There is one timeless way of building.
It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been.
The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.
It is a process through which the order of a building or a town grows out directly from the inner nature of the people, and the animals, and plants, and matter which are in it.
It is a process which allows the life inside a person, or a family, or a town, to flourish, openly, in freedom, so vividly that it gives birth, of its own accord, to the natural order which is needed to sustain this life.
It is so powerful and fundamental that with its help you can make any building in the world as beautiful as any place that you have ever seen.
Once you understand this way, you will be able to make your room alive; you will be able to design a house together with your family; a garden for your children; places where you can work; beautiful terraces where you can sit and dream.
It is so powerful, that with its help hundreds of people together can create a town, which is alive and vibrant, peaceful and relaxed, a town as beautiful as any town in history.
Without the help of architects or planners, if you are working in the timeless way, a town will grow under your hands, as steady as the flowers in your garden.
And there is no other way in which a building or a town which lives can possibly be made.
This does not mean that all ways of making buildings are identical. It means that at the core of all successful acts of building and at the core of all successful processes of growth, even though there are a million different versions of these acts and processes, there is one fundamental invariant feature, which is responsible for their success. Although this way has taken on a thousand different forms at different times, in different places, still, there is an unavoidable, invariant core to all of them.
Look at the buildings in the photographs which start this chapter.
They are alive. They have that sleepy, awkward grace which comes from perfect ease.
 What is it they have in common? They are beautiful, ordered, harmonious—yes, all these things. But especially, and what strikes to the heart, they live.
Each one of us wants to be able to bring a building or part of a town to life like this.
It is a fundamental human instinct, as much a part of our desire as the desire for children. It is, quite simply, the desire to make a part of nature, to complete a world which is already made of mountains, streams, snowdrops, and stones, with something made by us, as much a part of nature, and a part of our immediate surroundings.
Each one of us has, somewhere in his heart the dream to make a living world a universe.
Those of us who have been trained as architects have this desire perhaps at the very center of our lives: that one day, somewhere, somehow, we shall build one building which is wonderful, beautiful, breathtaking, a place where people can walk and dream for centuries.
In some form, every person has some version of this dream: whoever you are, you may have the dream of one day building a most beautiful house for your family, a garden, a fountain, a fishpond, a big room with soft light, flowers outside and the smell of new grass.
In some less clear fashion, anyone who is concerned with towns has this same dream, perhaps, for an entire town.
And there is a way that a building or a town can actually be brought to life like this.
There is a definable sequence of activities which are at the heart of all acts of building, and it is possible to specify, precisely, under what conditions these activities will generate a building which is alive. All this can be made so explicit that anyone can do it.
And just so, the process by which a group of independent people make part of a town alive can equally be made precise. Again, there is a definable sequence of activities, more complex in this case, which are at the heart of all collective building processes, and it is possible to specify exactly when these processes will bring things to life. And, once again, these processes can be made so explicit, and so clear, that any group of people can make use of them.
This one way of building has always existed.
It is behind the building of traditional villages in Africa, and India, and Japan. It was behind the building of the great religious buildings: the mosques of Islam, the monasteries of the middle ages, and the temples of Japan. It was behind the building of the simple benches, and cloisters and arcades of English country towns; of the mountain huts of Norway and Austria; the roof tiles on the walls of castles and palaces; the bridges of the Italian middle ages; the cathedral of Pisa.
In an unconscious form, this way has been behind almost all ways of building for thousands of years.
But it has become possible to identify it, only now, by going to a level of analysis which is deep enough to show what is invariant in all the different versions of this way.
This hinges on a form of representation which reveals all possible construction processes, as versions of one deeper process.
First, we have a way of looking at the ultimate constituents of the environment: the ultimate “things” which a building or a town is made of. As we shall see, in chapters 4 and 5, every building, every town, is made of certain entities which I call patterns: and once we understand buildings in terms of their patterns, we have a way of looking at them, which makes all buildings, all parts of a town similar, all members of the same class of physical structures.
Second, we have a way of understanding the generative processes which give rise to these patterns: in short, the source from which the ultimate constituents of building come. As we shall see in chapters 10, 11, and 12, these patterns always come from certain combinatory processes, which are different in the specific patterns which they generate, but always similar in their overall structure, and in the way they work. They are essentially like languages. And again, in terms of these pattern languages, all the different ways of building, although different in detail, become similar in general outline.
At this level of analysis, we can compare many different building processes.
Then, once we see their differences clearly, it becomes possible to define the difference between those processes which make buildings live, and those which make them dead.
And it turns out that, invariant, behind all processes which allow us to make buildings live, there is a single common process.
This single process is operational and precise. It is not merely a vague idea, or a class of processes which we can understand: it is concrete enough and specific enough, so that it functions practically. It gives us the power to make towns and buildings live, as concretely as a match gives us the power to make a flame. It is a method or a discipline, which teaches us precisely what we have to do to make our buildings live.
But though this method is precise, it cannot be used mechanically.
The fact is, that even when we have seen deep into the processes by which it is possible to make a building or a town alive, in the end, it turns out that this knowledge only brings us back to that part of ourselves which is forgotten.
Although the process is precise, and can be defined in exact scientific terms, finally it becomes valuable, not so much because it shows us things which we don’t know, but instead, because it shows us what we know already, only daren’t admit because it seems so childish, and so primitive.
Indeed it turns out, in the end, that what this method does is simply free us from all method.
The more we learn to use this method, the more we find that what it does is not so much to teach us processes we did not know before, but rather opens up a process in us, which was part of us already.
We find out that we already know how to make buildings live, but that the power has been frozen in us: that we have it, but are afraid to use it: that we are crippled by our fears; and crippled by the methods and the images which we use to overcome these fears.
And what happens finally, is that we learn to overcome our fears, and reach that portion of our selves which knows exactly how to make a building live, instinctively. But we learn too, that this capacity in us is not accessible, until we first go through the discipline which teaches us to let go of our fears.
And that is why the timeless way is, in the end, a timeless one.
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.
The power to make buildings beautiful lies in each of us already.
It is a core so simple, and so deep, that we are born with it. This is no metaphor. I mean it literally. Imagine the greatest possible beauty and harmony in the world—the most beautiful place that you have ever seen or dreamt of. You have the power to create it, at this very moment, just as you are.
And this power we have is so firmly rooted and coherent in every one of us that once it is liberated, it will allow us, by our individual, unconnected acts, to make a town, without the slightest need for plans, because, like every living process, it is a process which builds order out of nothing.
But as things are, we have so far beset ourselves with rules, and concepts, and ideas of what must be done to make a building or a town alive, that we have become afraid of what will happen naturally, and convinced that we must work within a “system” and with “methods” since without them our surroundings will come tumbling down in chaos.
We are afraid, perhaps, that without images and methods, chaos will break loose; worse still, that unless we use images of some kind, ourselves, our own creation will itself be chaos. And why are we afraid of that? Is it because people will laugh at us, if we make chaos? Or is it, perhaps, that we are most afraid of all that if we do make chaos, when we hope to create art, we will ourselves be chaos, hollow, nothing?
 They can persuade us that we must have more method, and more system, because we are afraid of our own chaos. Without method and more method, we are afraid the chaos which is in us will reveal itself. And yet these methods only make things worse.
The thoughts and fears which feed these methods are illusions.
It is the fears which these illusions have created in us, that make places which are dead and lifeless and artificial. And—greatest irony of all—it is the very methods we invent to free us from our fears which are themselves the chains whose grip on us creates our difficulties.
For the fact is, that this seeming chaos which is in us is a rich, rolling, swelling, dying, lilting, singing, laughing, shouting, crying, sleeping order. If we will only let this order guide our acts of building, the buildings that we make, the towns we help to make, will be the forests and the meadows of the human heart.
To purge ourselves of these illusions, to become free of all the artificial images of order which distort the nature that is in us, we must first learn a discipline which teaches us the true relationship between ourselves and our surroundings.
Then, once this discipline has done its work, and pricked the bubbles of illusion which we cling to now, we will be ready to give up the discipline, and act as nature does.
This is the timeless way of building: learning the discipline—and shedding it.
We have been taught that there is no objective difference between good buildings and bad, good towns and bad.
The fact is that the difference between a good building and a bad building, between a good town and a bad town, is an objective matter. It is the difference between health and sickness, wholeness and dividedness, self-maintenance and self-destruction. In a world which is healthy, whole, alive, and self-maintaining, people themselves can be alive and self-creating. In a world which is unwhole and self-destroying, people cannot be alive: they will inevitably themselves be self-destroying, and miserable.
But it is easy to understand why people believe so firmly that there is no single, solid basis for the difference between good building and bad.
It happens because the single central quality which makes the difference cannot be named.
The first place I think of, when I try to tell someone about this quality, is a corner of an English country garden, where a peach tree grows against a wall.
The wall runs east to west; the peach tree grows flat against its southern side. The sun shines on the tree and as it warms the bricks behind the tree, the warm bricks themselves warm the peaches on the tree. It has a slightly dozy quality. The tree, carefully tied to grow flat against the wall; warming the bricks; the peaches growing in the sun; the wild grass growing around the roots of the tree, in the angle where the earth and roots and wall all meet.
This quality is the most fundamental quality there is in anything.
It is never twice the same because it always takes its shape from the particular place in which it occurs.
In one place it is calm, in another it is stormy; in one person it is tidy; in another it is careless; in one house it is light; in another it is dark; in one room it is soft and quiet; in another it is yellow. In one family it is a love of picnics; in another dancing; in another playing poker; in another group of people it is not family life at all.
It is a subtle kind of freedom from inner contradictions.
A system has this quality when it is at one with itself; it lacks it when it is divided.
It has it when it is true to its own inner forces; lacks it when it is untrue to its own inner forces.
It has it when it is at peace with itself; and lacks it when it is at war with itself.
You already know this quality. The feeling for it is the most primitive feeling which an animal or a man can have. The feeling for it is as primitive as the feeling for our own well-being, for our own health, as primitive as the intuition which tells us when something is false or true.
But to grasp it fully you must overcome the prejudice of physics which tells us that all tilings are equally alive and real.
In physics and chemistry there is no sense in which one system can be more at one with itself than another.
And no sense at all in which what a system “ought to be” grows naturally from “what it is.” Take, for example, the atoms which a physicist deals with. An atom is so simple that there is never any question whether it is true to its own nature. Atoms are all true to their own natures; they are all equally real; they simply exist. An atom cannot be more true to itself, or less true to itself. And because physics has concentrated on very simple systems, like atoms, we have been led to believe that what something “is,” is an entirely separate question from what it “ought to be”; and that science and ethics can’t be mixed.
But the view of the world which physics teaches, powerful and wonderful as it is, is limited by this very blindness.
In the world of complex systems it is not so. Most men are not fully true to their own inner natures or fully “real.” In fact, for many people, the effort to become true to themselves is the central problem of life. When you meet a person who is true to himself, you feel at once that he is “more real” than other people are. At the human level of complexity, then, there is a distinction between systems which are true to their “inner nature,” and those which aren’t. Not all of us are equally true to our inner nature, or equally real, or equally whole.
And exactly the same is true in those larger systems, outside us, which we call our world. Not all parts of the world are equally true to themselves, equally real, equally whole. In the world of physics, any system which is self-destroying simply ceases to exist. But in the world of complex systems this is not so.
