معماری و راز جاودانگی - راه بی زمان ساختن

by Christopher W. Alexander, مهرداد قیومی بیدهندی (Translator)

چرا انسانها در طی سده ها زیستن و و ساختن در کره زمین، تا پیش از روزگار جدید، بناها و شهر هایی پدیدآورده اند که هک زیباتر و هم کارآمدتر، بناها و شهرهایی آرامش بخش و دلنشین و منسجم و همساز با طبیعت، بناها و شهرهایی متناسب با همه شئون زندگی و کار و حیات جمعی و فردی انسان؟ چرا در روزگاری که نه آرشیتکتی به معنای امروزی در کار بود و نه شهر ساز، نه طرح جامع و تفصیلی برای شهر ها تهیه می شد و نه معماران تحصیلات آکادمیک داشتند، چنان مکان ها نیکو پدید می آمد؟ چرا امروز ما از چنین کاری درمانده ایم و آن توانایی را از دست داده ایم؟ چرا همه تدبیرهای انسان امروزی برای ساماندهی و نظام بخشی به وضع معماری و مکان سازی خرد و کلان نتیجه نامطلوب به بار می آورد؟
کریستوفر الکساندر در این کتاب بر آن است که پیش از روزگار جدید، آنچه بناها و شهرهای نیکو پدید می آورد نه قوانین معماری و شهر سازی، بلکه زبان مشترک بود. مردم، در هر فرهنگ، زبان ساختن مشترکی داشتند. این زبان زا همه می دانستند، اما اهل پیشه معماری با ظرایف آن آشناتر بودند. این زبان واژه هایی داشت به نام اگو. الگو هم رویدادها را شامل می شد و هم بر مشخصه های کالبدی که آن رویدادها را در آن فرهنگ به بهترین نحو متحقق می کرد. این زبان نحو هم داشت، قانونی نا نوشته که رابطه میان الگوها، میان اگو ها و الگوهای فرادست و فرودست را معلوم می کرد. همه مردم، در هر فرهنگ، زبان الگوی خاص خود را می دانستند. از این رو، با یکدیگر هم زبان بودند. این زبان مشترک بود که بناها و شهرها منسجم و زنده پدید می آورد.
برای آنکه دوباره بتوانیم بناها و شهر های "زنده" بسازیم که چون موجودات زنده حیات داشته باشند و به محیط و بهره برداران از خود پاسخی طبیعی بدهند، باید دوباره زبانهای آلگوی مشترک بسازیم. الکساندر می کوشد راه ساختن زبان الگوی معماری و شهر در این روزگار را نشان دهد.
همراه با مقدمه ای از "دکتر مهدی حجت"

Genres: Architecture, Design, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Art, Urbanism, Business

360 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 12, 1978

About the author

Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander was an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist. He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature of human-centered design have affected fields beyond architecture, including urban design, software, and sociology. Alexander designed and personally built over 100 buildings, both as an architect and a general contractor.

In software, Alexander is regarded as the father of the pattern language movement. The first wiki—the technology behind Wikipedia—led directly from Alexander's work, according to its creator, Ward Cunningham. Alexander's work has also influenced the development of agile software development.

In architecture, Alexander's work is used by a number of different contemporary architectural communities of practice, including the New Urbanist movement, to help people to reclaim control over their own built environment. However, Alexander was controversial among some mainstream architects and critics, in part because his work was often harshly critical of much of contemporary architectural theory and practice.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend and poet Jen urged me to read this, telling me it is one of her favorite and most influential books. It was written over fourteen years in the sixties and seventies, published in 1979, and has the feel of a "back to the garden" romanticism. That sounds like I am dismissive of it, which isn't true. It just feels like what he said then is almost hopelessly truer today. Other books like it include Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, or Seeing Like a State by James Scott, books that essentially show you how bureaucracy moves us away from organic approaches to living. Alexander's book is about architecture, but it can be applied to anything. The making of anything, like my friend Jen's poetry.

Alexander looks at "the quality with no name" that he finds makes buildings alive, a quality connected to human need, to beauty, to interdependence, to nature. He sees contemporary architectural philosophy and practice as cut off from human beings, from nature. His is a stripped down approach that might best be described as a Zen or Taoist way of life. He includes more than a hundred illustrative photographs from various sources, usually unexplained.

