(Later, Alexander recants some of the rigorously mathematical thinking, both in the introduction to “Notes,” and in the paper “ A City is Not a Tree”. He does not yet define positive, extrinsic criteria for quality. Here, Alexander works within a classical scientific and mathematical framework – the answer is that we do not have a good fit between form and context we are not appropriately accounting for all of the various forces and needs at play, understanding their dependencies and relationships, and creating goodness-of-fit. The First Answer – “ Notes on the Synthesis of Form”Īlexander wrote Notes in 1964, about the same time that Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which dealt with the same issues. It’s all responding to a core line of questioning: “Why does the modern environment fail? Why don’t we – why can’t we – make places that feel beautiful and alive anymore? How do we do it?” We can see Alexander’s work as three major attempts to answer these questions. (A recount of Building Beauty Program Director Yodan Rofè's introduction to the The Nature of Order reading seminar)īeneath all of Christopher Alexander’s work is a characterization of architecture and the built environment as a complex whole the need for anything we create to be as free as possible from internal conflict, tension, contradiction.
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