Christopher Alexander on Belonging

“… there is a connection between ordinary human happiness and the existence of a living structure in our physical world … when architectural structure is an unfolded one … when it is created by repeated application of living processes, and by … structure preserving processes … then what comes from it is a world where people are able to feel happy. They can be themselves, more easily. They are more free – free in spirit, free in their emotions.

And … that on the contrary, within the dead structure we have become used to as the normal 20th-21st-century environment, this freedom, this blissful state, is almost unattainable.

… What is the character of the kind of world where we experience emotional possession of the places we are in? It is a world in which the find adaptation between people and their buildings and gardens and streets is so subtle, goes so deeply to the core of human experience, that the people who then live and work and play in that environment feel as if they belong there, as if it belongs to them, as if they are a part of it, as if, like an old shoe, it is completely and utterly theirs.

… Historically, this quality … came about as a result of a long process – often years, even centuries long … But in our era, the opportunity for this very long time span is less available. We live in a time where things move quickly, where society evolves at a very great speed, where people are highly mobile, where things change at a great speed … we must invent new kinds of process which can [created belongingness] … in some new form, and by different means…

… The true landscape of architecture … is that arrangement of materials, windows, seats, roofs … which, as nearly as possible, helps us arrive at this blissful state. It is generated by the free application of a living adaptive process.”

Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 3: A Vision of a Living World