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108 of 110 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First nomination for book of the Century, October 28, 2003
The Nature of Order Volume 1: The Phenomenon of LifeChristopher 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.
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