Indeed, this subtle and complex freedom from inner contradictions is just the very quality which makes things live.
In the world of living things, every system can be more real or less real, more true to itself or less true to itself. It cannot become more true to itself by copying any externally imposed criterion of what it ought to be. But it is possible to define a process which will tell you how the system can become more true to itself, in short what it “ought to be,” only according to what it is.
This oneness, or the lack of it, is the fundamental quality for any thing.  It embodies everything.
Yet still this quality cannot be named.
The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is unerringly precise. Words fail to capture it because it is much more precise than any word. The quality itself is sharp, exact, with no looseness in it whatsoever. But each word you choose to capture it has fuzzy edges and extensions which blur the central meaning of the quality.
I shall try to show you now, why words can never capture it, by circling round it, through the medium of half a dozen words.
The word which we most often use to talk about the quality without a name is the word “alive.”
There is a sense in which the distinction between something alive and something lifeless is much more general, and far more profound, than the distinction between living things and nonliving things, or between life and death. Things which are living may be lifeless; nonliving things may be alive. A man who is walking and talking can be alive; or he can be lifeless. Beethoven’s last quartets are alive; so are the waves at the ocean shore; so is a candle flame; a tiger may be more alive, because more in tune with its own inner forces, than a man.
A well-made fire is alive.  He places each log exactly to make the air between the logs just right. He doesn’t stir the logs with a poker, but while they are burning, grasps each one, and places it again, perhaps only an inch from where it was before. The logs are so exactly placed that they form channels for the draft. Waves of liquid yellow flame run up the logs when the draft blows. Each log glows with full intensity. The fire, watched, burns so intensely and so steadily, that when it dies, finally, it burns to nothing; when the last glow dies, there is nothing but a little dust left in the fireplace.
But the very beauty of the word “alive” is just its weakness.
The overwhelming thing that stays with you is that the fire lives. And yet this is a metaphor. Literally, we know that plants and animals are alive, and fire and music are not alive. If we are pressed to explain why we call one fire alive and another dead, then we are at a loss. The metaphor makes us believe that we have found a word to grasp the quality without a name. But we can only use the word to name the quality, when we already understand the quality.
Another word we often use to talk about the quality without a name is “whole”
A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions. When it is at war with itself, and gives rise to forces which act to tear it down, it is unwhole. The more free it is of its own inner contradictions, the more whole and healthy and wholehearted it becomes.
Compare the trees along a wild and windblown lake, with an eroded gully. These trees and branches are so made that when the wind blows they all bend, and all the forces in the system, even the violent forces of the wind, are still in balance when the trees are bent; and because they are in balance, they do no harm, they do no violence. The configuration of the bending trees makes them self-maintaining.
But think about a piece of land that is very steep, and where erosion is taking place. There aren’t enough tree roots to hold the earth together, let’s say; the rain falls, in torrents, and carries the earth down streams which form gullies; again, the earth is still not bound together because there aren’t enough plants there; the wind blows; the erosion goes further; next time the water comes, it runs in the very same gullies, and deepens them; and widens them. The configuration of this system is such that the forces which it gives birth to, which arise in it, in the long run act to destroy the system. The system is self-destroying; it does not have the capacity to contain the forces which arise within it.
The system of the trees and wind is whole; the system of the gully and the rain is unwhole.
But the word “whole” is too enclosed.
It suggests closure, containment, finiteness. When you call a thing whole, it makes you think that it is whole unto itself, and isolated from the world around it. But a lung is whole, only so long as it is breathing oxygen from the air outside the organism; a person is whole only so long as he is a member of some human group; a town is whole only so long as it is in balance with the surrounding countryside.
The word carries a subtle hint of self-containment. And self-containment always undermines the quality which has no name. For this reason, the word “whole” can never perfectly describe this quality.
Another facet of the quality which has no name is caught by the word “comfortable”
The word “comfortable” is more profound than people usually realize. The mystery of genuine comfort goes far beyond the simple idea that the word first seems to mean. Places which are comfortable are comfortable because they have no inner contradictions, because there is no little restlessness disturbing them.
Imagine yourself on a winter afternoon with a pot of tea, a book, a reading light, and two or three huge pillows to lean back against. Now make yourself comfortable. Not in some way which you can show to other people, and say how much you like it. I mean so that you really like it, for yourself.
You put the tea where you can reach it: but in a place where you can’t possibly knock it over.
When you take the trouble to do all that, and you do it carefully, with much attention, then it may begin to have the quality which has no name.
Yet the word “comfortable” is easy to misuse, and has too many other meanings.
There are kinds of comfort which stultify and deaden too.
A word which overcomes the lack of openness in the words “whole” and “comfortable” is the word “free”
The quality without a name is never calculated, never perfect; that subtle balance of forces only happens when the ideas and images are left behind; and created with abandon.
Think of a truck, filled with bags of cement. If the bags are stacked perfectly, in lines, it may be careful, and intelligent, and quite precise. But it will not begin to have the quality without a name, until there is a certain freedom there: the men who piled the bags, running, and throwing them, forgetting themselves, throwing themselves into it, lost, wild. …
And a steel mill too can have this quality because its freedom and its wildness show there, blazing in the night.
And yet, of course, this freedom can be too theatrical: a pose, a form, a manner.
 Its shape is borrowed, artificial, forced, contrived, made to copy outside images, not generated by the forces inside.
That kind of so-called freedom is opposite to the quality which has no name.
A word which helps restore the balance is the word “exact.”
The word “exact” helps to counterbalance the impression of other words like “comfortable” and “free.” These words suggest that the quality without a name is somehow inexact. And it is true that it is loose and fluid and relaxed. But it is never inexact. The forces in a situation are real forces. There is no getting round them. If the adaptation to the forces is not perfectly exact, there can be no comfort, and no freedom, because the small forces which have been left out will always work to make the system fail.
Suppose that I am trying to make a table for the blackbirds in my garden. In winter, when the snow is on the ground, and the blackbirds are short of food, I will put food out for them on the table. So I build the table; and dream about the clusters of blackbirds which will come flocking to the table in the snow.
But it is not so easy to build a table that will really work. The birds follow their own laws; and if I don’t understand them, they just won’t come. If I put the table too low, the birds won’t fly down to it, because they don’t like to swoop too close to the ground. If it is too high in the air, or too exposed, the wind won’t let them settle on it. If it is near a laundry line, blowing in the wind, they will be frightened by the moving line. Most of the places where I put the table actually don’t work.
I slowly learn that blackbirds have a million subtle forces guiding them in their behavior. If I don’t understand these forces, there is simply nothing I can do to make the table come to life. So long as the placing of the table is inexact, my image of the blackbirds flocked around the table eating, is just wishful thinking. To make the table live, I must take these forces seriously, and place the table in a position which is perfectly exact.
And, yet, of course, the word “exact” does not describe it properly.
It has no sense of freedom in it; and it is too reminiscent of those other things which are exact in an entirely different sense.
Usually, when we say something is exact, we mean that it fits some abstract image perfectly. If I cut a square of cardboard, and make it perfectly exact, it means that I have made the cardboard perfectly square : its sides are exactly equal: and its angles are exactly ninety degrees. I have matched an image perfectly.
The meaning of the word “exact” which I use here is almost opposite. A thing which has the quality without a name never fits any image exactly. What is exact is its adaptation to the forces which are in it. But this exactness requires that it be loose and fluid in its form.
A word which goes much deeper than the word “exact” is “egoless”
When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that there is no room for its own nature.
Think, by contrast, of the decoration on an old bench —small hearts carved in it; simple holes, cut out while it was being put together—these can be egoless.
They are not carved according to some plan. They are carefree, carved into it, wherever there seems to be a gap. It is not in the least contrived; there is no effort in the decoration; it does not seek to express the personality of the man who carved it. It is so natural, that it almost seems as though the bench itself cried out for it: and the carver simply did what was required.
And yet although the old bench and its carving may be egoless this word is also not quite right.
It does not mean, for instance, that the man who made it left his own person out of it. It was part of his person that he liked the bench, and wanted to carve hearts in it. Perhaps he made it for his favorite girl.
It is perfectly possible to make a thing which has the quality which has no name, and still let it reflect your personality. Your person, and the likes and dislikes which are part of you, are themselves forces in your garden, and your garden must reflect those forces just as it reflects the other forces which make leaves grow and birds sing.
But if you use the word “ego’′ to mean the center of a person’s character, then the idea of making something egoless can sound as though you want the person to efface himself completely. That is not what the word means at all; and yet because of it, the word is not quite right.
A last word which can help to catch the quality without a name is the word “eternal.”
All things and people and places which have the quality without a name, reach into the realm of the eternal.
Some are eternal in almost a literal sense: they are so strong, so balanced, so strongly self-maintaining, that they are not easily disturbed, almost imperishable. Others reach the quality for no more than an instant, and then fall back into the lesser state, where inner contradictions rule.
The word “eternal” describes them both. For the instant that they have this quality, they reach into the realm of eternal truth. At that moment when they are free from inner contradictions, they take their place among the order of things which stand outside of time.
I once saw a simple fish fond in a Japanese village which was perhaps eternal.
A farmer made it for his farm. The pond was a simple rectangle, about 6 feet wide, and 8 feet long; opening off a little irrigation stream. At one end, a bush of flowers hung over the water. At the other end, under the water, was a circle of wood, its top perhaps 12 inches below the surface of the water. In the pond there were eight great ancient carp, each maybe 18 inches long, orange, gold, purple, and black: the oldest one had been there eighty years. The eight fish swam, slowly, slowly, in circles—often within the wooden circle. The whole world was in that pond. Every day the farmer sat by it for a few minutes. I was there only one day and I sat by it all afternoon. Even now, I cannot think of it without tears. Those ancient fish had been swimming, slowly, in that pond for eighty years. It was so true to the nature of the fish, and flowers, and the water, and the farmers, that it had sustained itself for all that time, endlessly repeating, always different. There is no degree of wholeness or reality which can be reached beyond that simple pond.
And yet, like all the other words, this word confuses more than it explains.
It hints at a religious quality. The hint is accurate. And yet it makes it seem as though the quality which that pond has is a mysterious one. It is not mysterious. It is above all ordinary. What makes it eternal is its ordinariness. The word “eternal” cannot capture that.
And so you see, in spite of every effort lo give this quality a name, there is no single name which captures it.
Imagine the quality without a name as a point, and each of the words which we have tried as an ellipse. Each ellipse includes this point. But each ellipse also covers many other meanings, which are distant from this point.
Since every word is always an ellipse like this—then every word will always be too broad, too vague, too large in scope to refer only and exactly to the quality which is the point. No word can ever catch the quality without a name because the quality is too particular, and words too broad. And yet it is the most important quality there is, in anyone, or anything.
It is not only simple beauty of form and color. Man can make that without making nature. It is not only fitness to purpose. Man can make that too without making nature. And it is not only the spiritual quality of beautiful music or of a quiet mosque that, comes from faith. Man can make that too without making nature.
The quality which has no name includes these simpler sweeter qualities. But it is so ordinary as welly that it somehow reminds us of the passing of our life.
It is a slightly bitter quality
We know, now, what the quality without a name is like, in feeling and in character. But so far, concretely, we have not. seen this quality in any system larger than a tree, a fond, a bench. Yet it can be in anything—in buildings, animals, plants, cities, streets, the wilderness—and in ourselves. We shall begin to understand it concretely, in all these larger pieces of the world, only when we first understand it in ourselves.
It is, for instance, the wild smile of the gypsies dancing in the road.
The broad brim of the big hat, like arms spread wide, open to the world, confident, huge, … The embrace of the child’s arms about the grass. … It is the solid and entrenched repose of the old man lighting a cigarette: hands on his knees, solid, resting, waiting, listening.
