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Product Details
Series: Center for Environmental Structure (Book 2)
Nominally about architecture and urban planning, this book has more wisdom about psychology, anthropology, and sociology than any other that I've read. Nearly every one of this volume's 1170 pages will make you question an assumption that you probably didn't realize you were making. In a section entitled "Four-Story Limit", Alexander notes that "there is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy." Underneath is a photo of San Franisco's Transamerica tower, captioned with a quote from Orwell's 1984: "The Ministry of Truth--Minitrue, in Newspeak--was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up terrace after terrace 300 metres in the air." Alexander backs up this polemic with convincing arguments that high-rise living removes people too far from the casual society of the street, from children playing in the yard, and that apartment-dwellers therefore become isolated. Alexander spends a lot of time in this book trying to figure out how to restore the damage to our communities that have been done by automobiles. He argues for better public spaces and for more integration of children, old people, and workers. He argues for more access to water by more people. Many of Alexander's arguments are against the scale of modern systems. Public schools spend a fortune on building and administration precisely because they are so physically large [I've seen statistics showing that our cities spend only about one-third of their budgets on classrooms and teachers].Read more ›
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Well, a first glance this is a tiny fat book. But the paper is very thin, the print is very small, so there is a LOT in this book. To me, this book would make a good guide for discussion groups; its written in the manner of a discussion and even though its not exactly a new book, the ideas still have validity. However, the interesting part to me is that Alexander's idea of what a house should look like tend to revert back to a somewhat Austrian Alpine look and I have the feeling I need a beerstein and a pair of lederhosen at the end. Just the same I'm working on some projects and this book is a good reference for some layout work I was doing that was going in a poor way.
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Classic book from the 1970's written by a Berkley, CA and Oregon of University Professor. It is for serious architects or engineers who wish to be challenged by values in the way things are built. This man is the Archimedes of city planning. It is a dense read but will fire you up with dreams of a better way to plan humans enjoying each other, living together in balance with resources. It is over 1,000 valuable pages of hope for city planners or individual architects. It is a priceless AND timeless book, worthy to be preserved for 1,000's of years like Archimedes gifts to us. Also, see his more reader friendly "The Timeless Way of Building" only 550 pages long.
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A good friend showed me this book and I just had to have it for my own. My most important mentor, Buckminster Fuller said, "Environment Is Stronger Than Will" this is a wonderful book about all of the nuances of that construct. Really, really excellent!
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130 of 133 people found the following review helpful
I've read all three books in this series, and I thought this was by far the best and most accessible. The first, "A Timeless Way of Building", introduced the author's philosophy and was, I thought, a bit bogged down with New Age jargon. I prefer to think in terms of comfort and relationships, though ultimately I agree with just about everything the author-as-designer states and obviously went on to read his other work. I thought the third book, photographs of a project completed by the author, should have been the most informative, but ultimately didn't do justice to the author's ideas. But maybe it was just the poor quality of the pictures. IMHO this is the masterpiece of the trilogy. Christopher Alexander's Empire Strikes Back. Its concern is the practical application of the author's ideas, and one could only wish to live or work in a space designed with this philosophy. His thinking is pragmatic AND beautiful, bringing balance and harmony to space. Having made the case for his system of architectural and social design in his earlier work, the author here goes on to formalize a system of 253 patterns, ranging in scale from towns down to benches. Patterns 1 through 94 define a town or community; numbers 95 through 204 define (groups of) buildings; and numbers 205-253 define a "buildable building". The individual patterns are themselves evocative and inviting, and cover a myriad of human social and environmental relationships: number 1 is Independent Region, pattern 2 is Distribution of Towns, 10 is Magic of the City, 57 is Children in the City, number 62 is High Places, number 63 Dancing in the Street, 94 is Sleeping in Public, 203 Child Caves, 223 Deep Reveals, 235 Soft Inside Walls, 253 Things from Your Life.Read more ›
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This item: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure)
