The book is an introduction to the idea of design patterns in software engineering, and a catalog of twenty-three common patterns. The nice thing is, most experienced OOP designers will find out they've known about patterns all along. It's just that they've never considered them as such, or tried to centralize the idea behind a given pattern so that it will be easily reusable.

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

This is the third paper in a series being published in Design Studies, which aims to establish the theoretical bases for treating design as a coherent discipline of study. The first contribution in the series was from Bruce Archer, in the very first issue of Design Studies, and the second was from Gerald Nadler, in Vol 1, No 5. Further contributions are invited. Here, Higel Cross takes up the arguments for a ‘third area’ of education—design—that were outlined by Archer. He further defines this area by contrasting it with the other two—sciences and humanities—and goes on to consider the criteria which design must satisfy to be acceptable as a part of general education. Such an acceptance must imply a reorientation from the instrumental aims of conventional design education, towards intrinsic values. These values derive from the ‘designerly ways of knowing’. Because of a common concern with these fundamental ‘ways of knowing’, both design research and design education are contributing to the development of design as a discipline.

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Designerly ways of knowing

BUGS is a software package for Bayesian inference using Gibbs sampling. The software has been instrumental in raising awareness of Bayesian modelling among both academic and commercial communities internationally, and has enjoyed considerable success over its 20-year life span. Despite this, the software has a number of shortcomings and a principal aim of this paper is to provide a balanced critical appraisal, in particular highlighting how various ideas have led to unprecedented flexibility while at the same time producing negative side effects. We also present a historical overview of the BUGS project and some future perspectives. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The BUGS project: Evolution, critique and future directions

The first Danish language version of this book, published in 1971, was very much a protest against the functionalistic principles for planning cities and residential areas that prevailed during that period. The book carried an appeal to show concern for the people who were to move about between buildings, and it urged an understanding of the subtle, almost indefinable - but definite - qualities, which have always related to the interaction of people in public spaces, and it pointed to the life between buildings as a dimension of architecture that needs to be carefully treated. Now 40 years later, many architectural trends and ideologies have passed by over the years. These intervening years have also shown that the liveliness and liveability of cities and residential areas continues to be a important issue. The intensity in which fine public spaces are used at this point in time, as well as the greatly increased general interest in the quality of cities and their public spaces emphasises this point. The character of life between buildings changes with changes in any given social context, but the essential principles and quality criteria to be employed when working with life between buildings has proven to be remarkably constant. Though this work over the years has been updated and revised several times, this version bears little resemblance with the very early versions, however there was no reason to change the basic message: Take good care of the life between your buildings.

Life between buildings: Using public space

How the built environment affects physical activity: views from urban planning

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

A Pattern Language

A pattern language which generates multi-service centers

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Dorms at Berkeley : an environmental analysis

Clearly written and profusely illustrated, this book brings the timeless lessons of residential design to homeowners who seek inspiration and direction in the design or remodelling of their homes. This is destined to become the design bible for architects and stylish homeowners. The simple patterns described in this book will make the difference between a home that satisfies only the material needs of the owners and one that satisfies the essence of home. Colour photographs, drawings and simple analogies clarify the design concepts so that homeowners can use the same design tools as architects to evaluate the potential of a home for purchase. * A ground breaking book that offers innovative, thought-provoking design essentials that shape and define a well-crafted home. * Visually rich book that translates timeless design concepts into 10 classic enduring patterns - Inhabiting the site - Creating rooms, inside & out - - Sheltering roof - Capturing light - Parts in proportion - - The flow through the rooms - Private edges, common core - - Refuge and outlook - Places in between - Composing with materials -

Murray Silverstein

Papers

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

A Pattern Language

A pattern language which generates multi-service centers

Dorms at Berkeley : an environmental analysis

Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design