Category: Nature of Order

  • Christopher Alexander – Move with Certainty

    “As the living process goes forward, repeating the fundamental process again and again … one feature is built up at a time … How do you determine these steps which must be taken, and their sequence? … The most basic instruction I can give you as a guide for a living process, is that you…

  • Christopher Alexander on First Steps and Ripples in Design

    “… As any designer will tell you, it is the first steps in a design process which count for most. The first few strokes which create the form, carry within them the destiny of the rest. How then, in a living process, do we take the first steps of design so that a beautiful, coherent…

  • Christopher Alexander on Feedback

    “To make the feedback meaningful in a step-by-step process, the process must be open ended, hence partly unpredictable. It must lack a fixed predetermined end-state. This is necessary because adaptation itself means nothing if changes cannot be made in response to the process of adaptation. By definition, such changes cannot be foreseen. … For a…

  • Christopher Alexander on Vinyasa

    “Possibly the most basic and necessary feature of any living process is the fact that it goes gradually. The living structure emerges, slowly, step by step, and as the process goes forward step by step there is continuous feedback which allows the process to guide the system towards greater wholeness, and coherence, and adaptation.” Christopher…

  • Generative vs. Descriptive

    “Does the DNA contain a full description of the organism to which it will give rise? The answer is no. The genome contains instead a program of instructions for making the organism – a generative program … A descriptive program, like a blueprint or a plan, describes an object in some detail, whereas a generative…

  • One Wholesome Thing at a Time

    “Each process does something – just one thing – which is important, practical and creates good feeling. Then it does another. Then it does another. There is no manipulation and distortion of the structure, trying to predict where it is going, trying to make sure everything is OK. There is a sublime confidence, and practicality…

  • Christopher Alexander on Creativity

    “In a living system what is to be always grows out of what is, supports it, extends its structure smoothly and continuously, elaborates new form – sometimes startling new form – but without ever violating the structure which exists. … Creativity comes about when we discover the new within a structure already latent in the…

  • Christopher Alexander: Fifteen Transformations

    the fifteen properties are not merely observable end-products of structure-preserving transformations. They provide the base transformations from which, in practice, all structure preserving transformations are made

  • Unfolding Wholeness and Structure Preserving Transformations

    Any part of the world we build will have life if it is created by structure preserving transformations [ {where} centers will always tend to form in such a way as to preserve and enhance previous structure – and this means, in such a way as to help sustain other existing and emerging centers ],…

  • Christopher Alexander on Ornament

    “As the whole emerges, the universe becomes ornamented by it … In this understanding a flower, or a river, or a person, or a building all have the same potential role. Each of them may be judged by the extent to which this pure blissful structure comes into being, and by the extent to which…

  • Christopher Alexander – It Is the Process …

    Christopher Alexander – It Is the Process …

    The design is indeed beautiful, yes. But it can only be made as beautiful as it is within the technique, or process, used to make it. And once one uses this technique, the design … follows almost without thinking, just as a result of following the process.