I resist some of his more romantic, universalist claims for "timeless" qualities rooted in a common language, but I appreciate his organic approach, his resistance to acontextual, standardized approaches to the world, and architecture in particular. My own world, the world of the classroom, suffers from assumptions people have about standardized assessment, and the misguided idea that democracy somehow implies we have to treat everyone the same way, and make them all read and study precisely the same things at the same time. A robotic approach that denies individual differences, and at the same time resists any notion of community. The world seems to have forgotten about principles of interdependence. This book is a reminder.

[Maryam Shahriari · Rating 5 out of 5]

ساده بود و عمیق. به خواننده‌اش احترام گذاشته بود و نحوه خواندن کتاب را هم برای کسی که می‌خواهد سرسری نگاهش کند و هم کسی که می‌خواهد کل کتاب را بخواند توضیح داده بود. دنبال خودنمایی و نشان دادن علم و سواد و دایره لغاتش نبود. و همه‌ی اینها باعث شده بود که بتوانی به راحتی بخوانی‌اش؛ بتوانی آن را نه یک کتاب آموزشی، که یک رمان یا داستان تصور کنی که می‌توانی درازکش هم بخوانی و به اینکه آخرش چه می‌شود فکر کنی!‏
اما کتابی نبود که مثل رمان‌ها یک بار بخوانی و وقتی فهمیدی آخرش چه می‌شود به کتابخانه برگردانی. با وجود اینکه ساده بود ولی باید باز هم بخوانی‌اش. آخر از چیزهایی می‌گوید که همه می‌دانیم ولی سعی در انکار یا فراموشی‌شان داریم. بس که در این روزگار مدرن به یاد داشتن بعضی چیزها بی‌کلاسی حساب می‌شود و غرق شدن در آهن و بتن کلاس.‏
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دیر این کتاب را خواندم، اما ناراحت نیستم. هنوز آنقدر درگیر جاذبه مدرنیسم نشده‌ام که با حرف‌های نویسنده غریبه باشم. در مدت زمان خواندنم، مخصوصاً در فصل‌های آخری که نمونه موردی‌ها اضافه می‌شدند، به این فکر می‌کردم که من هم در طراحی خانه‌ای که به من سفارش شده بود با همین روش‌ها کار می‌کردم. بستن چشم‌ها و تصور فضایی که به من و ساکنین آن خانه حس خوب بدهد. کاری که این روزها در دانشگاه‌های معماری از یاد همه رفته است...‏



یکشنبه 4 خرداد 1391
تهران

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite philosophy books. It has lots and lots of picturs and the unusual feature of a fast-track design that allows people to skim the book in a day. I read the whole book and it made me cry and changed the way I look at everything.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book both wonderful and a bit frightening. The book is not a literary masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but the images it paints in the mind are quite beautiful in its discussion of what we use to be and what we've lost. As a designer, I find Alexander's proposed solution a bit scary as it reject contemporary architecture practices almost completely, even after 40 years of publication. But the ideas behind that rejection, about architecture being a common language and direct reflection of human nature and society, are incredibly intriguing. The concepts in this book could easily be applied to other professions and problems. Overall this is one of the few books that I borrowed and immediately wanted to keep for future reference and rereading.

[عهد Aahd · Rating 5 out of 5]

WARNING- short excerpt will follow.
Why is it that a book about building makes me cry every time I re-read it? This isn't a book about building. It's an ode to beauty and humility that speaks to the soul rather than the mind, and those two combined are just the healing my heart needs and forgets to get in the midst of the rational technicality of architectural and planning thought. I'm immensely grateful I studied architecture because I met pr. Alexander's books, and this one in particular. This book is a reminder that not all designers went to architecture school, and not all those who went to architecture school are designer.
"This is the importance of the void. A person who is free, and egoless, starts with a void, and lets the language generate the necessary forms, out of this void. He overcomes the need to hold onto an image, the need to control the design, and he is comfortable with the void, and confident that the laws of nature, formulated as patterns, acting in his mind, will together create all that is required."

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps it should have been called 'Zen and the Art of Building'.... I hadn't come across this book before, although I think it may be required reading for architecture students. Having come from a design background myself I found it interesting.

