| SE450: Patterns: The Quality without a Name [40/47] | |
You know beauty when you see it, but it is hard to say exactly what it is.
There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but cannot be named.
The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.
Alexander
The Timeless Way of Building [Amazon, AddAll]
by Christopher Alexander (Oxford, 1979)
A Pattern Language [Amazon, AddAll]
by Christopher Alexander (Oxford, 1977)
http://patternlanguage.com/sampleOnly/archive/ieee/ieeetext.htm
http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/001129-ee380-100.asx