To build "the whole"

In short, no pattern is an isolated entity.  Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that is supported by other patterns:  the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.

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 which you make takes it place in the web of nature, as you make it.

 

Christopher Alexander, et. al.

A Pattern Language:  Towns, Buildings, Construction, page xiii

(New York:  Oxford University Press, 1977)