It's long winded and often waxes lyrical, but the basic premise states that buildings are not for enhancing the egos of architects, but instead, they are for the people who use and live in them. So far, so good. Alexander also reveals how the patterns of activities carried out within a building are either helped or hindered by it's architecture, again, fairly predictable. He points out how certain buildings feel 'alive' while others are 'dead' spaces.

The book goes on to explain how to achieve what Alexander calls 'the quality with no name' which brings a building, even a whole city, to life. It's a very organic process, achieved without the detailed plans normally involved in construction. I love the idea of building in this way, but I'm not surprised it's not widely practiced. How long will the project take? How do you budget? Maybe he covers all that in one of his other books!

[Ash Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is essential reading for anyone involved in making things for use by other human beings. Part Taoist philosophy of architecture, part systems thinking for the way people and the spaces they inhabit interact, it explains why some places are vibrant and alive, others decaying and dying. It's impossible to look at buildings and towns the same way after reading this.

Alexander's Design Patterns give a way to capture the knowledge about how parts of a system (building, town) take their place in the whole, and how to peace them together in a constructive way. If you've come to Design Patterns from software development, you need to read this to understand the intent of a pattern language. If you've come to them from interaction/interface/product design, you need to read this to understand how to design and assemble something that is alive.

The Timeless Way of Building is profound, moving, and flowing. It's almost impossible to put down.

[Negar Ghadimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

چرا چنین هراسانیم؟ برای این‌ که اگر هرج‌و‌مرج ایجاد کنیم مردم به ما می‌خندند؟ یا شاید برای این که بیش از هر چیز از این می‌ترسیم که اگر در حالی که می‌خواهیم هنری بیافرینیم هرج‌ومرج ایجاد کنیم، خودمان آشفته و هیچ و پوچ شویم؟ ... هراس بر اثرِ اوهام در ما به وجود می‌آید ...
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بیشترِ انسان‌ها با طبیعتِ درونیِ خود سازگاری ندارند، و در نتیجه کاملاً اصیل نیستند. در واقع مهم‌ترین مسئله‌ی زندگیِ بسیاری از انسان‌ها سازگار بودن با خود است. وقتی با کسی برخورد می‌کنید که با خودش سازگار است، ناگهان احساس می‌کنید اصیل‌تر از سایرِ مردم است.
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درست است که گاه رویدادی خاص ممکن است زندگیِ ما را زیر و زبر کند، یا اثرِ خود را بر ما باقی بگذارد، اما گزافه نیست اگر بگوییم که به طورِ کلی هویتِ زندگیِ ما حاصلِ رویدادهایی است که به کرات و دفعات اتفاق می‌افتد.
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پرسیدنِ احساسِ کسی با پرسیدنِ نظرِ او یکی نیست ... پرسیدنِ احساسِ کسی با پرسیدنِ سلیقه‌ی او نیز یکی نیست ... پرسیدنِ احساس فقط پرسیدنِ احساس است و لاغیر.

[Zachary Siegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book, beautifully written, describing a beautiful vision.

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this thoughtful book, Chris Alexander takes an approach to architecture that understands it through the filter of human (and non-human) agency. He understands that the most useful buildings are ones that are created by the maximization of agency of the people involved, with the utilization of language based patterns that we inhabit to organize our behavior. He writes this book almost as if talking in a dream. Reading this book is a visceral experience of stepping into the a shower.

It's quite a masterful work, one that deals with the aesthetics of embodiedness rather than the more mundane (but necessary) considerations of budgeting, and so on. In a way, this a book of one who is entering a mastery of the craft, where the detailed considerations fall to the wayside as the considerations of that pure level of agency come into full consideration.

Alexander's method is more meditative and thoughtful, one that seems geared towards his process of consideration and his familiarity with the "pattern languages" that he utilizes more than anything else. What I find most interesting in this book is that he utilizes spaces from other cultures all the while remarking that such patterns are built into our native language. Are they then, really more a function of our cultural-mind? He suggests we know this intuitively, and yet most people cannot build accordingly as buildings cannot be formed from a poverty of our languaged patterns. So that seems like a big epistemological-cultural hole. But at the same time, his thoughts are so compelling, you want to believe in them. That there is a potentially rich environment of knowledge and consideration that we can dig from, only if we were in tune with it!

