The Timeless Way of building is a book written by Christopher Alexander. It defines a pattern based way of building architecture which has been highly influential in software design (See [[Technology]])
There is a 'quality without a name'.
It cannot be put exactly into words, but is something close to egoless / comfortable / whole / alive. Much of life is a struggle to become closer to that quality. Great architecture helps us become closer to that quality, by having some of it in it.
A place has that quality when it is alive.
Aliveness comes from the events that happen there every day. The events in a space have a symbiotic relationship with the architecture of the space. They shape each other.
A place is alive when it's been built by the community that use the place.
The quality without a name is emergent. It cannot be created, only encouraged by the architecture and the people in it.
To enable communities to build, we must equip them with a pattern language
patterns can either be alive or dead
each pattern is a rule of thumb which describes what must be done to generate the event which it defines
Each pattern has principle components which define it
you must be able to draw a pattern. This is because the language is spacial rather than verbal.
The patterns must then be put together into a structured language
Patterns are not isolated, and they do not live in a flat heirarchy
The network of patterns creates the language. It anchors each pattern and helps to make it complete.
The quality without a name emerges more from the compounding combination of patterns than any individual pattern
The language must be made before starting design, as it's the structure and content of the language which make the design.
In summary, to create somewhere that has the quality without a name:
Observe the events
List patterns which relate to these events
Combine the patterns in your mind
A pattern works when it deals with all forces that are present
The only way to know if it works is to see how it makes you feel
Finally, the timeless way of building is 'timeless' because it's the way we intuitively build as humans, and have done for years. It merely enables us to unlock that intuition.