In our lives, this quality without a name is the most precious thing we ever have.
And I am free to the extent I have this quality in me.
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. Imagine him especially, perhaps, wearing a great wide hat, his arm flung out in an expansive gesture, singing perhaps and for one instant utterly oblivious to everything but what is in him and around him at that second.
This wild freedom, this passion, comes into our lives in the instant we let go.
It is when all our forces can move freely in us. In nature, this quality is almost automatic, because there are no images to interfere with natural processes of making things. But in all of our creations, the possibility occurs that images can interfere with the natural, necessary order of a thing. And, most of all, this way that images distort the things we make, is familiar in ourselves. For we ourselves are, like our works, the products of our own creation. And we are only free, and have the quality without a name in us, when we give up the images which guide our lives.
Yet each of us faces the fear of letting go. The fear of being just exactly what one is, of letting the forces flow freely; of letting the configuration of one’s person adjust truly to these forces.
Our letting go is stifled, all the time, so long as we have ideas and opinions about ourselves, which make us hug too tightly to our images of how to live, and bottle up these forces.
So long as we are still bottled up, like this, there is a tightness about the mouth, a nervous tension in the eyes, a stiffness and a brittleness in the way we walk, the way we move.
And yet, until one does let go, it is impossible to be alive. The stereotypes are restricted; there are very different configurations. The infinite variety of actual people, with their vastly and utterly different forces, require a huge creation, to find the resolution of the person: and in finding this resolution truly, one must above all be free of the stereotypes.
The great film, Ikiru–to live—describes it in the life of an old man.
He has sat for thirty years behind a counter, preventing things from happening. And then he finds out that he is to die of cancer of the stomach, in six months. He tries to live; he seeks enjoyment; it doesn’t amount to much. And finally, against all obstacles, he helps to make a park in a dirty slum of Tokyo. He has lost his fear, because he knows that he is going to die; he works and works and works, there is no stopping him, because he is no longer afraid of anyone, or anything. He has no longer anything to lose, and so in this short time gains everything; and then dies, in the snow, swinging on a child’s swing in the park which he has made, and singing.
Each of us lives most fully “on the wire” in the face of death, daring to do the very thing which fear prevents us from.
A few years ago a family of high wire artists had a terrible fall from the high wire, in the middle of their performance. All of them were killed or maimed, except the father, who escaped with broken legs. But even after losing his children in the fall, a few months later he was back to work, in the circus, on the wire again.
Someone asked him in an interview, how he could bring himself to do it, after such a terrible accident. He answered: “On the wire, that’s living … all the rest is waiting.”
Of course for most of us it is not quite so literal.
The fear which prevents us from being ourselves, from being that one person unique in all the world, from coming to life—that may mean nothing greater than the fear of giving up the image of a certain job, an image of a certain kind of family life.
One man can be as free in lighting up a cigarette, as that old man dancing on the wire. Another traveling with the gypsies.
It has above all to do with the elements.
The wind, the soft rain; sitting on the back of an old truck moving clothes and baskets of possessions while the gentle rain is falling, laughing, crouching under a shawl to keep from getting wet, but getting wet. Eating a loaf of bread, torn in pieces, hunks of cheese cut crudely with a hatchet which is lying in the corner; red flowers glistening in the rain along the roadside; banging on the window of the truck to shout some joke.
Nothing to keep, nothing to lose. No possessions, no security, no concern about possessions, and no concern about security: in this mood it is possible to do exactly what makes sense, and nothing else: there are no hidden fears, no morals, no rules, no undercurrent of constraint, no subtle sense of concern for the form of what the people round about you are doing, and above all no concern for what you are yourself, no subtle fear of other people’s ridicule, no subtle train of fears which can connect the smallest triviality with bankruptcy and loss of love and loss of friends and death, no ties, no suits, no outward elements of majesty at all. Only the laughter and the rain.
And it happens when our inner forces are resolved.
And when a person’s forces are resolved, it makes us feel at home, because we know, by some sixth sense, that there are no other unexpected forces lurking underground. He acts according to the nature of the situations he is in, without distorting them.  And so, we feel relaxed and peaceful in his company.
Of course, in practice we often don’t know just what our inner forces are.
We live, for months, for years, acting in a certain way, not knowing whether we are free or not, doubting, not even sure when we are successfully resolved, and when we aren’t.
Yet still there are those special secret moments in our lives when we smile unexpectedly–when all our forces are resolved.
A woman can often see these moments in us, better than a man, better than we ourselves even. When we know those moments, when we smile, when we let go, when we are not on guard at all—these are the moments when our most important forces show themselves; whatever you are doing at such a moment, hold on to it, repeat it for that certain smile is the best knowledge that we ever have of what our hidden forces are, and where they lie, and how they can be loosed.
We cannot be aware of these most precious moments when they are actually happening.
In fact, the conscious effort to attain this quality, or to be free, or to be anything, the glance which this creates, will always spoil it.
It is, instead, when we forget ourselves completely: playing the fool perhaps among a group of friends, or swimming out to sea, or walking simply, or trying to finish something late at night over a table with a group of friends, cigarette stuck to lower lip, eyes tired, earnest concentration.
All these moments in my own life—I only know them now, in retrospect.
Yet each of us knows from experience the feeling which this quality creates in us.
It is the time when we are most right, most just, most sad, and most hilarious.
And for this reason, each one of us can also recognize this quality when it occurs in buildings.
We can identify the towns and buildings, streets and gardens, flower beds, chairs, tables, tablecloths, wine bottles, garden seats, and kitchen sinks which have this quality—simply by asking whether they are like us when we are free.
We need only ask ourselves which places—which towns, which buildings, which rooms, have made us feel like this—which of them have that breath of sudden passion in them, which whispers to us, and lets us recall those moments when we were ourselves.
And the connection between the two—between this quality in our own lives, and the same quality in our surroundings—is not just an analogy, or similarity. The fact is that each one creates the other.
Places which have this quality, invite this quality to come to life in us. And when we have this quality in us, we tend to make it come to life in towns and buildings which we help to build. It is a self-supporting, self-maintaining, generating quality. It is the quality of life. And we must seek it, for our own sakes, in our surroundings, simply in order that we can ourselves become alive.
That is the central scientific fact in all that follows.
We know what the quality without a name is like in our own lives.
As we shall see in the next few chapters, this quality can only come to life in us when it exists within the world that we are fart of. We can come alive only to the extent the buildings and towns we live in are alive. The quality without a name is circular: it exists in us, when it exists in our buildings; and it only exists in our buildings, when we have it in ourselves.
To understand this clearly, we must first recognize that what a town or building is, is governed, above all, by what is happening there.
I mean this in the most general sense.
Activities; events; forces; situations; lightning strikes; fish die; water flows; lovers quarrel; a cake burns; cats chase each other; a hummingbird sits outside my window; friends come by; my car breaks down; lovers’ reunion; children born; grandparents go broke. …
My life is made of episodes like this.
The life of every person, animal, plant, creature, is made of similar episodes.
The character of a place, then, is given to it by the episodes which happen there.
Those of us who are concerned with buildings tend to forget too easily that all the life and soul of a place, all of our experiences there, defend not simply on the physical environment, but on the patterns of events which we experience there.
What is Lima—what is most memorable there—eating anticuchos in the street; small pieces of beef heart, on sticks, cooked over open coals, with hot sauce on them; the dark, badly lit night streets of Lima, small carts with the flickering fire of the hot coals, the faces of the sellers, shadowy figures gathered round, to eat the beef hearts.
Or in Geneva—chestnuts, hot, in small paper bags, eaten in the autumn mist, warming the fingers.
And, what is it about the California coast—the shock of the waves, the hiss of the surf, standing on a rock while the white water hisses in, runs out, a dash across the wet sand to the rock, before the sea comes in again.
And it is just the same indoors. Think of a big room, vast, huge windows, big empty fireplace, completely empty, no furniture at all, except an easel and a chair Picasso’s studio. Is this not made entirely of the situations, the forces let loose by the configuration of events?
And what of a party around a kitchen table, people drinking together, cooking together, drinking wine, eating grapes, together preparing a stew of beef and wine and garlic and tomatoes which takes four hours to cook and while it cooks, we drink, and then, at last we eat it.
What of the kind of moment we remember most of all: the flickering candles on the Christmas tree, the small bell ringing, the children waiting, hour by hour, outside the door, peeping through the crack, and finally rushing in, when they hear the tinkling of that small bell, and see the tree there, lit, with fifty white and red candles, burning, and the smell of singed pine needles where a twig caught fire while the candles were being lit.
What of the process of scrubbing the floor, working the stiff bristles of the brush, and the pail of water, over the soft boards, with fibers breaking loose, and the smell of the soap that stays in the wood.
Or saying goodbye, at a train, leaning through the window of the train, waving, kissing, as the train pulls out, running along the platform. …
Or, taking the Sunday walk, a family, abreast, in twos and threes, walking along the road, pushing the smallest child perhaps, the others lagging behind to look at frogs, and an old shoe.
These patterns of events which create the character of a place are not necessarily human events.
The sunshine shining on the windowsill, the wind blowing in the grass are events too—they affect us just as much as social events.
Any combination of events, which has a bearing on our lives—an actual physical effect on us—affects our lives.
If, for example, there is a stream bed gouged in the rock outside my house, which fills each time it rains, this is a situation which has a powerful effect on the character of the environment, yet is not a human situation at all.
Corn-pare the power and importance of these events with the other purely geometrical aspects of the environment which architects concern themselves with.
Compare, for instance, two ways of including water in a building.
Suppose, on the one hand, that there is a concrete reflecting pool outside your room—with no purpose except to reflect the sky.
And suppose, on the other hand, that there is a stream outside your room, with a small rowing boat on it, where you can go, to row, lie on the water, struggle against the stream, tip over …
Which of these two makes the most difference to the building? The rowing boat, of course, because it alters the entire experience of the building.
It is the action of these moments, the people involved in them, and the peculiar situations, which make the impression on our lives.
The life of a house, or of a town, is not given to it, directly, by the shape of its buildings, or by the ornament and plan—it is given to them by the quality of the events and situations we encounter there. Always it is our situations which allow us to be what we are.
It is the people around us, and the most common ways we have of meeting them, of being with them, it is, in short, the ways of being which exist in our world, that make it possible for us to be alive.
We know, then, that what matters in a building or a town is not its outward shape, its physical geometry alone, but the events that happen there.
It is all the events which happen there—the human events given by the situations which are repeated, the mechanical events, the rush of trains, the fall of water, the slow cracking of structures, the growing of the grass, the melting of the snow, the rusting of iron, the flowering of roses, the heat of a summer’s day, the cooking, loving, playing, dying, and not only of ourselves, but of the animals, and plants, and even of the inorganic processes which make the whole.
Of course, some events happen once in a lifetime; others happen more often; and some happen very often indeed. But although it is true that a unique event can sometimes change our lives completely, or leave its mark on us, it is not too much to say that, by and large, the overall character of our lives is given by those events which keep on recurring over and over again.
And, by the same token, it is roughly true that any system, any aspect of the life of a part of the world, is essentially governed by those situations, human or nonhuman—which keep on repeating there.
A building or a town is given its character, essentially, by those events which keep on happening there most often.
A field of grass is given its character, essentially, by those events which happen over and over again—millions upon millions of times. The germination of the grass seed, the blowing wind, the flowering of the grass, the movement of the worms, the hatching of the insects …
A car is given its character by the events which keep on happening there—the rolling of the wheels, the movement of the pistons in the cylinders, the limited to and fro of the steering wheel and axle, as the car changes direction.
A family is given its character by the particular events which keep on happening there—the small affections, kisses, breakfast, the particular kinds of arguments which keep on happening, the way these arguments resolve themselves, the idiosyncrasies of people, both together and alone, which make us love them …
And just the same is true in any person’s individual life.