It's no surprise then, that he originates in the Berkeley area, as San Francisco is the hotbed of such hippy mysticism. Still, there's something to be said for his approach and his "method" which takes a much less mechanical view of building. We should gear our use appropriately to the individuals for whom a building should embody! Our culture is impoverished due to the fragmentation of disciplines and the jealous guardians who don't want to share with their economic competitors! In a very real way he is talking about Taoism. I look forward to reading more of his work.

[Sina Tahmasbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

خلاصه ی این کتاب رو از پادکست وادی شنیدم
https://castbox.fm/vb/277848416

مقدمه‌ی خوبیه برای کتاب زبان الگو از همین نویسنده و برای کسایی که کتاب" تفکر معماری:فرایند طراحی و چشمان جوینده"رو‌خوندن میتونه منبع کاملی باشه که موضوع زبان الگو رو کامل تر درک کنن.
گوینده توضیح میده که بیشتر بخش های کتاب مثال هایی هستن برای درک سر تیتر ها و چند نمونه از این مثال ها رو هم میگه.

[Mahdi Taheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتاب را میتوان به گونه ای ذن و معماری دانست اما با توضیحاتی که نویسنده در بخشی پایانی و البته زیبای کتاب بابت خلاء ذهنی بیان میکند، تعبیر جاودانه بودن در معماری زیباتر است تا عنوان کردن یه فلسفه بخصوص.
زیبایی کتاب در تلاشی است که نویسنده بکار میگیرد تا احساسات و حال خوبی که انسان از فضا دریافت میکند را با تکنیک ویا به بیان کتاب زبان الگو گره بزند. اینکه چه روشی را اتخاذ کنیم تا بنایی داشته باشیم که آن حال خوب و جاودانه را تجربه کنیم
کتاب را برای دو دسته بغیر از معماران پیشنهاد میکنم:
اول دوستانی که دغدغه پیوند تکنیک و فلسفه و یا به نوعی عرفان هستند و اینکه چگونه میتوان بین دو دید شهودی و تحلیلی هماهنگی ایجاد کرد و دوم دوستانی که به هر طریق چیزی (نه لزوما ساختمان و بنای معماری) میسازند که با انسانها ارتباط دارد.

[Erika RS · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book isn't life changing so much as it expresses clearly and beautifully things which I know deep inside. And yet, since what is being described is itself so hard to describe, the truths of this book are sometimes more felt than explicitly learned.

On the surface, this book is about how to develop pattern languages and use them to guide building physical places which live. The patterns are all from the domain of architecture. Some elements, such as how to go about the processes of detailed design or building are deeply impractical in a culture where, for better and for worse, much of what it takes to build buildings has been professionalized. (That said, as a metaphor for software creation, which does depend on taking common components and contextualizing them, they are more applicable.)

However, none of that matters because what you really take away is the deeper sense of what it means for a system to be alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, eternal — for it to have the quality without a name. The quality without a name is that deeply felt yet hard to describe sense of rightness that things sometimes have. It can be thought of as a sense of dynamic equilibrium where all forces are aligned and tensions resolved. Yet even that is a deceptive description because the forces in play are always changing and so while particular solution may embody the quality without a name for moment, for a system to have this quality, it must be always adapting.

Because there is so much great material in this book, I'll just highlight some of the ideas I loved best.

The world is made up of relationships, called patterns. These patterns arise from the events which happen repeatedly in a space. Patterns which help resolve the tensions that arise from these events are alive. Those patterns which create or increase tensions eventually make a space dead. Dead patterns cannot be isolated. They eventually leak out and contaminate the whole system, so it is important to try to resolve them, not just hide them. Living patterns reinforce each other.

Patterns together form a pattern language. A pattern language is made of patterns which relate to each other in a certain way: a pattern depends on the components which are needed to make it whole. In computer science terms, patterns form a directed acyclic graph. We each have our own pattern language which is built from the forces we've had to deal with in our lives. Yet our pattern languages are also shared. We learn patterns from each other and our own patterns evolve in response to what we learn. It is because these languages are largely shared that the application of a pattern language can lead to a common character over a larger set of design decisions.

