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Rating: 
Summary: The question of judgement in architecture
Review: "The Nature of Order" is a series of four books, a work that has taken 30 years to complete. It is an ambitious attempt at synthesis, a near-impossible challenge to join together, in one generative thought, all the aspects of man in the universe. Consequently, the critical and wary reader will possibly detect traces of what could possibly resemble an immense megalomania, as Christopher Alexander aims to reunite physics, biology, and the wholeness of human beings in a geometric conception of the universe. Nevertheless, this same reaction is triggered by every real effort of synthetic thought that tries to build a vision of the world less fragmented than today's.Often in the scientific community, great researchers allow themselves, towards the end of their career, some philosophical height in order to consider the world in the light of the particular discoveries they have made. Some of them -- the most reductionistic -- try to explain whole phenomena by a generalisation of laws they had previously discovered in a particular context. In fact, they reduce the whole world to the phenomena they are able to explain, and try to affirm the supremacy of a particular point of view. These are, for example, the common "all is social", or "all is biological", explanations. Some other scientists, much less pretentious, explain that their discoveries come to support or to lighten in some way certain elements of forgotten and ancestral wisdom. Thus, they indirectly point towards a return of those wisdoms, but without necessarily showing the way. Christopher Alexander belongs to a third category of scientific researchers : those who develop during a lifetime of inquiry their own general vision of the world, continuously nourishing it with the particular progresses of science and the local lessons of practice. If Christopher Alexander appears to have been obsessed all his life by one and only question (how to make good architecture?), he did not lock himself up in architectural practice, nor in a particular scientific discipline, nor in any philosophy. This is why he knew how to develop and considerably deepen a way of building that is not directly linked to ancestral techniques but possesses even today their immensely wise qualities. Because of the vast implications of Christopher Alexander's work, I will comment on only one aspect of the first volume (The Phenomenon of Life) ; that is, the issue of judgement in architecture. In this first book, Christopher Alexander introduces and describes a single criterion to define the architectural value of any building. This criterion is (1) empirical, based on experience, and (2) objective, because it can be shared among several individuals. Each building, each construction, can be characterized by its degree of life. Provided with this criterion it is possible to discriminate between "good architecture" and "bad architecture". This degree of life depends on the presence or the absence of a spatial structure which he calls living structure and which can be used to explain judgements after they have been made. Provided with the properties and qualities of this living structure, it is then possible to look for the processes that governed its growth, in order to formalize a knowledge of the ways of designing and building that lead to "good architecture". The empirical results are based on comparisons of objects, photographs, situations, or buildings. They are obtained by asking one question : which one of these two buildings has more life ? This question can be reformulated as follows : which one of these two buildings best represents the whole of yourself, which one best represents at the same time all your qualities and all your faults, all your forces and all your weaknesses, all the events you lived and all the ones you hope to live in the future, all the things you love and all the ones you hate, etc. If the answer to this question is sincere, the results are shared in common for a majority of people, and the measurement, which is made by comparison, is valid. For my own part, I did not find anything to object to the possible validity of this method. If one starts to analyze this question, one realizes that it cancels (or tries to cancel) the majority of the determinisms that we are carrying and that we inherited more or less luckily during our life. It cancels the determinism of personal history by the opposition of past versus future, it cancels psychological determinism since it calls upon forces and weaknesses, it cancels aesthetic determinism by opposing what one loves and hates, etc. Finally, this form of judgement tries to reach the Wholeness which is present in each one of us. It aims at a criterion which is both personal and objective.
