Status Updates From The Timeless Way of Building

"Almost everybody feels at peace with nature: listening to the ocean waves against the shore, by a still lake, in a field of grass, on a windblown heath. One day, when we have learned the timeless way again, we shall feel the same about our towns, and we shall feel as much at peace in them, as we do today walking by the ocean, or stretched out in the long grass of a meadow."

"Imagine, for example, blue tiles, white fountains, birds nests under the arcades, yellow paint, fresh scrubbed woodwork...The beauty of this place, the quality in it which touches us, the thing which makes it live, is, above all, that it is carefree, that it is innocent."

"The timeless character of buildings is as much a part of nature as the character of rivers, trees, hills, flames, and stars. Each class of phenomena in nature has its own characteristic morphology...And when buildings are made properly, and true to all the forces in them, then they too will always have their own specific character. This is the character created by the timeless way."

"...a town which is whole, like an oak tree, must be unpredictable...This process, exactly like the emergence of any other form of life, alone produces a living order...It cannot be created by decision. It cannot be designed. It cannot be predicted in a plan. It is the living testament of hundreds and thousands of people, making their own lives and all their inner forces manifest. And, finally, the whole emerges."

"The life, pulse, substance, subtlety of the building can only be retained, if it is built, in the same way that it has been designed - by a sequential and linguistic process, which gives birth to the building slowly, in which the building gets its final form during the actual process of construction..."

"Imagine trying to build sentences by shuffling words around on a piece of tracing paper...It is only in the mind's eye, eyes shut, not on paper, that a building can be born out of the vividness of actual experience."

was considering a DNF until this chapter

i keep mishearing the narrator's "patterns" as "patents"