Christopher Alexander on Microstructure

so … in mixing cob, even though it looks like we are stomping mud, we are creating life at a molecular level!

“The walls, are they living centers? Is the roof a  living center? Is the roof edge a living center? Are the columns living centers? Are the windows living centers? Is every door a living center? Is the window sill a living center? Are the floors living centers? Is each ceiling a living center? Is the base of the  main wall a living center? Is each beam a living center? Is the space between two beams a living center?

… The building can only amount to something as a living thing when the various physical elements which appear in the building are profound centers …

It requires that evert part be though of as a beautiful thing in itself, where the physical material of which it is made is shaped and treasured as a thing …

Wholeness will not exist in the large unless it also exists in the small … and for it to exist in the small, it must me made …

The big fields of centers will only be coherent if the microstructure which supports it is coherent too. This means that the field of centers must continue down all the way from the large scale to the scale of the very small, even to the atoms and molecules in the construction materials.”

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