If I consider my life honestly, I see that it is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again.
Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, having a drink at a friend’s house, driving on the freeway, going to bed again. There are a few more.
There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person’s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen.  It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me.
Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can’t.
Of course, the standard patterns of events vary very much from person to person, and from culture to culture.
For a teenage boy, at high school in Los Angeles, his situations include hanging out in the corridor with other boys; watching television; sitting in a car with his girlfriend at a drive-in restaurant eating coke and hamburgers. For an old woman, in a European mountain village, her situations include scrubbing her front doorstep, lighting a candle in the local church, stopping at the market to buy fresh vegetables, walking five miles across the mountains to visit her grandson.
But each town, each neighborhood each building has }y a particular set of these patterns of events according to its prevailing culture.
A person can modify his immediate situations. He can move, change his life, and so on. In exceptional cases he can even change them almost wholly. But it is not possible to go beyond the bounds of the collection of events and pattern of events which our culture makes available to us.
We have a glimpse, then, of the fact that our world has a structure, in the simple fact that certain patterns of events—both human and nonhuman—keep repeating, and account essentially for much the greater part of the events which happen there.
Our individual lives are made from them … so are our lives together … they are the rules, through which our culture maintains itself, keeps itself alive, and it is by building our lives, out of these patterns of events, that we are people of our culture …
There is no aspect of our lives which is not governed by these patterns of events. And if the quality without a name can come into our lives at all, it is clear that it depends entirely on the specific nature of these patterns of events from which our world is made.
And indeed^ the world does have a structure, just because these patterns of events which repeat themselves are always anchored in the space.
I cannot imagine any pattern of events without imagining a place where it is happening. I cannot think of sleeping, without imagining myself sleeping somewhere. Of course, I can imagine myself sleeping in many different kinds of places—but these places all have at least certain physical geometrical characteristics in common. And I cannot think about the place without also knowing, or imagining, what happens there. I cannot think of a bedroom, without imagining the bed, lovemaking, sleeping, dressing perhaps, waking up … breakfast in bed …
Consider, for examfley the pattern of events which we might call “watching the world go by”
We sit, perhaps slightly raised, on the front porch, or on some steps in a park, or on a cafe terrace, with a more or less protected, sheltered, partly private place behind us, looking out into a more public place, slightly raised above it, watching the world go by.
I cannot separate it from the forch where it occurs.
The action and the space are indivisible. The action is supported by this kind of space. The space supports this kind of action. The two form a unit, a pattern of events in space.
The same in a barbershop. Inside, barbers, customers sitting in a row along one side, chairs for haircuts in another row, widely spaced, facing the mirrors, the barber idly talking while he cuts your hair, bottles of pomade around, hair dryer lying on the table, a basin in front for rinsing, a strop hanging on the wall, for stropping the razors … Again, the activity and its physical space are one. There is no separating them.
Indeed, a culture always defines its pattern of events by referring to the names of the physical elements of space which are standard in that, culture.
If you look back at the patterns of events that I have mentioned, each one is almost completely defined by the spatial character of the place where it occurs.
The barbershop, the porch, the shower, the study with its writing desk, the garden with its path, the bed, the communal lunch table, the cinema, the freeway, the high school corridor, the television set, the drive-in restaurant, the front doorstep, the candlestand at the back of the church, the market with its vegetable stalls, the mountain path. Each of these elements defines a pattern of events.
And the mere list of elements which are typical in a given town tells us the way of life of people there.
When you think of Los Angeles, you think of freeways, drive-ins, suburbs, airports, gas stations, shopping centers, swimming pools, hamburger joints, parking lots, beaches, billboards, supermarkets, free-standing one-family houses, front yards, traffic lights …
When you think of a medieval European town, you think of the church, the marketplace, the town square, the wall around the town, the town gates, narrow winding streets and lanes, rows of attached houses, each one containing an extended family, rooftops, alleys, blacksmiths, alehouses …
In each case the simple list of elements is intensely evocative. The elements are not just dead pieces of architecture and building—each one has an entire life associated with it. The names of the elements make us imagine and remember what people are doing in those elements, and what life is like in an environment which has those elements.
This does not mean that sface creates events, or that it causes them.
For example, in a modern town, the concrete spatial pattern of a sidewalk does not “cause” the kinds of human behavior which happens there.
What happens is much more complex. The people on the sidewalk, being culture-bound, know that the space which they are part of is a sidewalk, and, as part of their culture, they have the pattern of a sidewalk in their minds. It is this pattern in their minds which causes them to behave the way that people do behave on sidewalks, not the purely spatial aspect of the concrete and the walls and curbs.
And this means, of course, that in two cultures, people may see sidewalks differently, that is, they may have different patterns in their minds—and, that they will, as a result, act differently on the sidewalks. For example, in New York, a sidewalk is mainly a place for walking, jostling, moving fast.
It is not correct to interpret this by saying that the two sidewalks are the same.
It simply means that a pattern of events cannot be separated from the space where it occurs.
Each sidewalk is a unitary system, which includes both the field of geometrical relationships which define its concrete geometry, and the field of human actions and events, which are associated with it.
So when we see that a sidewalk in Bombay is used by people sleeping, or for parking cars … and that in New York it is used only for walking—we cannot interpret this correctly as a single sidewalk pattern, with two different uses. The Bombay sidewalk (space + events) is one pattern; the New York sidewalk (space + events) is another pattern. They are two entirely different patterns.
This close connection between patterns of events and space is commonplace in nature.
The word “stream” describes a pattern of physical space and a pattern of events, at the same time.
We do not separate the stream bed from the stream. There is no distinction in our minds between the bed of the stream, its banks, its winding configuration in the land, and the rushing of the water, the growth of plants, the swimming of the fish.
And in the same way the patterns of events which govern life in buildings and in towns cannot be separated from the space where they occur.
Each one is a living thing, a pattern of events in space, just like a stream, a waterfall, a fire, a storm—a thing which happens, over and again, and is exactly one of the elements from which the world is made.
And it is therefore clear that we can only understand these patterns of events by seeing them as living elements of space themselves.
It is the space itself which lives and breathes; it is the space which is the walking, jostling sidewalk in New York; it is the space we call the porch, which is the pattern of events we also call watching the world go by.
The life which happens in a building or a town is not merely anchored in the space but made up from the space itself.
For since space is made up of these living elements, these labeled patterns of events in space, we see that what seems at first sight like the dead geometry we call a building or a town is indeed a quick thing, a living system, a collection of interacting, and adjacent, patterns of events in space, each one repeating certain events over and over again, yet always anchored by its place in space. And, if we hope to understand the life which happens in a building or a town, we must therefore try to understand the structure of the space itself.
We shall now try to find some way of understanding space which yields its patterns of events in a completely natural way so that we can succeed in seeing patterns of events, and space, as one.
We are now ready to come to grips with the most basic problem of a building or a town: What is it made of? What is its structure? What is its physical essence? What are the building blocks of which its space is made?
We know, from chapter 4, that any town and any building gets its character from those events and patterns of events which keep on happening there the most, and that the patterns of events are linked, somehow, to space.
So far, though, we do not know just what aspect of the space it is that correlates with the events. We do not have a picture of a building or a town which shows us how its obvious outward structure—the way it looks, its physical geometry—is interlocked with these events.
Suppose I want to understand the “structure” of something. Just what exactly does this mean?
It means, of course, that I want to make a simple picture of it, which lets me grasp it as a whole.
And it means, too, that as far as possible, I want to paint this simple picture out of as few elements as possible. The fewer elements there are, the richer the relationships between them, and the more of the picture lies in the “structure” of these relationships.
And finally, of course, I want to paint a picture which allows me to understand the patterns of events which keep on happening in the thing whose structure I seek. In other words, I hope to find a picture, or a structure, which will, in some rather obvious and simple sense, account for the outward properties, for the pattern of events of the thing which I am studying.
What then, is the fundamental “structure” of a building or a town ?
In the crudest sense, we know from the last chapter roughly what the structure of a town or building is.
It is made up of certain concrete elements, with every element associated with a certain pattern of events.
On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeating endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations.
A town is made of houses, gardens, streets, sidewalks, shopping centers, shops, workplaces, factories, perhaps a river, sportgrounds, parking …
A-building is made up of walls, windows, doors, rooms, ceilings, nooks, stairs, staircase treads, doorhandles, terraces, counter tops, flowerpots … repeated over and again.
A gothic cathedral is made of a nave, aisles, west door, transept, choir, apse, ambulatory, columns, windows, buttresses, vaults, ribs, window tracery.
A modern metropolitan region in the United States is made of industrial areas, freeways, central business districts, supermarkets, parks, single-family houses, gardens, high-rise housing, streets, arteries, traffic lights, sidewalks.
And each of these elements has a specific pattern of events associated with it.
Families living in the houses, cars and buses driving in the streets, flowers growing in the flower pots, people walking through the doors, opening and closing them, traffic lights changing, people gathering for mass on Sundays in the nave of the cathedral, forces acting on the vaults, when the wind sways the building, light coming through the windows, people sitting at the windows in their living rooms and looking at the view …
But this picture of space does not ex-plain how—or why—these elements associate themselves with definite and quite specific patterns of events.
What is the relation between a church, say, taken as an element—and the pattern of events which happens in the church? It is all very well to say that they are connected. But unless we can see some kind of common sense in the connection, it explains nothing.
It is certainly not enough merely to say glibly that every pattern of events resides in space. That is obvious, and not very interesting. What we want to know is just how the structure of the space supports the patterns of events it does, in such a way that if we change the structure of the space, we shall be able to predict what kinds of changes in the patterns of events this change will generate.
In short, we want a theory which presents the interaction of the space and the events, in a clear and unambiguous way.
Further, it is very puzzling to realize that the “elements,” which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur.
For among the endless repetition of elements we also see an almost endless variation. Each church has a slightly different nave, the aisles are different, the west door is different … and in the nave, the various bays are usually different, the individual columns are different; each vault has slightly different ribs; each window has a slightly different tracery and different glass.
And just so in an urban region. Each industrial area is different; each freeway is different; each park is different; each supermarket is different—even the smaller individual elements like traffic lights and stop signs, although very similar, are never quite the same—and there is always a variety of types.
If the elements are different every time that they occur evidently then it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or a town: these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate “atomic” constituents of space.
Since every church is different, the so-called element we call “church” is not constant at all. Giving it a name only deepens the puzzle. If every church is different, what is it that remains the same, from church to church, that we call “church”?
When we say that matter is made of electrons, protons, and so forth, this is a satisfying way of understanding things, because these electrons seem, indeed, to be the same each time that they occur, and it therefore makes sense to show how matter can be built up from combinations of these “elements,” because the elements are truly elementary.
But if the so-called elements of which a building or a town is made—the houses, streets, windows, doors—are merely names, and the underlying things which they refer to keep on changing, then we have no solidity at all in our picture, and we need to find some other elements which truly are invariant throughout the variation, in a way that we can understand a building or a town as a structure made up by combination of these elements.
Let us therefore look more carefully at the structure of the space from which a building or a town is made to find out what it really is that is repeating y there.
We may notice first that over and above the elements, there are relationships between the elements which keep repeating too, just as the elements themselves repeat. …