Design works best when it is holistic. At each step of the design process, design should apply differentiation on a whole. Details should not be designed in isolation, without any concern for their context. Rather, the context should be defined to form a whole, then the parts within that refined to form a more detailed whole, and so on until a design is complete down to the details. If a design is whole at every step of the way, it minimizes the chance that a later detail will derail the big picture design. This process of refinement depends on having a properly structured order for design. In a pattern language, that is captured in the hierarchical relationship between patterns.

A shared pattern language can help a design to be coherent when applied to design decisions made in a community. Nested groups should be responsible for design, where the group that uses a pattern at a certain scale is responsible for designing their own solution. However, they are also responsible for making sure their solution fits coherently with the larger patterns it is encompassed in. The larger groups which the smaller groups are a part of are responsible for instantiating those larger patterns. When a pattern language is shared across a community, this process of delegating design to the smallest applicable group can create a coherent whole even while many independent decisions are being made.

All that just scratches the surface. This book has so much to offer, and I look forward to reading it again.

[Owen Brush · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I were to summarize this book in a single sentence, I would say that it applies taoist philosophy to architecture. However, that is not giving either this book or taoism the the attention they deserve.

The Timeless Way of Building describes a natural way of building. However, when I say this, I do not mean natural in terms of materials or aesthetics, or even neccisarily the methods of construction. But rather, in an aproach to design and building that creates living environments. The Timeless way describes a way of building where one recognizes the underlying forces at play within an environment - whether it be the need for people to get from one place to another, the need for privacy, social spaces, ect... and to then identify the patterns of behaviour and space that are neccisary to allow these forces to be resolved. The result is then a language of patterns that describe the qualities and aspects that are neccisary for an environment to foster the life in and around it. Using these pattern languages as a blueprint, one can then create environments that are similiar in their nature but also different, in that they are perfectly suited to a particular place, and particular inhabitants. Like branches of a tree, each one grows in the best way possible to contribute to the wellbeing of the tree.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give this book 6 stars if possible. Christopher Alexander's approach to architecture is so natural and comforting. I don't doubt that the world would be very different if everyone fully embraced his approach, especially since, as he argues, it's the same approach that had been used for thousands of years until the past few decades. But the thing that I liked so much about this book is that his approach is broad enough to apply to other areas of life instead of just architecture. He is constantly trying to describe a certain quality which he says is undefinable. But that quality is what we should be striving for in our houses, neighborhoods, and towns. He doesn't explicitly say this, but he implies that the same quality should not only be at the heart of architecture, but also relationships, social situations, personality, philosophy, religion, business, politics, etc. The book was published in 1979, but it feels like it was written this year.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book i’ve ever read. In The Timeless Way, Chris Alexander illustrates and breaks down why some places feel alive and why others do not. He goes further, chapter by chapter, describing the ways in which patterns and pattern languages can be used such that anyone can build places that are alive.

Chris Alexander has a way of writing about abstract concepts in such a beautiful way. This work of non-fiction is poetry. Even if you have no intention of designing a building, the concepts he covers can be applied to many different types of “building”. Maybe you’re a designer, or a writer, or an engineer; all his concepts of trying to make something that is living can be applied to all of this work.

This book is a primer for a A Pattern Language, and gives a very good introduction to the next book.

[Aubrianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five starts not because that’s necessarily what it deserves but for how much I’ve thought about it.

What a crazy book.

Takes Jane Jacob’s theory about diversity and goes wild with it. I think I agreed and then disagreed with every other sentence in this book.


Some maybe helpful alternative tiles for this book that have helped me pin down parts of the theory:

- If they come, you will build it: the natural law approach to architecture.
- let he with no sin, lay the first brick: urban architecture for a world without total depravity.
- generational architecture: construction without timelines or building codes.
- the philosophy of the alcove: architecture for the hobbit-minded.


Ultimately, I think your particular political philosophy will determine your response to this book.

[Nick Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will never stop re-reading this one. How can a book about architecture possibly hold such deep wisdom about design and programming?

[Eduard Sizov · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing, profound book that teaches you how to see things, create things, and live a quality life. Not all chapters are equally exciting, but it's worth reading from beginning to end.

