While Christopher Alexander’s pattern language has been widely accepted by building contractors and do-it-yourself homeowners, academics have often rejected it for being deterministic and authoritarian. This paper argues for a balanced re-evaluation of Alexander’s work, arguing that its importance lies in its recognition that life patterns allow for unconscious cognitive relationships with space that can be discerned and actively improved. Moreover, Alexander’s philosophical concerns can be more fully understood in the context of recently growing interests in philosophy, the cognitive sciences and emerging somatic practices.