In a living process, what is always happening is that every step (large or small, whether it comes late or early) is done in such a way to as to increase the beauty – the life – of the whole. The process starts with a vision of a possible whole that comes out of the circumstances, that is felt as something which grows out of the form of the world.

— Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, 1977, Ch. The Process of Creating Life, p. 266 (via)