By raising this question, one establishes empirical results without dividing the individual into biological, psychological, sociological (and many more) components, because this question addresses the individual in his wholeness. And good architecture should not address only the psychological component of the individual, or the sociological or the historical ones, but the whole individual. Hence this form of judgement constitutes a solid proposal to define the value of architecture. However it is not easy to apply in today's world, because obviously, we are not used to asking ourselves this type of question. One could even think that all the analytical developments around architectural and urban questions that exist today have as a principal function to circumvent this question that we refuse to ask ourselves directly, and when faced with it, the majority of us is in great difficulty. But to avoid judging is to make ourselves unable to judge, therefore unable to appreciate the things that have value. Most importantly, avoiding this judgement consequently makes us incompetent to design and to build valuable buildings. The issue of judgement, which introduces this first volume of The Nature of Order, is an essential precondition to the construction of a true knowledge in architecture. Thus my opinion on this book is extremely positive. Without doubt, it is the best book on architecture I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent, worthy of close study
Review: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts" is commonly said or writ, but never before have i read so much detail, amply illustrated, of just how that works. There are pictures of beautiful things, and some horrendously ugly things (a certain postmodern house in particular made me laugh out loud), and some side-by-side comparisons of two moderately beautiful things that made me think...which has more "life"? My interest in architecture is limited to a desire to build an Earthship or cob house sometime in the next few years. I wonder why i find such houses more beautiful than the conventional kind? Well, understanding the 15 properties gives one an excellent mental toolkit for studying beauty and beautiful things, and figuring out how to make a place or structure more welcoming to human life. Practical exercises and advice, along with all the examples, help the reader develop an eye for these qualities. As an artist, i can apply these properties to creating and
critiquing my works, and perhaps even to know better how to fix an image that has gone awry. The author's sketches of beautiful patterns of objects, some in which he didn't quite capture the magical essence of life and examines why, enlightened me as i followed the development of his ideas through the book. Always a doodler, i've had a great time hanging out in coffee shops with some 4x6 cards, pencils, Alexander's book, experimenting with following and sometimes deliberately (and sometimes accidently) violating each of the properties, coming to understand them better. Be warned: really "grokking" the material will take much time and much fun! I actually started with volume 2 then went into volume 1, and that worked okay. Volume two reviews the 15 properties sufficiently, and i found processes to be a more interesting place to start. But partway through vol. 2 i just had to dive into vol 1 wholeheartedly to really understand all 15 of the properties.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent, worthy of close study
Review: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts" is commonly said or writ, but never before have i read so much detail, amply illustrated, of just how that works. There are pictures of beautiful things, and some horrendously ugly things (a certain postmodern house in particular made me laugh out loud), and some side-by-side comparisons of two moderately beautiful things that made me think...which has more "life"? My interest in architecture is limited to a desire to build an Earthship or cob house sometime in the next few years. I wonder why i find such houses more beautiful than the conventional kind? Well, understanding the 15 properties gives one an excellent mental toolkit for studying beauty and beautiful things, and figuring out how to make a place or structure more welcoming to human life. Practical exercises and advice, along with all the examples, help the reader develop an eye for these qualities. As an artist, i can apply these properties to creating and
critiquing my works, and perhaps even to know better how to fix an image that has gone awry. The author's sketches of beautiful patterns of objects, some in which he didn't quite capture the magical essence of life and examines why, enlightened me as i followed the development of his ideas through the book. Always a doodler, i've had a great time hanging out in coffee shops with some 4x6 cards, pencils, Alexander's book, experimenting with following and sometimes deliberately (and sometimes accidently) violating each of the properties, coming to understand them better. Be warned: really "grokking" the material will take much time and much fun! I actually started with volume 2 then went into volume 1, and that worked okay. Volume two reviews the 15 properties sufficiently, and i found processes to be a more interesting place to start. But partway through vol. 2 i just had to dive into vol 1 wholeheartedly to really understand all 15 of the properties.
Rating:
Summary: A Master Synthesis
Review: Alexander has spent a life time studying (and building) works full of life. This is volume 1 of his masterwork. This volume can be seen as a very careful argument on the nature of aesthetics. However, Alexander is aiming higher than just breaking new ground in understand aesthetics. He sees the subject as being inextricably linked with the nature of life itself. This is a book people may well be studying two hundred years hence.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading for Architects
Review: Christopher Alexander's latest series of books, "The Nature of Order", propose new ways of understanding the built environment, as well as new methods of practicing architecture, and as such should be part of every architect's library. As a practicing architect, I have found that "The Nature of Order" series has had a profound impact on the way that I design and create buildings, as well as on the way that I understand architecture and its connection to the larger physical world. The theoretical framework that Alexander sets up in his first book, The Phenomenon of Life, coupled with the analysis and exploration of generative processes presented in his second book, The Process of Creating Life, propose a fascinating and intriguing new way of understanding the physical structure of the world. Alexander presents us with a unified theory where art and science are part of an integrated system that together define the physical structure of all matter, including "life" itself. In the first book, The Phenomenon of Life, Alexander proposes that the physical environment consists of discreet entities that form specific geometrical relationships, and that these geometrical relationships each have an intrinsic value; a value that can be objectively identified and measured with a significant degree of accuracy and agreement among many observers. Alexander goes on to identify this degree of value as "life", expanding the current biological definition to one that includes strong coherence of geometrical structure. In analyzing thousands of examples, Alexander and his colleagues have identified 15 geometrical properties that, when present in a physical structure or design, help to increase the degree of life, in that particular place or object. These properties can be easily identified and measured, by each one of us, and thus form the basis for an objective form of aesthetic judgment. Questions that address degrees of value, such as "what is a good building?", "what is a good piece of art?", and "what is a good environment?" can now be answered using objective criteria, where consistent agreement among individuals is possible. It is Alexander's objective approach for judging aesthetic quality, combined with his unified view of the physical and aesthetic world, that has profoundly influenced my own work. As I work on projects every day, going through the process of testing different ideas and possibilities, I now have the tools and framework for making good design decisions - decisions that can be objectively evaluated in terms of their impact on the "life" of each project. In addition, Alexander has provided me with a deeper understanding of the place of my own work in the physical world - how whatever I make, whether it is the creation of window seat or the lay-out of a series of buildings, has a direct connection to the larger and smaller geometrical structures of which it is a part. Of course this approach leads to a sense of deep responsibility for the enhancement and betterment of the physical world; a responsibility that I believe should be fundamental to the practice of architecture.
