Cob RE: "A Pattern Language"

[John Schinnerer]

Aloha,

"The Timeless Way of Building" by C. Alexander is the predecessor to "A
Pattern Language" and I suggest taking a look at it first (or along with),
to see where they were coming from (so to speak) in writing "A Pattern
Language."

	>...They formulated rules for communities, building complexes,
buildings,
	>homes and down to rooms, as well as construction techniques.

	Note that Alexander et. al. clearly indicate in the preface to "A
Pattern Language" that these are not to be taken as hard and fast 'rules'
but only as their best attempts thus far (1977) at formulating 'A' (not
'The') "pattern language."  They encourage further exploration and
development, not unquestioning application (and hey, we're just the folks to
do it!!).  

	As will be noticed during a thorough reading, there are some areas
with which a lot of cobbers and other natural building folks might find
themselves taking issue with Alexander et. al.  For example, they were
working in the late 70's when lightweight ferrocement was a 'hot' material,
and they praise/recommend it in various places...also, during that period
there were a lot of 'womb-room' experimental designs of 'too-round', egg- or
womb-shaped rooms and/or structures and in what appears to be a reaction to
this at the time, they rather summarily (in my opinion) consider and then
dismiss any room/structure shapes other than basically square.  It's a great
book when taken with a few grains of salt... :-)

	I recommend Christopher Day's "Places of the Soul - architecture as
healing art" as another good one...he considers a lot of the same stuff as
"A Pattern Language" from slightly different perspectives.  I don't think he
builds with cob but a lot of his ideas and designs are naturals for it...

	John Schinnerer