Christopher Alexander
Christopher Alexander was born in Vienna in 1936 and was brought up in the UK. He first studied Chemistry and Physics before switching to Mathematics and Architecture at Cambridge. He achieved the first ever PHD in Architecture from Harvard. He then taught Architecture at Berkeley.
In his most famous work, the book A Pattern Language he advocates for the use of a set of patterns to help solve design problems that are not identical but share many things in common. This theme has been taken up much more in the field of software and programming than in Architecture. §
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