[Gabriel Chartier · Rating 5 out of 5]

I look at many areas of life differently after having read this, and for that, it's one of the most important and influential books I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

[Miguel Domínguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Debería considerarse más como un libro de filosofía que de arquitectura para poderlo abrir al mundo. Aunque se torna técnico en su último tercio, aplicando el contenido a la práctica arquitectónica, todo lo aquí escrito es de enorme valor y belleza para cualquier arte, y en consecuencia, a la práctica de vivir. El Modo Intemporal que da nombre al libro es una cualidad de la naturaleza que habita dentro nuestro (por ser hijos de la Tierra) y que puede impregnar nuestras creaciones, haciéndolas parte de la naturaleza misma. Un edificio debe ser tan natural al paisaje como un árbol; una ventana tan orgánica como el reflejo del sol en un charco. Podría sonar cursi, pero el libro parte de esta idea para irse expandiendo en cómo podemos llegar a construir (crear) de tal modo, con conceptos propuestas por el autor, Christopher Alexander, hasta llegar a ese último tercio donde da ejemplos claros de su aplicación. Y aún así, el último capítulo es un recordatorio de que todo lo enseñado por el libro no es tanto un método, sino una manera antiquísima de moldear el espacio a manera de nuestra naturaleza, que nos haga sentir frente a las olas del mar o en un prado soplado por el viento. Para crear un arte verdaderamente bello, natural e íntegro al mundo, debemos ser el mundo, debemos ser naturaleza. Debemos desprendernos del yo construido por normas, estéticas y corrientes y hacer caso a nuestros instintos primitivos en búsqueda de belleza. Las creaciones más hermosas no son pensadas: surgen de un impulso de creación ignorante de la creación misma. Como la flor crece sin pensar en ello. Y Alexander contribuye estas meditaciones al mundo, pues a diferencia de otros artes, la arquitectura define el mundo y su fisicalidad. No es que una ciudad bella sea la clave para nuestra salvación, pero quizás modifique nuestras vidas al hacernos sentir no ausentes de la naturaleza, sino parte de ella. Una ciudad en que las cosas se sientan correctas, donde tú y el prójimo se sientan correctos. Esto es un libro sobre hombres que no se saben artistas, pues el hombre por naturaleza puede serlo. Hay que eliminar el título y quedarnos solo con el hombre: aquel que construyo e hizo bello el mundo antes que el artista.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starting 2022 off impossibly strong

[Laura Clawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled upon Christopher Alexander's work a handful of years ago and revisited it as we made plans to revive an old home. Highly recommended resource for those interested in city planning, architecture, home design or living an interesting life. This is one of my favorite gifts to give.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never thought that architecture could be so interesting!… a book for every human.
Christopher Alexander’s writing was brought to my attention by reading Jane Jacobs (The Death and life of Great American Cities) and Timothy Patitsas (The Ethics of Beauty).

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Austrian-British architect Christopher Alexander wrote The Timeless Way of Building nearly forty years ago, but in some ways it seems as timeless as the buildings it describes and illustrates. It reads as an extended meditation on the proper purposes and methods of architecture, but Alexander would likely baulk at such an explanation. What he purports to give us is a ‘way’, a ‘gate’ – a ‘language’ of architectural patterns that can be used by anyone to re-enrich our lived spaces; and this ‘way’ works by operating on a quality that cannot be named, that causes the buildings and the people who live and work in them to feel alive. If this sounds purposely New Age (or retro-Daoist, or Zen), that appears to be intentional. Alexander makes no bones about having been influenced by the architecture (and philosophy) of the Far East, particularly Old Japan.

Alexander’s architectural gospel combines a populist attempt to undo the bureaucratisation and professionalisation of architecture, an æsthetic critique of artificial and modular attempts to impose a forced order on both human habits and the external environment, and a pattern theory that in some important ways resembles the Platonic forms. Like the forms, Alexander’s patterns are exact(ing), but are never tied down to any one particular expression in fact, being dependent for their expression on their surroundings. Like the forms, the patterns resist easy resolution into ‘one’ and ‘many’, into ‘whole’ and ‘part’, but can be repeated and adapted across any number of different expressions, from the minute and immediate to the ‘macro’-level one would see in the apparent design of a town. Like the forms, the patterns exist in a common and commonly-accessible human experience that has to be ‘remembered’ in a particular way by the builders who use them.

