Pattern Of Discursiveness

Regarding the loss of diversity and multiplicity in our collective living environment,to discuss a ‘Pattern of Discursiveness',is to re——assess the theory of “Pattern Language”,which was once proposed by American architect Christopher Alexander,from a different theoretical thread under the contemporary Chinese context.The paper aims to reexamine the potential of “Pattern” as a conceptual tool to re-emphasize the sociability of architecture,and to contemplate how to rebuild the lost civicness in modern multistorey collective housing..For professional architects,the fundamental discussion regarding the social concept of architecture revolves around the debate of either neglecting or reiterating the concept of “type”.”Type” per se,is a cultural product which is accumulated over a long period of time,but often represented abstractly as an ‘a-priori' form.However if we follow the development of Modern Architecuture movement,we could discern the two different tendencies: one is the ‘anti-type' school,they intended to discard spatial architectural form as a stagnated social product,which was an attitude inherited from the linguistic revolution of the Modern Art Movement;the other tendency is represented by Aldo Rossi and the Italian school,aims to reiterate ‘type' as a concept ot defend the materialistic substance of historical cities,while having a potential to be didactic.The architectural language of multi——storey residential buildings,which are considered as one of the characteristics of modern cities,inherits the ahistorical roots of the ‘anti-type'.In the Chinese context,the accumulativeness of ‘type' remain as an irresistable force,and reappear in terms of ‘unit types' which were mostly dictacted by the commercial ideology of property development.Furthermore,the commercialization of collective housing pays no attention to the arising civic problems,which causes the further atomicization and nomadization in urban society,and the total loss of collective living experience in urban conditions.On this basis,we must ask,would the debate revolving around ‘type' still be adequate and sufficient in such social context? It is in this sense,the paper aims to renew the concept of ‘pattern language' which were originated from an anthropological perspective concerning the concept of ‘place' and concrete experiences of daily life.The paper tries to rethink the critical question which Christopher Alexander once raised,“How does a settlement come to being?” With the emphasis of such question,the city is no longer seen as an interpretive object of Historical-Social Darwinism,but an analytical subject regarded as a heterogenous totality that contains an aspect of time,and its functional aspect being the interrelationship between its elements.Refering to Belgian philosopher J.M Broekman,such conceptual transformation was taken place under the phenomenon of Structuralist and Linguistic theory,and since then such historical model has been replaced by a rather ‘scientific' model,in which the concern of the humancentric problem has been novated to a structural problem regarding the urban condition as a whole and its parts.In the twentieth century architectural discource,two opposing urban design methodologies were developed under these different urban conceptual frameworks: one aims to approach the city with total control with a characteristic of ‘master plan',to impose a pre-established pattern over the city itself;the other concerns themselves with the discursive process of an urban transformation,which accentuates on small and minute places that contains historical and cultural traces of daily life.It is from such perspective,I consider Christopher's theory as the ‘Language of Pattern'.Perhaps what I could see from the theory is not only the proposition of a linguistic model which explains the growing whole of a townscape,but more so the attempt to investigate on elementalized ‘patterns' which concern the diversity and multiplicity of the world,and to propose a linguistic structure which makes it operational.In 1970 s,Christopher's theory was critical against the anti-social ideologies which was nurtured from the Liberalism and Consumerism that was immanent in the communities of British and American ‘New Town',which was one of the earlier Modernist experiments.Regarding this,Christopher proposed a ‘generative grammar' for towns,which aims to offer a more humanistic elementalized spatial form —— ‘pattern',as a therapeutic spatial treatment for social issues.Compared to the usual ‘Style',‘Pattern Language' theory seems to offer a more practical,phenomenological and philosophical building handbook.While the theory seems to have a universal application,the theory is limited to towns,as well as its hidden cultural ideology of British ways of living,which draws the boundary for its effectiveness towards contemporary urban scenarios.To re-assess the elementalized ‘pattern',is to contemplate on a ‘discursive' technique of urban design through the ‘weaving' of concrete elementalized small ‘place-form' and ‘pattern',which is built on the basis of the linguistic model propsed by Christopher.More importantly,under such critical ideological re-evaluation,the city is emancipated from its pre-established urban structural pattern,and dissolved into linguistic architectural fragments which contains social and ideological inter-connections.This means that not only the urban types contains social and cultural traces,but fragmentation of concrete ‘place-form' embodies the possibility of influencing social ideology as a whole.It is under these context,the research tries to conduct a parallel discussion with the concept of ‘place' and ‘cluster' proposed by Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck,which continues a theoretical thread that tries to reform architecture from an anthropological perspective.While confronted with the dilemma of being trapped in the architectural ‘meaning-fulness' and ‘meaninglessness',many architectural theories lack the capacity to discern and examine our concrete reality,and this paper believes that the authencity of existing communities exceeds the explicative nature of theories.In this sense,the research aims to form a neutral spatial theory,which tries to rediscover a relative consistency and synchronicity of community,while avoiding to be possessed by neither ‘scientific' superstition nor ‘humanistic' mystification.Hence,we could examine the extent of how existing communities contains the homogenous and heterogenous quality of a linguistic model,which points towards rebuilding a cultural and figurative architectural language,rather than a professional architectural discourse.As a result,the thesis refers to linguistic theories as a way to re-enter the discussion of social reality of architecture,which was once proposed by Chinese architect Wangshu as ‘the shift from urban research to linguistics'.To talk about a concept of elementalized ‘pattern',is also anticipate a ‘curing' and discursive building activity which allows for all urban reality and complexity to persist and continue at its utmost extent.The true value of this paper,is aiming towards the reformation of a social concept behind collective housing,and through architectural means,tries to outline a possibility of a social-experimental design method for the discursive growth of the being of cities.