Book,
The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1
Center for Environmental Structure, (July 2004)
Abstract
Christopher Alexander, the humble messiah of good architectural design, invites readers to get comfortable with their inner judgments in <I>The Nature of Order: The Phenomenon of Life</I>. Best known as principal author of <I>A Pattern Language</I>, Alexander has designed and built countless projects worldwide, all the while thinking deeply about the nature of his work. Frustrated with the 20th century's reluctance to acknowledge human commonality and reliance on Cartesian mechanism, he urges us to rethink our understanding of space itself. With an architect's precision and clarity, he explains his theory of life as the order inhabiting space--an order both variable in degree and apprehensible to human minds. Though the scientifically minded will resist his seeming subjectivity, it will be hard for any to argue that his many examples of good and bad design are equivalent. Alexander's combination of powerful analysis and compelling synthesis makes <I>The Nature of Order</I> essential 21st-century reading. <I>--Rob Lightner</I> <p>What is happening when a place in the world has life? And what is happening when it does not? In Book 1 of this four-volume work, Alexander describes a scientific view of the world in which all space-matter has perceptible degrees of life, and sets this understanding of living structure as an intellectual basis for a new architecture.</p><p>He identifies fifteen geometric properties which tend to accompany the presence of life in nature, and also in the buildings and cities we make. These properties are seen over and over in nature, and in cities and streets of the past, but have all but disappeared in the deadly developments and buildings of the last one hundred years.</p><p>The book shows that living structure depends on features which make a close connection with the human self, and that only living structure has the capacity to support human well-being.</p><p>The other three volumes of <i>The Nature of Order</i> continue this thesis with three complementary views giving a masterful prescription for the processes which allow us to generate living structure in the world. They show us what such a world must gradually come to look like, and describe the modified cosmology in which "life" as an essential quality, together with our inner connection to the world around us-towns, streets, buildings, and artifacts-are central to a proper understanding of the scientific nature of the universe.</p><p>". . . Five hundred years is a long time, and I don't expect many of the people I interview will be known in the year 2500. Christopher Alexander may be an exception."-David Creelman, author, interviewer and editor, <i>HR Magazine</i>, Toronto</p><p><b>Christopher Alexander</b> is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, architect, builder and author of many books and technical papers. He is the winner of the first medal for research ever awarded by the American Institute of Architects, and after 40 years of teaching is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.</p>
