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Christopher Alexander - Patterns in Architecture

Peter Petrash · 134.7K views · 2013-09-09 · 1:03:36

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Overview

Christopher Alexander's keynote at OOPSLA 1996 on patterns in architecture, addressed to the software community. He moves beyond patterns toward deeper ideas of wholeness and living structure.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as the primary source for the claim that Alexander deprecated patterns, and as a prescient talk for programmers.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2016–2026

Topics

Software architecture & designVisual arts, photography & architecture
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christopher alexanderdesign patternsoopslaliving structurearchitecture

What people said

simonebrunozzi · 2018-12 · Strong recommendation

Just finished watching a great 1996 lecture by Christopher Alexander: [VIDEO] I recommend it for those who have read his work, but never seen or heard the man in action.

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keithnz · 2026-07 · Recommendation

worth checking this out from 1996 [VIDEO] kind of ironic he was moving away from patterns to more fundamental concepts just as the software world was just discovering patterns. I think his shift to these more fundamental concepts is a much better way to think about design.

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keithnz · 2021-03 · Recommendation

this talk that christopher alexander did a number of years ago is quite interesting [VIDEO] one of the interesting things is that he had really moved on from "patterns" and was looking for something more intrinisic or "atomic" about design. Which actually is a much better guide to designing software.

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Sources

Video by Peter Petrash, played through YouTube.

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