9. This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the seed.
10. The people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done it for centuries, by using languages which I call pattern languages. A pattern language gives each person who uses it the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences.
11. These pattern languages are not confined to villages and farm society. All acts of building are governed by a pattern language of some sort, and the patterns in the world are there, entirely because they are created by the pattern languages which people use.
And, beyond that, it is not just the shape of towns and buildings which comes from pattern languages--it is their quality as well. Even the life and beauty of the most awe-inspiring great religious buildings came from the languages their builders used.
13. But in our time the languages have broken down. Simnce they are no longer shared, the processes which keep them keep have broken down; and it is therefore virtually impossible for anybody, in our time, to make a building live.
14. To work our way towards a shared and living language once again, we must first learn how to discover patterns which are deep, and capable of generating life.
15. We may then gradually improve these patterns which we share, by testing them against experience: we can determine, very simply, whether these patterns make our surroundings live, or not, by recognizing how they make us feel.
16. Once we have understood how to discover individual patterns which are alive, we may then make a language for ourselves for any building tak we face. The structure of the language is created by the network of connections among individual patterns: and the language lives, or not, as a totality, to the degree these patterns form a whole.
17. Then finally from separate languages for different building tasks, we can create a larger structure still, a structure of structures, evolving constantly, which is the common language for a town. This is the gate.