Christopher Alexander – What Kind of Thing is Order?
” … to make buildings which have life and profound order – it is necessary to be rescued from the mechanistic trap by concentrating on life and order of a building as something in itself. I believe such a formulation can only come from a new view of the world which intentionally sees things in their wholeness, not as parts or fragments – and which recognizes ‘life,’ even in an apparently inanimate thing like a building as something real.
… Such a new view of order will create a new relationship between ideas of ornament and function. In present views of architectural order, function is something we can understand intellectually … Ornament, on the other hand, is something we may like but cannot understand intellectually. One is serious, the other frivolous … There is no conception of order which lets us see buildings as both functional and ornamented at the same time.
The view of order which I describe in this book is very different. It is even handed with regard to ornament and function … they are really only different aspects of a single kind of order.
… 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.
… The theory which I shall lay out is in no sense against science; it is simply an extension of science …
… it is not only the detail of what ‘order is which needs to be questioned, but also the very nature of order. So long as we have a confused or inaccurate conception of what kind of thing order is, we shall inevitably make buildings which are ugly, houses which do not support ordinary human well-being, gardens and streets which are at odds with nature, and a world which destroys our souls.”
Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life