Here we further emphasise the practice, the verb - pattern language(ing) - as distinct from the patterns, or the language.
Pattern language is a demanding, sophisticated and relatively new cultural form (emerging from the 60s' ‘systems’ aesthetic) and there have been many variants since the original Alexander collection of 253 space-creation patterns \[Hales 2018, constructs xxx], some quite casual and some rather rigorous in their architecture [http://2020college.federated.wiki/pattern-languageing.html].
foprop is unusually rigorous in its framing, and is a language of quite a different kind than Alexander’s: of quite different purposes, engaging quite different material. Alexander was able to adopt an obvious ‘out-there’ hierarchy of physical scale as the frame; foprop adopts a phenomenological pseudo-hierarchy of ¿zones of reach in activist practice, founded on an ontology of three §landscapes that inhere in practice per se.
While Alexander’s is a pattern language of *experiential impacts* of inert built environment, which can facilitate the enlivening of life, foprop is theory of *praxis*, framed for the skilful, graceful, situation-to-situation construction of *activist life* within history; making a literally *living* economy - a collective practice - rather than a metaphorically 'living' built infrastructure.
The foprop pattern language takes a necessary and decisive step beyond an organisation-design or culture-design toolkit, of the kind that was assembled in the Young Foundation collections *Social venturing* and *The open book of social innovation*, referred to earlier. It does this by adopting a ‘principled’ framing of historical engagement: - forces of production (richly conceptualised as weaves of concrete practice) . . - self-consciously organised and reorganised and animated . . - under relations of production . . - by cultural and economic formations.
At the same time, as a ‘design patterns’ approach, pattern language is kin to the kind of work Robin did in connection with the Design Centre and the Young Foundation in the early 90s, and in particular, seems quite close to the ‘Ten principles’ he tantalisingly identified in DaO. So, as a way of illustrating what patterns in the foprop language might handle, I'll pick up some threads from Robin's 'Ten principles' in DaO.
We link below to four illustrative examples of patterns that can be anticipated to figure in the pattern repertoire of the college. The summaries are necessarily sketchy; and all of the patterns call for the validation and curating of a well-constituted *commons of pattern language(ing) capability*, as stewarding of the college begins to operate, the Faculties begin to knuckle down to the challenges of livelihood and infrastructure, and the federated Schools begin their collaborative, trans-generational, intersectional, cultural and aesthetic labour.
We include a pattern from each faculty of the college, and each of them derives from a focus of Robin’s in his 'Ten principles'. - 1 Fairtrade visiting (Faculty of formacion work) - 2 Zero waste (Faculty of subsistence work) - 3 Festival of value(ing) (Faculty of care work) - 4 Dancers in the region (Faculty of stewarding work)