Possibly a bit unlike the forms, though, these patterns relate to each other in a fashion which Alexander likens to linguistic composition. In order to articulate oneself in speaking or writing, one has to use a certain set of grammatical and syntactical rules that obtain in the English language. Alexander’s patterns also follow a specific set of rules and interrelations, such that patterns can scale up and down from each other, follow from and flow into each other like a cascade or a waterfall. This is a part which, it appears, Alexander’s point has to be intuited rather than ratiocinated. He articulates himself not with dry directions, but with descriptions: scenes of human life, sensations, actions, habits. The patterns are meant to fit the entire spectrum of human behaviours and external ‘forces’ which guide it. Architecture is meant to resolve these forces and support the ordinary business of human life in its entire depth.

But the patterns are only the means. The end is nothing less than life, and here Alexander turns to a kind of Buddhist analogy. Patterns can be used in healthy and life-giving ways, or they can be used in inappropriate ways that don’t resolve their environmental and human forces, and result in uncomfortable or dead space. What commonality underlies all of these unhealthy expressions? They spring from ego: whether it’s the individual ego seeking some kind of artificial liberation, or the corporate ego that seeks to impose an artificial, modular and mass-produced order on the world. Alexander says that patterns work best when the builder loses her ego: when she gets out of her own way, when she frees herself from her extraneous ideas and concepts of what architecture should look like, when she observes the forces at work around her, when she lets the solution to them come out of itself. Only when ego is removed from the picture can the architectural patterns thus serve and support healthy and life-giving ends.

This book is itself very difficult to classify. Is it philosophy? Social critique? Architectural theory? A travelogue? In fact, it’s all of the above: a thrilling blend of the ideas of Plato and Zhuangzi, applied dynamically to the problems of how we physically live.

[Talbot Hook · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Timeless Way of Building is a challenging book on many levels. It is intellectually challenging, as it is bound not by strict logic, but also by intuition and observation; it is personally challenging, as it encourages us to shrug off our methodologies and systems in favor of a quality of architecture and design that is ultimately unnameable; it is economically challenging, because it calls into question the very existence of specialist jobs in urban planning and city design; and it is socially challenging, as it calls into our minds an uncomfortable fact that we all know: many of our buildings, neighborhoods, and cities feel dead. They drain us. They are loud, uncomfortable, smelly, ill-conceived, dirty: made for mindless consumers, but not for humanity. Perhaps most damning of all though, is its insistence on a common aesthetic that underlies all of human art and well-being - and the corollary proposition that most modern artists and architects are so ego-driven and selfish as to be destructive of human health and wholeness. One need only to look at the Royal Ontario Museum to know how deep this problem runs.

Something particularly interesting is the presence of Daoist thought in Alexander's theory. From The Quality Without a Name to the reliance upon shedding form to get at inner force, passages from the Dao de Jing are perfectly at home within this "system". But whereas Daoism strikes at our ethical heart, illuminating the fact that sometimes our moral systems can cloud our judgment and cause us to act in inhumane ways, this book focuses on aesthetic claims. As a parallel, we have an inborn sense of what is beautiful, or what moves us, or where we feel at home, but over time our systems and traditions have occluded this childlike knowledge. The foundation has been utterly covered by academic jargon and egoistic dross. There is definitely some truth to this claim, although there are also problems that invariably arise. The chief issue is that, because this quality is nameless (and even though we can form patterns and disciplines from it), it is exceedingly difficult to judge when it is or is not embodied. This is not a problem with the system per se; rather, it is me simply being skeptical of whether or not humans can achieve this in a modern world that is so far separated from the traditional building systems of peoples long past.

It strikes me as possible to have a people all firmly ensconced in one tradition of building in full adherence of Alexander's Timeless Way; each villager knows what form this post should take, or how thick the walls should be, or of what material and pattern the roof should consist. But, in a world dominated by myriad schools, traditions, and forms, we have lost our common language of architecture. A walk through any Western university will show buildings ranging from the Collegiate Gothic to the Brutal, and running the entire gamut in between. And there is no such unity on a campus like that. People that preside over universities are betraying part of their charge when they allow their intellectual space to be marred by internal inconsistencies and warring styles. This is made even worse, though, as many (post-)modernists believe that all taste is but preference, and that all buildings are equally alive or equally dead. And many just imagine them dead - hollow shells built by humanity to house us, but not to transform us or encourage us toward growth.