Rating:
Summary: The Nature of Order: Why I strongly recommend this work.
Review: First of all I'd just like to clarify that I am in the relatively unique position of having read through this material, as a developing work in progress, four different times over the course of a ten year period from 1988 to 1998. During this time I had the opportunity to study with Professor Alexander and then to help teach scores of students working on learning and applying the material that forms the basis of these books. My experience has been that for those students who were willing to approach this material with an open mind, and with sincere effort, the Nature of Order is a challenging and inspiring work. Alexander, in my estimation, is proposing an approach to understanding and shaping the built environment that not only has the potential to produce beautiful satisfying, endlessly unique and deeply personal places, this approach also happens to be one that is exceptionally creative, unique to each person and a great deal of fun. Perhaps it is risky to speak of fun, as this can seem to make light of a subject of momentous importance, which this subject is, if you are someone who cares deeply about the world you live in. Nevertheless, my experience has been that students who not only read this work attentively, but actually throw themselves into learning to apply this material, appear to have the most fun of any architecture students I have ever known. Their work reflects this joy, this satisfaction that comes from struggling to make something that goes beyond expressing their own ego to somehow being a thing that many people could love. And what's more, their work has been quite good, in many cases outstanding and the improvement has been at times rather dramatic. (I myself won several design competitions after I began to gain some understanding of this material.) Please understand that the Nature of Order proposes some thought provoking, eye opening insights that can prove quite challenging. It also includes what I consider to be powerful tools that have the capacity drastically increase ones effective creativity and mastery of ones own creative process. Gaining proficiency in these skills takes time and practice. If you want to make places or art or furniture that come from a place inside you drawing upon the very best that you have to offer, then I highly recommend reading and rereading this four volume work. This is a monumental work oriented more towards expanding the creativity of the reader than any other book I have ever encountered. If I had to sum up the Nature of Order in one word, that word would be liberation. I am an architect living and working in California.
Rating: 
Summary: Carlos Castaneda meets Architecture
Review: Having read three out of the four books in this series so far, all I can say is that if you are interested in arbitrary and very personal pseudo-metaphysical remarks about architecture, this is a sort of must-read for you.
Do not expect however to find the teachings of a guru at all. It is more like a collection of simplistic gut feelings for architects and designers avid for incense and self-help manuals.
These books read like extracts from a personal new-age diary. Read while listening to a Cafe del Mar CD.
For all the great existing philosophical and metaphysical ideas on Architecture, the two most extraordinary things about these books are the extremely poor quality of the photographs of Alexander's own work and the exaggerated reviews it is rapidly accumulating in certain circles.
If you are really interested in the topics which the title of this book implies, keep away from it and head to Derrida, Deleuze, Moles and keep going from there.
