Advisory Board 

Primary Sponsors: 
* Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) 
* Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost 
* Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society 
(CITRIS) 

Selected events co-presented with: 
* Department of Art Practice 
* Department of Architecture 
* Townsend Center for the Humanities 
* Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive 
* Berkeley Parallel Computing Lab 

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Directions to Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall: 
http://citris-uc.org/about/headquarters

Contact: 
info.bcnm AT berkeley.edu
 510-495-3505 http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/

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