As should be obvious, the book is quite odd; its thesis is odder. But, I am rather in love with how the book is written, as well as the vision to which it speaks. Our world is the poorer for our current artistic trends, and our intellects have, for too long, been battered by the nihilism and relativism of a society unmoored by the wars and academic trends of the twentieth century. This book is a partial antidote (but not a panacea) to many of our problems, and thank goodness for that.

[Daniel Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of me is tempted to rate this book 1 star as it doesn't actually say very much, and to the extent it represents ideas, they have already been absorbed in the zeitgeist and I've accepted them through osmosis. On the other hand, part of me was tempted to give it a 5 because the book is so unique, so right on important insights and has more zest for life than probably anything I've ever consumed before. Seriously, this book is like poetry, oozing with life in every sentence.

While notionally about "building", I read The Timeless Way of Building as a meditation on life itself.

As someone with strong technocratic, optimizer, perfectionist instincts, I think the Hayekian/Seeing Like a State type ideas put forward in this book are incredibly important to accept, like one of the singular most important things any decision maker/builder should really grapple with.
Alexander's whole shtick is you need to let life emerge, and when you do so, without ego and judgment or pre-determination, wonderful flourishing things will emerge.

I especially love this line:
"One of the most moving moments in my life, was also one of the most ordinary. I was with a friend in Denmark. We were having strawberries for tea, and I noticed that she sliced the strawberries very very fine, almost like paper. Of course, it took longer than usual, and I asked her why she did it. When you eat a strawberry, she said, the taste of it comes from the open surfaces you touch. The more surfaces there are, the more it tastes. The finer I slice the strawberries, the more surfaces there are."

As a Phish fan, it's a common expression between me and several close friends to say (quoting Phish song, The Lizards): "The trick is to surrender to the flow", which is actually incredibly important life advice for building wonderful things.

With AI being all the buzz these days, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this quote from Nabeel Qureshi https://x.com/nabeelqu/status/1657072... "Life planning beyond a 1 year horizon is overrated, just gradient descent onward using your feelings as the loss function".

As Alexander instructs, so much of the good things in life come from not planning, and instead being judgment free in the moment, and leaning into your instincts. Telling that AGI emerges in the same way.

[Greenmtngirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexander's books are as much about community--what it is, what it might be in other times and places, what it could be--as they are about architecture. Here's one of my favorite passages from The Timeless Way of Building:

"There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit of [a person:], a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.

The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of a person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.

In order to define this quality in buildings and in towns, we must begin by understanding that every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there.

These patterns of events are always interlocked with certain geometric patterns in the space. Indeed, as we shall see, each building and each town is ultimately made out of these patterns in the space, and out of nothing else: They are atoms and molecules from which a building or town is made.

The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked in conflict.

The more living patterns there are in a place—a room, a building, or a town—the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self maintaining fire which is the quality without a name."

Alexander's ideas resonate with me, even though they might appear out of date, or hearkening back to the 70s when the books were published. His writing is both clear and graceful. As a non-architect, I sometimes find it hard to keep my feet in a book that is primarily about community planning and buildings, but I've found these books worth the work.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

The architect Christopher Alexander says that we can immediately feel when a place makes us feel more alive. “We become happy in the presence of deep wholeness,” he says. “When a building works, when the world enters the blissful state which makes us fully comfortable, the space itself awakens. We awaken. The garden awakens. The windows awaken. We and our plants and animals and fellow creatures and the walls and light together wake.”
In his masterful, poetic book, The Timeless Way of Building, Alexander called this animating spirit “the quality without a name.” “There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.” He considers some descriptions—alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, and eternal—but while that’s partly it, no single word captures this quality.
“The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story,” Alexander writes. “It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.”

[Droqen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book so I could understand A Pattern Language which I, in turn, wanted to read so I could understand Pattern Language for Game Design for my practice of (surprise) designing games. The nested approach to design is powerful and the book presents many beautiful ways to look at the nature of design and everyday life. Read it cover to cover in two days, skimming as desired (and as suggested. What an incredible way to structure a book).

One thing I will mention is that I found The Timeless Way of Building paired well with what I learned from The Beginning of Infinity - a book that I have not yet finished, but which suggests that the search for better explanations is really an infinite process. Deutsch's titular 'infinity' is a necessary and beautiful concept to help describe Alexander's pursuit of the 'nameless quality' as both concrete and yet endless.