We were back home today. I continued to devote an hour to the reading of "The Timeless Way of Building". Here are a few selected quotes:

• A building or a town will only be alive to the extent that it is governed by the timeless way.
• To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name.
• To reach the quality without a name we must then build a living pattern language as a gate.
• Once we have built the gate, we can pass through it to the practice of the timeless way.
• And yet the timeless way is not complete, and will not fully generate the quality without a name, until we leave the gate behind.

These 5 quotes represent a summary of the entire book. However they are very Spartan unless one reads the entire book, probably more than once.

For me, the key practical insight is that of building a living pattern language. I immediately see extensions of this idea to:

• educational programs (e.g. B. Ed., M. Ed.)
• unit plans and lesson plans for curriculum design
• cookbooks
• web based learning
• web based instruction
• mathematics
• haiku poetry.

Here a few more selected quotes:

• "But though this method is precise, it cannot be used mechanically" (p. 12)
• "It is not an external method, which can be imposed on things. It is instead a process which lies deep in us: and only needs to be released." (p. 14)
• "The feeling for it is as primitive as the feeling for our own well-being, for our own health, as primitive as the inutuition which tells us when something is false or true." (p. 26)
• "One man is free at that one instant when you see in him a certain smile and you know he is himself, and perfectly at home within himself." (p. 47)
• "On the wire, that's living... all the rest is waiting." [high wire artist] (p. 50)
• "The character of a place, then, is given to it by the episodes which happen there." (p. 62)
• "... the overall character of our lives is given by those events which keep on recurring over and over again." (p. 66)
• "There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person's way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen." (p. 67)
• "Some kinds of physical and social circumstances help a person come to life. Others make it very difficult." (p. 106)

I like this book. It is difficult to imagine that is is officially a book about architecture. It is really about the very foundations of architecture. About patterns that connect. And patterns that connect are about people. And psychology. And mathematics. And learning. I love this book!