This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the seed.
A pattern language gives each person who uses it the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences. Even the life and beauty of the most awe-inspiring great religious buildings came from the pattern language their builders used.
But in our time the languages have broken down. Since they are no longer shared, the processes that keep them deep have broken down; and it is therefore virtually impossible for anybody, in our time, to make a building live.