Beyond its elements each building is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements.
In a gothic cathedral, the nave is flanked by aisles which run parallel to it. The transept is at right angles to the nave and aisles; the ambulatory is wrapped around the outside of the apse; the columns are vertical, on the line separating nave from aisle, spaced at equal intervals. Each vault connects four columns, and has a characteristic shape, cross-like in plan, concave in space. The buttresses are run down the outside of the aisles, on the same lines as the columns, supporting the load from the vaults. The nave is always a long thin rectangle—its ratio may vary between 1:3 and 1:6, but is never 1:2 or 1:20. The aisles are always narrower than the nave.
And each urban region, too, is defined by certain patterns of relationships among its elements.
Consider a typical mid-twentieth-century American metropolitan region. Somewhere towards the center of the region, there is a central business district, which contains a very high density office block; near these there are high density apartments. The overall density of the region slopes off with distance from the center, according to an exponential law periodically there are again peaks of higher density, but smaller than the central ones; and subsidiary to these smaller peaks, there are still smaller peaks. Each of these peaks of density contains stores and offices surrounded by higher density housing. Towards the outer fringe of the metropolis there are large areas of freestanding one-family houses; the farther out from the center they are, the larger their gardens. The region is served by a network of freeways. These freeways are closer together at the center. Independent of the freeways, there is a roughly regular two-dimensional network of streets. Every five or ten streets, there is a larger one, which functions as an artery. A few of the arteries are even bigger than the others: these tend to be arranged radially, branching out from the center in a star-shaped fashion. Where an artery meets a freeway, there is a characteristic cloverleaf arrangement of connecting lanes. Where two arteries intersect there is a traffic light; where a local street meets an artery, there is a stop sign. The major commercial areas, which coincide with the high density peaks in the density distribution, all fall on the major arteries. Industrial areas all fall within half a mile of a freeway and the older ones are also close to at least one major artery.
Evidently then, a large fart of the “structure” of a y building or a town consists of patterns of relationships.
For both the city of Los Angeles and the medieval church get their respective characters as much from these repeating patterns of relationships, as they do from the elements themselves
At first sight, it seems as though these patterns of relationships are separate from the elements.
Think of the aisle of the cathedral. It is parallel to the nave, and next to it, it shares columns with the nave, it runs east-west, like the church itself, it contains columns, on its inner wall, and windows on its outer wall. At first sight, it seems that these relationships are “extra,” over and above the fact of its being an aisle.
When we look closer, we realize that these relationships are not extra, but necessary to the elements, indeed a part of them.
We realize, for instance, that if an aisle were not parallel to the nave, were not next to it, were not narrower than the nave, did not share columns with the nave, did not run east to west, … that it would not be an “aisle” at all. It would be merely a rectangle of space, in gothic construction, floating free … and what makes it an aisle, specifically, is just the pattern of relationships which it has to the nave, and other elements around it.
When we look closer still, we realize that even this view is still not very accurate. For it is not merely true that the relationships are attached to the elements: the fact is that the elements themselves are patterns of relationships.
For, once we recognize that much of what we think of as an “element” in fact lies in the pattern of relationships between this thing and the things in the world around it, we then come to the second even greater realization, that the so-called element is itself nothing but a myth, and that indeed, the element itself is not just embedded in a pattern of relationships, but is itself entirely a pattern of relationships, and nothing else.
In short, the aisle, which needs the pattern of relationships to the nave and the east window to define it, is itself also a pattern of relationships between its length, its width, the columns which lie on the boundary with the nave, the windows which lie on the outer boundary …
And finally, the things which seem like elements dissolve, and leave a fabric of relationships behind, which is the stuff that actually repeats itself, and gives the structure to a building or a town.
In short, we may forget about the idea that the building is made up of elements entirely, and recognize instead, the deeper fact that all these so-called elements are only labels for the patterns of relationships which really do repeat.
The freeway, as a whole, does not repeat. But the fact that there are cloverleafs which connect the freeway to roads at certain intervals—that does repeat. There is a certain relationship between the freeway and its crossing arteries and cloverleafs, which does repeat.
But once again, the cloverleaf itself does not repeat. Each cloverleaf is different. What does repeat is that each lane forms a continuously curving off ramp to the right—there is a relationship between its radius, its tangency, the fact that it is banked, which does repeat.
Yet once again the “lane” which figures in this pattern of relationships does not repeat. What we call a lane is itself a relationship among still smaller so-called elements—the edges of the road, the surface, the lines which form the edge … and these again, although they function temporarily as elements, in order to make these relations clear, themselves evaporate when we look closely at them.
Each one of these patterns is a morphological law, which establishes a set of relationships in space.
This morphological law can always be expressed in the same general form: X → r (A, B, …), which means: Within a context of type X, the parts A, B, … are related by the relationship r. Thus, for example: Within a gothic cathedral → the nave is flanked on both sides by parallel aisles. or: Where a freeway meets an artery → the access ramps of the interchange take the rough form of a cloverleaf.
And each law or pattern is itself a pattern of relationships among still other laws, which are themselves just patterns of relationships again.
For though each pattern is itself apparently composed of smaller things which look like parts, of course, when we look closely at them, we see that these apparent “parts” are patterns too.
Consider, for example, the pattern we call a door. This pattern is a relationship among the frame, the hinges, and the door itself: and these parts in turn are made of smaller parts: the frame is made of uprights, a crosspiece, and cover mouldings over joints; the door is made of uprights, crosspieces and panels; the hinge is made of leaves and a pin. Yet any one of these things we call its “parts” are themselves in fact also patterns, each one of which may take an almost infinite variety of shapes, and color and exact size relationships which make it what it is.
The patterns are not just patterns of relationships, but patterns of relationships among other smaller patterns, which themselves have still other patterns hooking them together and we see finally, that the world is entirely made of all these interhooking, interlocking nonmaterial patterns.
Further, each pattern in the space has a pattern of events associated with it.
For instance, the pattern of the freeway contains a certain fabric of events, defined by rules: drivers drive at certain speeds; there are rules governing the way that people may change lanes; the cars all face the same way; there are certain kinds of overtaking; people drive a little slower on the entrances and exits &hellip
And the pattern of a kitchen, in any given culture, also contains a very definite pattern of events: the way that people use the kitchen, the way that food is prepared, the fact that people eat there, or don’t eat there, the fact that they wash the dishes standing at the sink … and on and on …
Of course, the pattern of space, does not “cause” the pattern of events.
Neither does the pattern of events “cause” the pattern in the space. The total pattern, space and events together, is an element of people’s culture. It is invented by culture, transmitted by culture, and merely anchored in space.
But there is a fundamental inner connection between each pattern of events, and the pattern of space in which it happens.
For the pattern in the space is, precisely, the precondition, the requirement, which allows the pattern of events to happen. In this sense, it plays a fundamental role in making sure that just this pattern of events keeps on repeating over and over again, throughout the space, and that it is, therefore, one of the things which gives a certain building, or a certain town, its character.
Go back, for example, to the porch of chapter 4, and the pattern of events we may call “sitting on the porch, watching the world go by.n
What aspect of the space is it which is connected to this pattern of events? Certainly it is not the whole porch, in its entirety: it is instead, just certain specific relationships.
For instance, in order for the pattern of events “watching the world go by” to happen, it is essential that the porch should be a little raised above the level of the street; it is essential that the porch be deep enough, to let a group of people sit there comfortably; and it is essential, of course, that the front of the porch be open, pierced with openings, and that the roof is therefore supported on columns.
It is this bundle of relationships which is essential, because these are the ones which are directly congruent with the pattern of events.
By contrast, the length of the porch, its height, its color, the materials of which it is made, the height of the side walls, the way the porch connects up with the inside of the house, are less essential—so they can vary, without altering the fundamental and essential nature of the porch.
And in this same sense, each pattern of relationships in space is congruent with some specific pattern of events.
The pattern of relationships we call a “freeway” is just that pattern of relationships required by the process of driving fast with limited access to and from side roads: in short the pattern of events.
The pattern of relationships we call a Chinese “kitchen” is just that pattern of relationships required for cooking Chinese food: again the underlying pattern of events.
And insofar as there are different “kinds” of kitchens, there are different patterns of relationships, responsible for slightly different patterns of events, in different cultures, which have different patterns of cooking.
In every case the pattern of relationships in space is that invariant which must repeat itself with some pattern of events, because it is exactly these relationships which are required to sustain that pattern of events.
We realize then that it is just the patterns of events in space which are repeating in the building or the town: and nothing else.
Nothing of any importance happens in a building or a town except what is defined within the patterns which repeat themselves.
For what the patterns do is at the same time seize the outward physical geometry, and also seize what happens there.
They account entirely for its geometrical structure: they are the visible, coherent stuff that is repeating, and coherent there: they are the background of the variation, which makes each concrete element a little different.
And, at the same time, they are also responsible for those events which keep repeating there, and therefore do the most to give the building or a town its character …
Each neighborhood is defined, too, in everything that matters, by the patterns which keep on repeating there.
Again, it is just those details which give the neighborhood a “character” which are defined by patterns: the kind of streets which it has, the kind of lots the houses are; the typical size of houses, the way that the houses are connected or distinct. …
Isn’t it true that the features which you remember in a place are not so much peculiarities, but rather the typical, the recurrent, the characteristic features: the canals of Venice, the flat roofs of a Moroccan town, the even spacing of the fruit trees in an orchard, the slope of a beach towards the sea, the umbrellas of an Italian beach, the wide sidewalks, sidewalk cafes, cylindrical poster board-use of two-inch bricks in Georgian houses, the ratio of bathroom area to house area, compared with that typical of an American house, the use of flagstones—on the sidewalks. Then down to the tiniest details of all the special shape of English faucets, the kinds of handles on an English metal window, the shape of the insulators on a telegraph pole.
Again, in each case the patterns define all the typical events which happen there. So “London,” as a way of life, lies there completely in these patterns which the Londoners create, and fill with the events that are exactly congruent with them.
And, what is most remarkable of all, the number of the patterns out of which a building or a town is made is rather small.
One might imagine that a building has a thousand different patterns in it; or that a town has tens of thousands. …
But the fact is that a building is defined, in its essentials, by a few dozen patterns. And, a vast town like London, or Paris, is defined, in its essence, by a few hundred patterns at the most.
In short, the patterns have enormous power and depth; they have the power to create an almost endless variety, they are so deep, so general, that they can combine in millions upon millions of different ways, to such an extent, that when we walk through Paris we are mainly overwhelmed by the variety; and the fact that there are these deep invariants, lying behind the vast variety, and generating it, is really an amazing shock. …
In this sense, the patterns are perhaps still deeper and more powerful than the discussion has made clear so far. From a handful of patterns, a vast, almost incalculable variety can be made: and a building, with all of its complexity and variety, is generated, actually, by a small number of them.
They are the atoms of our man-made universe.
In chemistry we learn that the world, in all of its complexity, is made up from combinations of some 92 elements, or atoms. This is an extraordinary fact, amazing to a person who learns chemistry for the first time. It is true that our conception of these atoms has changed repeatedly far from being the little billiard balls we once thought, we know that they are shifting patterns of particles and waves and—that even the most “elementary” particle the electron not a “thing.” However, all these changing views do not alter the fact that at the level of scale ’where atoms occur, they do occur, as identifiable recurrent entities. And even if vast changes occur in physics, and we one day recognize that these so-called atoms are also merely ripples in a deeper field, the fact that there are entities of some kind which correspond to the things we once called atoms will remain.