Rating:
Summary: First nomination for book of the Century
Review: The Nature of Order Volume 1: The Phenomenon of Life Christopher Alexander This is a book that will haunt you. You think you have "seen" its purpose, and then you'll reread something, and see new depths, reach new insights. You'll be frustrated you don't have it with you to refer to at odd moments, when one of its passages starts ringing bells, and illuminating bits of your experience in new ways. Chris Alexander talks about his journey over twenty five years to write the book, and the efforts over five to ten years by students to grasp and articulate and internalise his ideas. But don't let these time scale put you off. It is also a wonderfully illuminating book, and very clearly written. The use of hundreds of contrasting photos of buildings, carpets, ceramics, parking areas, and so on to illuminate the concepts, and the presence of more or less life, is nothing short of breath-taking. I found only one pair of pictures leaving me feeling equivocal about what Chris was trying to communicate. If you are interested in art, architecture, design, learning, cognition, religion, then you will gain immense value from this book, whether from a furiously busy two weeks on a loan from the library, or a purchase to treasure and explore for the rest of your life. The excerpts from the 476 pages identify and briefly explain the fifteen properties, and attempt to give you a hint of the power of this book. .. the structure I identify as the foundation of all order is also personal. As we learn to understand it, we shall see that our own feeling, the feeling of what it is to be a person, rooted, happy, alive in oneself, straightforward, and ordinary, is itself inextricably connected with order. 22. Real life. .. is comfortable, rough around the edges, smooth as if it had been rubbed together. This kind of life is the ordinary life which is not connected to high art or fashion. It has nothing to do with images. It occurs most deeply when things are simply going well, where we are having a good time, or when we are experiencing joy or sorrow - when we experience the real. 38. .. ordinary enough, or profound enough, to feel alive in some degree. .. they are alive because they are - as far as possible - concept free... They are vigorous and straightforward, where the soul of the maker has entered the thing - or where the ordinary processes of daily life, uncontaminated by ideas or notions of what to do, has unfolded in a way that we accept very easily. These things make us comfortable because we recognize them as genuine. 51. THE FIFTEEN PROPERTIES: 1. LEVELS OF SCALE:
(can be) too far apart in scale to be coherent with each other. 147 2. STRONG CENTERS:
cumulative power of strong centers.. progressive quality. 153 3. BOUNDARIES:
If we apply the rule repeatedly, it says that every part, at every level, has a boundary which is a thing in its own right. This includes the boundaries themselves. They too have boundaries, each of which is a thing in its own right. What seems like one rule, then, is a pervasive structural feature of enormous depth, which is in effect applied dozens or hundreds of times, at different scales throughout the thing. 162 4. ALTERNATING REPETITION:
The tired yet killing repetition comes from the fact that what repeats is one-dimensional there is no alternation to speak of, no living centers which repeat. And there are no vital secondary centers repeating between the primary ones. The difference between the kind of repetition which has life, and supports life, and the kind which is banal, always lies in this matter of alternation. 169 5. POSITIVE SPACE:
There is not a single space which is "leftover". ..every shape is a strong center, and every space is made up in such a way that it only has strong centers in its space, nothing else besides. 176 6. GOOD SHAPE:
a shape which is itself, as a shape, made up of multiple coherent centers. It is easiest to understand good shape as a recursive rule. The recursive rule says that the elements of any good shape are always good shapes themselves. 179 Partial list of properties required to make a good shape..
High degree of internal symmetries
Bilateral symmetry (almost always)
A well-marked center ( not necessarily at the geometric middle)
The spaces .. next to it are also positive
Strongly distinct from what surrounds it
Relatively compact (1:1, 1:2, occ 1:4)
Closure and complete feel 183
7. LOCAL SYMMETRIES:
over-simplified overall symmetry in buildings is most often naïve and even brutal. 186. ... a large symmetry of the simplified neoclassicist type rarely contributes to the life of the thing because in any complex whole in the world, there are nearly always complex, symmetrical forces at work - matters of location, and context, and function - which require that symmetry be broken. 187 .. the relative coherence of the patterns is an objective matter of cognitive processing, independent of the person who is judging, and independent of the particular kind of experimental judgement which is used to measure it. .. but the measure is subtle and refined. Even in the most coherent patterns only (a few) of the segments are symmetrical. 190,191 8. DEEP INTERLOCK AND AMBIGUITY:
