Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language: analysing, mapping and classifying the critical response

City, Territory and Architecture

An interdisciplinary debate on project perspectives

Table 1 Criticisms of Alexander’s second theory of architecture: conceptualisation

[#]	Issue	A#	Criticism	S#	Source
1	Ontology	–	Rejecting pluralistic values confuses subjective and objective phenomena	3	(Saunders 2002a, 2003; Bhatt 2010)
2	Ontology	–	Alternate experiences and social, political and economic realities are incompatible with Alexander’s world view	3	(Montgomery 1970; Broadbent 1980; Davis 1983; Dovey 1990; Salingaros 2000, Elsheshtawy 2001; Kohn 2002; Saunders 2002a; Walker 2003; Mehaffy 2008; Bhatt 2010; Kalb 2014)
3	Ontology	1, 2	The timeless way of building is the only valid means for creating beautiful environments	10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17,18, 19, 20, 21, 22	(Broadbent 1980; Protzen 1980; Dovey 1990; Lang 1994)
4	Epistemology	–	Alexander’s definition of ‘science’ excludes many tenets of scholarly research	5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,12, 13, 14, 18	(Alexander 2002a,b; Saunders 2002a)