Workforce Credentials
Workforce Credentials
A list of Software Assurance certification and training opportunities
EC-Council
http://www.eccouncil.org/certification.htm
Certified Secure Programmer (ECSP) (Technologies Covered: C/C++, Java, .Net, PHP, SQL )
Certified Secure Application Developer (CSAD)
Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
Licensed Penetration Tester (LPT)
GIAC - Global Information Assurance Certification
http://www.giac.org/certifications/
GIAC Secure Software Programmer - .NET (GSSP-NET)
GIAC Secure Software Programmer - Java (GSSP-JAVA)
GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT)
GIAC Certified Penetration Tester (GPEN)
IEEE Computer Society
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/certification
Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP)
(ISC)2
http://www.isc2.org/csslp-certification.aspx
Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP)
Workforce Credentials
4/9/12


CurbWheel Admin
Current version:
Upload code
Current OSM file:
Processing...
Upload OSM
Current MBTiles file:
Processing...
Upload MBtiles
Use Local Network
Run Access Point
Update Network
Export surveys
Download Data
Reset surveys


A perfect hole to begin your day at Willet Creek. Long hitters have a reasonable chance at birdie. The hole plays slightly uphill. When the wind is blowing in, it can be an especially challenging hole to par. Two good shots will leave a short approach shot to an elevated green.