situations where centers are "hooked" into their surroundings. Eg arcade or gallery. 195 The space in the gallery belongs to the outside world, and yet simultaneously belongs to the building - thus causing a fusion of the two. 197 9. CONTRAST:
Life cannot occur without differentiation. Unity can only be created from distinctness. .. for the thing to be whole, the contrast has to be pronounced. 200. but it is not forced 10. GRADIENTS:
Qualities vary slowly, subtly, gradually, across the extent of the thing. ..One quality changes slowly across space, and becomes another. ..centers .. varying in size, spacing, intensity, and character. 205. 11. ROUGHNESS:
.. the seemingly rough solution - which seems superficially inaccurate - is in fact more precise, not less so, because it comes about as a result of paying attention to what matters most, and letting go of what matters less. .. another essential aspect of the property of roughness is its abandon. Roughness can never be consciously or deliberately created. Then it is merely contrived. 211 12. ECHOES:
a deep underlying similarity - a family resemblance - among the elements, so deep that everything seems to be related, and yet one doesn't quite know why, or what causes it. ..depend on the angles, and families of angles, which are prevalent in the design. 218 13. THE VOID:
This emptiness is needed, in some form, by every center, large or small. It is the quiet that draws the center's energy to itself, gives it the basis of its strength. 225. .. there is a great lack of simple, silent, empty, large, calm space. 225 14. SIMPLICITY AND INNER CALM:
geometrical simplicity and purity .. certain slowness, majesty, quietness... it comes about when everything unnecessary has been removed. 226. It comes from an uncompromising steadfastness to function, following the thing to its logical conclusion, refusing to be deterred by convention. An extreme freedom. 227 15. NOT-SEPARATENESS:
when a thing lacks life, is not whole, we experience it as being separate from the world and from itself. ..any center which has deep life is connected, in feeling, to what surrounds it, and is not cut off, isolated, or separated. .. Those unusual things which have the power to heal, the depth and inner light of real wholeness, are never like this. .. 231. ..lack of abruptness, or sharpness.. 234. The interplay of the properties:
The 15 properties are not independent. They overlap. In many cases we need one of them to understand the definition of another one. .. to define ALTERNATING REPETITION exactly, we need to get clear that there is an alternation between certain things or STRONG CENTERS which repeat... (which) relies heavily on the GOOD SHAPE of the things that are repeating.. 237. LEVELS OF SCALE ..are not discernible at all , until we identify the things at different levels as wholes... STRONG CENTERS and have GOOD SHAPE...which contains powerful centers within the BOUNDARIES of the shape. 237 It is the field of centers which is primary, not the fifteen properties. Each of the properties describes one of the possible ways in which centers can intensify each other. Each one defines one type of spatial relationship between two or more centers, and then shows how the mutual intensification works in the framework of this relationship. 241 Life will increase, or it will degenerate, according to the degree to which the wholeness of the world is upheld, or damaged, by human beings and human processes. 293 .. It is not easy to find what we really like, and it is by no means automatic to be in touch with it. It takes effort, hard work, and personal enlightenment to understand it and to feel it. It requires liberation from opinions and concepts and ego to experience deep liking. 316 My experiments show that, in general, people agree to a remarkable extent about which objects are more, or less, like their best, or better, or most whole selves. Very surprisingly, it appears that this judgement is independent of person-to-person differences and independent of culture. .. Even if an observer is at first confused by the question.. "Which of the two is more alive?", it allows him to teach himself and to grow in his ability to judge the matter. 319 We live in an era when people's likes and dislikes are controlled by dubious intellectual fashions - often supported by the media... It is only with maturity that we learn to listen to our own heart and recognize what we truly like. 342 A healthy human being is able, essentially, to solve problems, to develop, to move towards objects of desire, to contribute to the well-being of others in society, to create value in the world, and to love, to be exhilarated, to enjoy. The capacity to do these many positive things, to do them well, and to do them freely, is natural. It arises by itself. It cannot be created, artificially in a person, but it needs to be released, given room. It does need to be supported. It depends, simply, on the degree to which a person is able to concentrate on these things, not on others. 373 I hope these excerpts have done enough justice to the richness and power of this book, and that they stimulate you to buy a copy, study it with care, and then, in time, to use it with flair. We are using it to help us design our eco-village called Rosneath Farm.
