Category: Nature of Order
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 12: Echoes
there is 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. That is what I mean by ‘echoes.’
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 11: Roughness
The seemingly rough arrangement is more precise because it comes from a much more careful guarding of the essential centers in the design … Roughness can never be consciously or deliberately created. Then it is merely contrived. To make a thing live, its roughness must be the product of egolessness, the product of no will…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 10: Gradients
“… Gradients must arise in the world when the world is in harmony with itself simply because conditions vary. Qualities vary, so centers which are adapted to them respond by varying in size, spacing, intensity and character. Daylight varies from the top floor of an urban building to the bottom floor: both windows and ceiling…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 9: Contrast
“… Life cannot occur without differentiation. Unity can only be created from distinctness. This means that every center is made from discernible opposites, and intensified when the not-center, against which it is opposed, is clarified, and itself becomes a center … in order for the thing to be truly whole, the contrast has to be…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 8: Deep Interlock and Ambiguity
Images selected by me inspired by the ones shown in the book. “In a surprisingly large number of cases, living structures contain some form of interlock: situations where centers are ‘hooked’ into their surroundings. This has the effect of making it difficult to disentangle the center from its surroundings. … a similar unification is accomplished…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 7: Local Symmetries
“… Where a living center forms, it is often necessary to have some local symmetry. … Living things, though often symmetrical, rarely have perfect symmetry. Indeed, perfect symmetry is often a mark of death in things, rather than life. I believe the lack of clarity on the subject has arisen because of a failure to…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 6: Good Shape
good shape … comes about when the whole is made of parts that are themselves whole in this rather simple geometric sense … is not only making things more beautiful; it also makes them work more profoundly, more effectively.
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 5: Positive Space
“What I call positive space occurs when every bit of space swells outward, is substantial in itself, is ever the leftover from an adjacent space. We may see it like a ripening corn, each kernel swelling until it meets the others … An almost archetypal example of this positive and coherent state of space may…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 4: Repetition
Once again, except for the dull office building facade (scanned from the book), the images are selected by me. “… Centers intensify other centers by repeating. The rhythm of the repeating centers, slowly, like the beat of a drum, intensifies the field effect. … Most things are made from repetition at some level: repetition of…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 3: Boundaries
My attempt to find suitable images to use in these excerpts is a demanding practice. This time I separated the task of looking for images from writing the excerpt itself. At first I felt that these images were easier to find than those for the previous posts. But then when I came to assemble the…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 2: Strong Centers
For this excerpt, I was able to find compatible images, so the images you see are not the ones shown in the book. “… I began to notice that, next to the property of levels of scale, possibly the most important feature of a thing which is alive is that we find that the various…
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 1: Levels of Scale
I spent a couple of hours trying to find alternative images to those in the book. The concrete one was easy to find, the rest not … so I gave up trying. The images in the book (especially the living ones) are too subtle to easily replace. So I opted to scan a few samples…
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Drawing Centers
As I mentioned before I took some time to draw centers … and it was a fascinating practice. I tried to capture some of it, though to fully experience it I invite you to do it on your own. Milford Graves (<– link will open in a new tab in case you wish to listen…
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Christopher Alexander – Wholeness as a Fundamental Structure
At one point after ending my career, I reflected back on my systems analysis experience and realized that I could do an excellent, full coverage, detailed analysis of a domain, have software built to the specifications in my analysis … and still the software would not get the job done. I experienced some relief and…
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Christopher Alexander – Centers
“We may consider any configuration in the world, a building, a street, a room full of people, a forest. Each has its wholeness. By that I mean that there are visible within that thing, a huge number of entities, at different scales … and that the totality of these entities with the way they are…
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Christopher Alexander – The Idea of Wholeness
The pictures embedded in this excerpt (and their locations in it) were drawn (and placed) by me in an attempt to replicate those that are presented in the book (and should therefore not be considered as belonging to the original work). “Intuitively we may guess that the beauty of a building, its life, and its…