Istilah design patterns
dimulai di bidang perancangan bangunan oleh Christopher Alexander. Dalam
bukunya A Pattern Language [Alex77], ia menerangkan pola-pola yang terdapat di
dalam berbagai rancangan arsitektur bangunan. Arti design pattern
diterangkannya dalam kalimat berikut:
Each pattern describes a problem which occurs
over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the
solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a
million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice [Alex77].