Rating:
Summary: Another Magnum Opus from a central figure in design theory
Review: This four-volume work is Christopher Alexander's magnum opus of architectural philosophy, and a book on which he has been working for over twenty years. Like Steven Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" -- to which it has been compared by a number of authors -- it is long (almost 2,000 pages), richly illustrated, and suggestive of nothing less than a new scientific world view. The essence of that view is this: the universe is not made of "things," but of patterns, of complex, interactive geometries. Furthermore, this way of understanding the world can unlock marvelous secrets of nature, and perhaps even make possible a renaissance of human-scale design and technology. As to the second assertion, one may be appropriately skeptical until more evidence is seen. As to the first, there are emerging echoes of this world view across the sciences, in quantum physics, in biology, in the mathematics of complexity and elsewhere. Theorists and philosophers throughout the twentieth century have noted the gradual shift of scientific world view away from objects and toward processes, described by Whitehead, Bergson and many others. Alexander, like Wolfram, takes it a step further, arguing that we are on the verge of supplanting the Cartesian model altogether, and embarking on a revolutionary new phase in the understanding of the geometry of nature. This is much more than speculative mysticism, as some poorly-read critics will doubtless be eager to claim. The Cambridge-educated mathematician backs up his beautifully illustrated assertions with copious mathematical formulas and notes, and he includes extensive discussions of the philosophical ideas of Descartes, Newton, Whitehead and many others. He paints an extremely detailed and convincing picture of a vast world of geometric structure that is just now coming into the range of human comprehension. Alexander even goes beyond Wolfram and the other complexity theorists in one crucial respect: he argues that life does not "emerge" from the complex interactions of an essentially dead universe, but rather manifests itself, in greater or lesser degrees, in geometric order. For Alexander, the universe is alive in its very geometrical essence, and we ourselves are an inextricable part of that life. This is a "hard" scientific world view which is completely without opposition to questions of "meaning" or "value", "life" or "spirit". For Alexander, such questions are hardly irrelevant: in fact, they are of the essence in the most physical, concrete sense. Alexander started his career as a highly influential design theorist, and the ideas of this book are its direct if surprising progeny. Early on he was a pioneer of computer-aided design methodology, and his book "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" is a classic in the field. (Curiously, Alexander's work has more recently spawned an entire new field of computer programming language, as well as popular computer games like "The Sims".) Later on, Alexander sought a method to handle the unwieldy thickets of complex data generated by the computer. He soon identified design "patterns" that repeatedly occurred in the built environment, and that together formed systems or "languages." Such languages, he argued, were readily observable in traditional design methodologies, and were in large part responsible for their unity and wholeness. Implicit in this phase of work was the belief that the priesthood of architects hardly had an exclusive claim to good design, and that ordinary people could be taught to make quite handsome and satisfying buildings, as they have been known to do throughout history. A Pattern Language was met with great success, and even at $65 per copy, it is still one of the best-selling books on architecture -- some 25 years after it was first published. But Alexander and his colleagues were disturbed to find that many of the designers inspired by A Pattern Language produced work that was crude and artless. How, short of returning to the unsatisfactory methods of the priesthood of trained professionals, could this be corrected? What was missing from the methodology he and his colleagues were offering? Alexander came to believe what was needed was an essential grasp of the geometry of nature, in the broadest sense. The effort to come to terms with the implications of this, and to document the ideas for his readers, would occupy him for the next 25 years, and require nothing short of an overhaul of the Cartesian worldview that he believed underlies the conception of the design problem. Alexander studied the designs of cultures throughout history and across the world, and formulated some empirical notions about their geometric properties. He distilled these down to 15 recurrent geometric properties, and developed them into a powerful and versatile theory of design. At the core of his theory is the idea that good design is not a matter of elements working properly in a mechanistic system, but rather of regions of space amplifying one another in a larger totality. That is, one cannot take the environment apart into elements, but must see the environment as a field of wholes, each supporting and amplifying one another in an interlocking totality. One can be very precise and descriptive about these wholes, but one cannot avoid looking at the totality at each step of the way. Alexander calls each spatial region a "center," emphasizing that it is not an isolated entity, but an embedded field within an infinitely larger system of fields, with gradually diminishing contextual influences. One cannot look at a part of the whole without looking at its relation to the whole, and the complex influences of its location within the field. This geometric holism is not a new view of things, although perhaps, as Alexander suggests, it holds revolutionary implications for the way we order the architecture of modern society. If so, this work is a major advancement. It is not an accident that scientists are often Alexander's biggest fans, for they understand his ideas more deeply than do many architects. If history is any guide, thoughtful people would do well to pay close attention to the insights of this fascinating, brilliant, important theorist.
