Traditional Construction Patterns is written for contractors, owners and architects, setting out in plain-spoken fashion basic principles of proper design & construction. It is illustrated with approximately 1,000 photographs and 400 drawings.
Chapter 1: The Story of the Languages of Architecture
This is the theoretical underpinning of the book, focusing on the patterns that make up the Most-Loved Places and how those patterns work together. Patterns are organized within the Four Realms of Architecture as follows: The First Realm: The Universal; the Second Realm: The National Language; the Third Realm: The Regional Dialect, and the Fourth Realm: The Local Particulars. Chapter 1 also discusses how the languages were lost and how they can be revived.
Chapter 2: Three Great Themes of Traditional Architecture
The themes are Buildings for People, Apparent Structure and Celebration of the Act of Building. They underlie nearly all of the pat-terns that follow.
Chapter 3: The Classical Orders
This short chapter discusses the origins of our classical heritage and also how classical architecture became the common genetic material of much of Western architecture.
Chapter 4: The Lexicon
The lexicon is a fully illustrated catalog of close to 200 terms that should be (but probably are not) part of the vocabulary of anyone designing or building a building today. Common terms such as “door,” “wall” or “roof” are not included precisely because they are commonly understood.
Remaining Chapters
The last ten chapters focus on 108 patterns which are most commonly built incorrectly today. Each pattern occupies a two-page spread, with the incorrect method on the left side and the correct method on the right, with text explaining the difference. The intent is to illustrate the methods clearly and plainly enough that anyone would be ashamed to build the patterns incorrectly again.
