...a great architect's creative power, his capacity to make something beautiful, lies in his capacity to observe correctly, and deeply. A painter's t… - Christopher Alexander

Look more carefully...to find out what it really is that is repeating there .... Beyond its elements, each building [or town] is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements.... These relationships are not extra, but necessary to the elements... The elements themselves are patterns of relationships.

...the constitution of the universe may be such that the human self and the substance that things [are] made out of, the spatial matter or whatever you call it, are much more inextricably related than we realized.

...every pattern we define must be formulated in the form of a rule which establishes a relationship between a context, a system of forces which arises in that context, and a configuration which allows these forces to resolve themselves in that context.