Rating:
Summary: Another Magnum Opus from a central figure in design theory
Review: This four-volume work is Christopher Alexander's magnum opus of architectural philosophy, and a book on which he has been working for over twenty years. Like Steven Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" -- to which it has been compared by a number of authors -- it is long (almost 2,000 pages), richly illustrated, and suggestive of nothing less than a new scientific world view. The essence of that view is this: the universe is not made of "things," but of patterns, of complex, interactive geometries. Furthermore, this way of understanding the world can unlock marvelous secrets of nature, and perhaps even make possible a renaissance of human-scale design and technology. As to the second assertion, one may be appropriately skeptical until more evidence is seen. As to the first, there are emerging echoes of this world view across the sciences, in quantum physics, in biology, in the mathematics of complexity and elsewhere. Theorists and philosophers throughout the twentieth century have noted the gradual shift of scientific world view away from objects and toward processes, described by Whitehead, Bergson and many others. Alexander, like Wolfram, takes it a step further, arguing that we are on the verge of supplanting the Cartesian model altogether, and embarking on a revolutionary new phase in the understanding of the geometry of nature. This is much more than speculative mysticism, as some poorly-read critics will doubtless be eager to claim. The Cambridge-educated mathematician backs up his beautifully illustrated assertions with copious mathematical formulas and notes, and he includes extensive discussions of the philosophical ideas of Descartes, Newton, Whitehead and many others. He paints an extremely detailed and convincing picture of a vast world of geometric structure that is just now coming into the range of human comprehension. Alexander even goes beyond Wolfram and the other complexity theorists in one crucial respect: he argues that life does not "emerge" from the complex interactions of an essentially dead universe, but rather manifests itself, in greater or lesser degrees, in geometric order. For Alexander, the universe is alive in its very geometrical essence, and we ourselves are an inextricable part of that life. This is a "hard" scientific world view which is completely without opposition to questions of "meaning" or "value", "life" or "spirit". For Alexander, such questions are hardly irrelevant: in fact, they are of the essence in the most physical, concrete sense. Alexander started his career as a highly influential design theorist, and the ideas of this book are its direct if surprising progeny. Early on he was a pioneer of computer-aided design methodology, and his book "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" is a classic in the field. (Curiously, Alexander's work has more recently spawned an entire new field of computer programming language, as well as popular computer games like "The Sims".) Later on, Alexander sought a method to handle the unwieldy thickets of complex data generated by the computer. He soon identified design "patterns" that repeatedly occurred in the built environment, and that together formed systems or "languages." Such languages, he argued, were readily observable in traditional design methodologies, and were in large part responsible for their unity and wholeness. Implicit in this phase of work was the belief that the priesthood of architects hardly had an exclusive claim to good design, and that ordinary people could be taught to make quite handsome and satisfying buildings, as they have been known to do throughout history. A Pattern Language was met with great success, and even at $65 per copy, it is still one of the best-selling books on architecture -- some 25 years after it was first published. But Alexander and his colleagues were disturbed to find that many of the designers inspired by A Pattern Language produced work that was crude and artless. How, short of returning to the unsatisfactory methods of the priesthood of trained professionals, could this be corrected? What was missing from the methodology he and his colleagues were offering? Alexander came to believe what was needed was an essential grasp of the geometry of nature, in the broadest sense. The effort to come to terms with the implications of this, and to document the ideas for his readers, would occupy him for the next 25 years, and require nothing short of an overhaul of the Cartesian worldview that he believed underlies the conception of the design problem. Alexander studied the designs of cultures throughout history and across the world, and formulated some empirical notions about their geometric properties. He distilled these down to 15 recurrent geometric properties, and developed them into a powerful and versatile theory of design. At the core of his theory is the idea that good design is not a matter of elements working properly in a mechanistic system, but rather of regions of space amplifying one another in a larger totality. That is, one cannot take the environment apart into elements, but must see the environment as a field of wholes, each supporting and amplifying one another in an interlocking totality. One can be very precise and descriptive about these wholes, but one cannot avoid looking at the totality at each step of the way. Alexander calls each spatial region a "center," emphasizing that it is not an isolated entity, but an embedded field within an infinitely larger system of fields, with gradually diminishing contextual influences. One cannot look at a part of the whole without looking at its relation to the whole, and the complex influences of its location within the field. This geometric holism is not a new view of things, although perhaps, as Alexander suggests, it holds revolutionary implications for the way we order the architecture of modern society. If so, this work is a major advancement. It is not an accident that scientists are often Alexander's biggest fans, for they understand his ideas more deeply than do many architects. If history is any guide, thoughtful people would do well to pay close attention to the insights of this fascinating, brilliant, important theorist.
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