-
This is Playr. Use it to make playlists.
- Add songs or videos from a variety of sources: Soundcloud, Vimeo, Youtube, or any browser-friendly .mp4 or .webm
- Drag items around to re-order.
- TODO: Name and save your playlists.
- TODO: Broadcast what you're listening to.


# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
__author__ = """Chris Tabor (dxdstudio@gmail.com)"""
if __name__ == '__main__':
from os import getcwd
from os import sys
sys.path.append(getcwd())
from MOAL.helpers.display import Section
from MOAL.helpers.display import print_h2
from MOAL.helpers.display import print_h3
from MOAL.helpers.display import print_info
from MOAL.helpers.display import divider
from MOAL.helpers.text import randchars
from MOAL.data_structures.abstract.array_and_linked_lists import AssociationList
from random import randrange as rr
from random import choice
from faker import Factory
DEBUG = True if __name__ == '__main__' else False
[docs]class MapADT(AssociationList):
"""From wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_array:
"Operations associated with this data type allow:
* The addition of pairs to the collection
* The removal of pairs from the collection
* The modification of the values of existing pairs
* The lookup of the value associated with a particular key"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
While we could just use a dictionary (cheating), it would make sense
to use a vanilla array and implement a custom & importantly, internal,
function that does key lookups.
However, an associative array / map is purely abstract, and other data types
use it as a template, either concretely or conceptually. A linked list is
given as an example implementation, so we can use it here,
providing some basic methods that act as a facade pattern over the
internal implementation."""
[docs] def __str__(self):
print('{')
for node in self:
print(' "{}": "{}",'.format(node.title, node.cargo))
print('}')
return ''
[docs]class MultiMap(MapADT):
"""From wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimap (paraphrased):
"In computer science, a multimap (sometimes also multihash) is a
generalization of a map or associative array abstract data type in which
more than one value may be associated with and returned for a given key.
Often the multimap is implemented as a map with lists/sets as the values."
"Both map and multimap are particular cases of containers"
(See abstract/container for an example of this ADT.)
Since our MapADT uses a linked list, and the linked list implementation
does not prohibit certain types as values,
we can simply use a list as mentioned above for the value.
We could enforce certain types on the original linked list,
but that is arbitrary and unnecessary."""
[docs] def __setitem__(self, key, value):
super(MultiMap, self).append(key, value)
[docs]class Enrollment(MultiMap):
def __init__(self, students=[], classes=[], title='Enrollment-MultiMap'):
self.MAX_CLASSES = 4
self.classes = classes
self.students = students
super(Enrollment, self).__init__(title=title)
def enroll(self, student, klass):
super(Enrollment, self).__setitem__(student, klass)
def enroll_all(self, schedules):
for student, classes in schedules.iteritems():
for klass in classes:
self.enroll(student, klass)
if DEBUG:
divider(atom='.')
def _classes(self):
return [choice(self.classes) for _ in range(self.MAX_CLASSES)]
def schedules(self):
self.schedules = [{
student: self._classes()} for student in self.students]
return self.schedules
def get_classes(self, student):
res = super(Enrollment, self).__getitem__(student)
classes = res.cargo
return classes
def __setitem__(self, student, klass):
# Toss in a random class level (e.g 101, 302)
klass = '{}{} {}'.format(choice(['AP ', '']), klass, str(rr(100, 999)))
if DEBUG:
print('Enrolling {} into {}'.format(student, klass))
super(Enrollment, self).__setitem__(student, klass)
[docs]class BidirectionalMap(dict):
"""The bi-directional map uses a dictionary rather than an associative
or linked list, since the main purposes is to stress the concept of
bi-directional mapping, not the actual implementation. Besides, a dict would
be a better implementation for real-world usage, at least in python."""
[docs] def __str__(self):
print('{')
for key, val in self.items.iteritems():
print(' {}: {}'.format(key, val))
# print(' {}: {} (or) {}: {}'.format(key, val, val, key))
print('}')
return ''
[docs] def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.items = {}
self.items.update(*args, **kwargs)
[docs] def __contains__(self, key):
for _key, val in self.items.iteritems():
if _key == key:
return True
elif val == key:
return True
return False
[docs] def __getitem__(self, key, value):
try:
return self[key]
except KeyError:
return self[value]
finally:
pass
[docs] def __setitem__(self, key, val):
"""The idea here is that a key and a value are interchangeable,
but either direction should still enforce the rules of a traditional
map (or dictionary, in this case.)"""
keys = self.items.keys()
values = self.items.values()
is_both_key = key in keys and key in values
is_both_val = val in keys and val in values
if is_both_key or is_both_val:
raise ValueError(
'Item already exists in both key and value'
' -- it can only exist in one!')
super(BidirectionalMap, self).__setitem__(key, val)
if DEBUG:
with Section('Map Abstract Data Type'):
map_adt = MapADT(title='map_head')
for n in range(6):
key = 'map_item-{}'.format(''.join(randchars(8)))
map_adt[key] = ''.join(randchars(4))
print(map_adt)
with Section('Multi-Map Abstract Data Type'):
faker = Factory.create()
multimap = MultiMap(title='multi-map_head')
print_h2('Multimap', desc='General abstract usage.')
for n in range(4):
key = 'map_item-{}'.format(n)
multimap[key] = ''.join(randchars(4))
print(multimap)
print(multimap['map_item-1'])
print_h2('Multimap', desc='Used contextually for school enrollment.')
classes_map = Enrollment(
classes=['English', 'Comp Sci', 'History', 'Math', 'Art'],
students=[faker.name() for _ in range(3)] + ['Ms. Ella Tabor'])
map(classes_map.enroll_all, classes_map.schedules())
print_h3('All fields')
print(classes_map)
print_h3('\nClasses for Ella Tabor')
print('Classes: {}'.format(classes_map.get_classes('Ms. Ella Tabor')))
del classes_map['Ms. Ella Tabor']
# Too young to be taking classes right now anyway.
assert classes_map['Ms. Ella Tabor'] is None
print(classes_map)
assert 'Ms. Ella Tabor' not in classes_map
print_h3('Bi-directional', desc='A map ADT that maps to key OR value.')
bdmap = BidirectionalMap(
{1: 'Foo', 2: 'Bar', 'Foo': 'Bar', 'Bar': 'Foo'})
print(bdmap)
try:
bdmap['Bar'] = 'Foo'
bdmap['Foo'] = 'Bar'
except ValueError:
print_info('Test raising error for duplicate values Foo and Bar')
print(bdmap)
assert 'Bar' in bdmap
assert 'Foo' in bdmap


