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Saturday, May 21, 2005
Has anyone read A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction? If not, I highly recommend checking it out. It's a really interesting book about designing homes and communities by focusing on making them livable instead of overly worrying about aesthetic concerns. Oddly enough, it's a very popular book amongst software developers, who apply it's architectural ideas to designing software programs.
Anyways, I thought about it today when I went to this local coffee shop M was talking about earlier. A couple things about it made me think of the book. First of all, it's interior design is very welcoming and comfortable, much more so than say a Starbucks or Tim Hortons. Secondly, the location - it's in the middle of a residential neighborhood instead of being right downtown. It's something I wish existed more - a blend of commercial and residential buildings everywhere, rather than a centralized downtown commerical district surrounded by urban sprawl. It's better for community, it saves on transportation costs, and it makes residential areas feel more livable. It's one of the things the book really emphasized, and I'm glad to see more businesses attempting to move out into the suburbs.
Anyways, I thought about it today when I went to this local coffee shop M was talking about earlier. A couple things about it made me think of the book. First of all, it's interior design is very welcoming and comfortable, much more so than say a Starbucks or Tim Hortons. Secondly, the location - it's in the middle of a residential neighborhood instead of being right downtown. It's something I wish existed more - a blend of commercial and residential buildings everywhere, rather than a centralized downtown commerical district surrounded by urban sprawl. It's better for community, it saves on transportation costs, and it makes residential areas feel more livable. It's one of the things the book really emphasized, and I'm glad to see more businesses attempting to move out into the suburbs.
