The second world conference took place from October 19 to 21, 2017 at Danube University Krems. Around seventy scientists and practitioners from thirteen countries took part.
The event was organised by the Departments of Interactive Media and Educational Technologies and of Building and Environment. Sessions covered education, media, software development, management, pedagogy, health care, politics, social innovation, integration, art, personal development, and design.
Christopher Alexander, born in Vienna and trained at Cambridge, Harvard, and Berkeley, published A Pattern Language in 1977. The conference showed how far the approach has travelled since then, and how many fields now use it to organise knowledge that would otherwise remain scattered.
The gathering combined research presentations with demonstrations and informal exchange. For many participants, the value was in meeting people from other disciplines who were wrestling with the same design questions.