POSTCARD FROM TANZANIA

Dear ArchitectureWeek,

While traveling on the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania we visited a Masai village. The village is built in a circle with a large wall around it and several entrances. Every night the Masai bring all their cattle into the center of the village and close up the entrances to protect them from lions and other predators.

REMEMBERING A BARRAGÁN LANDSCAPE

In 1945, renowned Mexican architect Luis Barragán began work on the Gardens of El Pedregal, a subdivision in Mexico City dotted with plazas, fountains, ponds, cacti, and pepper trees. He considered El Pedregal his most important project, and critics have described the houses and gardens there as a turning point in Mexican modern architecture. Reflecting the fragility of public landscapes, many of these elements were long ago modified or destroyed.

PATTERNS OF HOME

Years ago, at the beginning of our professional careers, two of us were part of an effort to create a design language that was similar in many ways to what we are now calling "the patterns of home." In that work, A Pattern Language (1977), we and our colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure in Berkeley defined over 200 design ideas, which we called patterns.

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