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The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 1 - The Phenomenon of Life (Center for Environmental Structure, Vol. 9)

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Christopher Alexander (Author)
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21 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0972652919
ISBN-10: 0972652914
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Christopher Alexander, the humble messiah of good architectural design, invites readers to get comfortable with their inner judgments in The Nature of Order: The Phenomenon of Life. Best known as principal author of A Pattern Language, 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 The Nature of Order essential 21st-century reading. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

In The Nature of Order: Book One, the Phenomenon of Life, architectural theorist Christopher Alexander (The Timeless Way of Building) ponders why 20th-century buildings so often seem inhospitable. The problem seemingly stems from the mechanistic worldview of architects, who ignore fundamental but elusive properties like the "order" and "life" of a building. Alexander works to define such terms using copious illustrations and showing that people almost always agree on which buildings have more life to them. This first in a four-volume series on architecture's role in the universe builds on Alexander's pioneering and now classic study, A Pattern Language, and should be showing up on syllabi around the world.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 476 pages
  • Publisher: Routledge (July 15, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0972652914
  • ISBN-13: 978-0972652919
  • Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 7.9 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

438 of 449 people found the following review helpful
Another Magnum Opus from a central figure in design theory
By Michael W Mehaffy on June 17, 2003
Format: Hardcover
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.Read more ›
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134 of 136 people found the following review helpful
First nomination for book of the Century
By A Customer on October 28, 2003
Format: Hardcover
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. ..Read more ›
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59 of 61 people found the following review helpful
The question of judgement in architecture
By A Customer on October 17, 2003
Format: Hardcover
"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.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Five Stars

Great gift for environmentalist

Published 3 months ago by J. Haklik
Unified Design Theory

Combines life, function, sensory experience, methods in a vivid description across 4 books. I found the work to be tangibly mind altering. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Michael Gautier
An exceptional man

I discovered Christopher Alexander around 1986 when I read A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building. Read more

Published on September 25, 2012 by Joyce
This book is amazing and wonderfull

This book is amazing and wonderfull. This book is amazing and wonderfull. This book is amazing and wonderfull. This book is amazing and wonderfull

Published on February 21, 2012 by Celena
Worth it, but imperfect

There are a few editing errors scattered throughout, which is in my opinion unacceptable for such a biblical work. Exceptional choice of photos, though some a bit poorly printed. Read more

Published on December 6, 2010 by Alexander Tarnas
a book about everything

After dropping my son off for his first karate lesson, I went in the neighboring book store, plopped myself into the only available comfortable chair and grabbed the nearest... Read more

Published on May 16, 2010 by Margaret Magnus
The Nature of Order, and A New Kind of Science

In his book The Phenomenon of Life, Christopher Alexander explains how some "centers" (animate and/or inanimate objects or environments) have more "life", have more wholeness, and... Read more

Published on August 14, 2009 by Jon Arts
Interesting Thesis

I've read both of Alexander's "A Pattern Language" and "The Timeless Way of Being". "The Nature of Order" is similar. Read more

Published on September 7, 2008 by L. King
Gordon L. Prescott come to life?

Read 'The Fifteen Properties' excerpted in the 'First Nomination for Book of the Century' customer review, or any other excerpt, and then consider the words of Gordon L. Read more

Published on September 25, 2006 by Reviewer
Some of these reviews are flawed

Anne Broadbent's review below is completely unjustified. She writes "At the beginning of the first book, Alexander shows a beautiful pagoda - but I still think I wouldn't want to... Read more

Published on December 3, 2005 by CustomerX

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The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 1 - The Phenomenon of Life (Center for Environmental Structure, Vol. 9)
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