Pattern Sphere

Wicked problems getting you down?

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Explore, Design, and Engage with Patterns and Pattern Languages

The Pattern Sphere (PS) supports the use of patterns and pattern languages to address difficult social and environmental problems collaboratively.

Patterns are structured description of successful ideas and actions. They are not recipes with precise instructions. You adapt them to fit your needs.

The PS currently has some functionality — and we are adding more as fast we can!

Suggested Uses

Community Building
Helping to build community can be an end goal or a way help build capacity and resilience within your own group. Tailor these patterns and others to help integrate your work with the communities you're working with.

community-animators community-inquiry community-networks-1

Designing Projects
What is your project supposed to accomplish. And why and how? These patterns can provide insights into both.

participatory-design grassroots-public-policy-development opportunity-spaces

Analyzing Problems
You won't make any progress without understanding the situation. These patterns and others will help you get to the heart.

power-research voices-unheard indicators-0

Why Patterns and Pattern Languages?

"This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing that you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it. —Chistopher Alexander et al, A Pattern Language

"Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use the solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice." —Chistopher Alexander et al, A Pattern Language

If you are interested in using the system or in helping out with development, please visit the Pattern Sphere project page on the Democracy Lab site for more information and information on volunteering.

Projects