Hello {{ .UserName }}, You have logged in successfully. Use below to logout
logout
Kubernetes Cluster Roles
View Roles
Update Existing Role
Create New Role
Delete Roles
Kubernetes Roles
View Roles
Update Existing Role
Create New Role
Delete Roles


{% extends 'base.html' %} {% block title %}Home{% endblock title %} {% load staticfiles%} {% block content %} {% if user.is_authenticated %}
You're already logged in. If you'd like, you can logout or head to your projects.
The activation link you've used is invalid, possibly because it has already been used.


litter effects size OpenUrl effect inbred weaned model CrossRef data strain sex variance pups Science diallel genetic scale Figure Genetics mean mouse average effects, number litters parental Collaborative contributions overall posterior strains using BayesDiallel Web analysis ratio used additive crosses indicate factors lines male observed total values Cross breeding expected linear order reproductive size. Diallel Poisson cross founder maternal significant standard strains, collaborative epistatic estimates strain-specific variation Abstract FREE Genetic Text evidence modeled original paternal regression size, strong (A) Lenarcic Variance WSB environmental facility given laboratory mice mice. negative parent-of-origin positive sizes traits value vertical Genes, Genome account distribution latent new random respectively. shown significantly (B) (data) Animal Appendix Aylor Biology Genomes, Research UNC asymmetric binomial calculated class corresponding corresponds cross. explained fitness founders heritability hybrid mixed pup research use zero-truncated Bayesian CAST, Download GMB Litter NOD Open PWK PWK, S). Using WSBxWSB analysis. batch breeding. conflict continuous dams data-hide-link-title=""> data-icon-position="" described determined different distinct estimate figure highest including influence intervals inverse large larger males means measured model, proportion selection sire sire.strain smaller strains. study tab wild-derived (HPD) (VarPs) (x) A). Chesler Cross. Evolution Ferris HPDs Hillsborough MCMCglmm Mammalian Miller Morgan Mouse NZO Odet Peripato Philip Shorter accounting available classes classes, contribution counts crosses, dam dam.strain data, density did drawn effects. factors. female following gene general generated generations housing increase individual likely line link litter. multiple obtain package parameters phenotypic populations possible previous projections pups. red reported results row subspecific symmetric variable variables vs. weaning


Passwordless User Authentication System
PHP, Vue, MySQL, MetaMask
PHP, Vue, MySQL, MetaMask
Click the button to (sign up and) login!
To login, first install a Web3 wallet like the MetaMask browser extension or mobile app
Log in to your wallet account first!
Sign the message with your wallet to authenticate
Successful authentication for address:
{{ ethAddress }}
You can set a public name for this account:
{{ ethAddress }}
You can set a public name for this account:


ّ
A famous tourist attraction in USA: Bernie Sanders.8
A famous tourist attraction in USA: Elizabeth Warren.
A famous tourist attraction in USA: Joe Biden.


SpaceStation
问题描述 :
N space stations are built in the space, and flights should be set among these space stations. Flights are bidirectional, and connect different space stations. A valid arrangement of flights must satisfy the rules below:
1. Every space station can be reached from all others via flights directly or indirectly.
2. Because the spaceships are too expensive, the number of flights should be minimal.
3. Due to the limited resource of service and communication, the number of flights directly connected to each space station is limited.
Here comes the problem: how many different valid arrangements can be set?
Two arrangements A and B are different means that, there exists at least one flight in A but not in B, or there exists at least one flight in B but not in A.
1. Every space station can be reached from all others via flights directly or indirectly.
2. Because the spaceships are too expensive, the number of flights should be minimal.
3. Due to the limited resource of service and communication, the number of flights directly connected to each space station is limited.
Here comes the problem: how many different valid arrangements can be set?
Two arrangements A and B are different means that, there exists at least one flight in A but not in B, or there exists at least one flight in B but not in A.
输入:
The input contains multiple test cases.
The first line contains an integer T, 0 < T <= 20, representing the number of test cases.
For each test case:
The first line contains an integer N, 0 < N <= 300, representing the number of space stations. The second line contains N integers K1、K2 ? KN, 0 <= Ki <= N – 1,Ki, separated by blanks, representing the maximal flights directly connected to the i-th space station.
The first line contains an integer T, 0 < T <= 20, representing the number of test cases.
For each test case:
The first line contains an integer N, 0 < N <= 300, representing the number of space stations. The second line contains N integers K1、K2 ? KN, 0 <= Ki <= N – 1,Ki, separated by blanks, representing the maximal flights directly connected to the i-th space station.
输出:
The input contains multiple test cases.
The first line contains an integer T, 0 < T <= 20, representing the number of test cases.
For each test case:
The first line contains an integer N, 0 < N <= 300, representing the number of space stations. The second line contains N integers K1、K2 ? KN, 0 <= Ki <= N – 1,Ki, separated by blanks, representing the maximal flights directly connected to the i-th space station.
The first line contains an integer T, 0 < T <= 20, representing the number of test cases.
For each test case:
The first line contains an integer N, 0 < N <= 300, representing the number of space stations. The second line contains N integers K1、K2 ? KN, 0 <= Ki <= N – 1,Ki, separated by blanks, representing the maximal flights directly connected to the i-th space station.
样例输入:
2 4 2 2 2 2 4 3 3 3 3
样例输出:
12 16
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
演员嘛，演什么人都可以。只要演的到位。
学习了
很好。代码比书上的简练！
这个问题别太纠结了，不同的编译器结果不一
额，不对应吧
不对吧 你算的an是前面说有的项的和
顺利测试通过了，多谢
很好的思路，可以借鉴
其实就是DFS搜索，数据量较小，穷举了所有情况
您没有考虑 树的根节点是负数的情况， 若树的根节点是个很大的负数，那么就要考虑过不过另外一边子树了
/*
* =====================================================================================
*
* Filename: 1366.cc
*
* Description:
*
* Version: 1.0
* Created: 2014年01月06日 14时52分14秒
* Revision: none
* Compiler: gcc
*
* Author: Wenxian Ni (Hello World~<EMAIL_ADDRESS>* Organization: AMS/ICT
*
* =====================================================================================
*/
#include
#include
using namespace std;
int main()
{
stack st;
int n,i,j;
int test;
int a[100001];
int b[100001];
while(cin>>n)
{
for(i=1;i>a[i];
for(i=1;i>b[i];
//st.clear();
while(!st.empty())
st.pop();
i = 1;
j = 1;
while(in)
break;
}
while(!st.empty()&&st.top()==b[j])
{
st.pop();
j++;
}
}
if(st.empty())
cout<<"YES"<<endl;
else
cout<<"NO"<<endl;
}
return 0;
}
问题3中，GetRightPosition()和GetLeftPosition()与STL中的upper_bound()和lower_boune()的代码实现一样吗？
学习了
[…] 如果此题没有要求 相对位置不变，可以参考文章：http://www.acmerblog.com/interview-9-2427/ […]
Often We don’t set up on weblogs, but I would like to condition that this established up really forced me individually to do this! considerably outstanding publish


Are you moving? Packing? Are you looking for a great packaging product which is inexpensive, strong and made from recycled paper, you should check out UsedCardboardBoxes.com. There is a great assortment of boxes and packaging supplies, all made from used cardboard boxes that is purchased from other big companies . You will love UsedCardboardBoxes.com. They have the best packaging products and it’s all recyclable. Use our discount coupon to steal a deal. UsedCardboardBoxes.com is a company with a conscience. They don’t cut down any trees to make their cardboard boxes and packing materials. They rescue truckload of used cardboard boxes from large companies and make it available to you at a big discount. UsedCardboardBoxes.com prices are the lowest you will find. Check out UsedCardboardBoxes.com for all your packing, moving needs. All packing orders are shipped free of cost and will reach you within a day or two. UsedCardboardBoxes.com. uses only the best, sturdiest and high quality boxes for resale. You can pack your stuff with peace of mind and save money on UsedCardboardBoxes.com with our discount coupons.
UsedCardboardBoxes.com is the best place to buy boxes and moving supplies. You can make a contribution to the environment not only do you get your cardboard box, but you get a used box which was recycled from another one. UsedCardboardBoxes.com has boxes available in sets for your convenience. If you want to buy boxes for moving a bedroom you get that package. There are several packages to choose from. Use our discount coupon on UsedCardboardBoxes.com for the best deals.


--- layout: page title: About header-img: "img/about-bg.png" ---
My name is Sydney, I'm 22 years old and a current software engineering student in the part time online course through the Flatiron School.


hello, world!
Jacob # 1
Paragragh text
header 1
Header 2
header 6
Link TO google
-
item 1
One Line
Two line
emphasizetext
Strongtext
Underlinedtext
Indented (by default) quotation of some kind
div is a generic block element for anthing that doesn't alread have a tag defined
span is a generic inline element for when there is no tag for that
Chữ Nôm
<
>
&
©
ԉ
₫


You're seeing this page because we couldn't find a template to render.
To modify this page, create a {{filename}} file in the templates directory or
install a theme.
You can find what variables are available in this template in the documentation.