Christopher Alexander
Architects are much too concerned with the design of the world (its static structure), and not yet concerned enough with the design of the generative processes that create the world (its dynamic structure). 4
Real kindness is something quite different, something valuable in itself. It is a true process, not guided by the the grasp for a goal, but guided by the minute-to-minute necessity of caring, dynamically, for the feelings and well-being of another. This is not trivial, but deep; sincerely related to human feeling; and not predictable in its end-result, because the end-result is not a goal. Unlike the goal-oriented picture, which is imposed intellectually on our substance as persons, real kindness is a process true to our essential human instinct and to our knowledge of what it means to be a person. But the machine-age view showed a process like kindness as being oriented toward a goal, just as every machine too has its purpose — it’s goal, what it is intended to produce. 9
The Principle of Least Action, 37: The principle says that the evolution of any dynamic system will always follow the path of least work.
Under these circumstances, as layer upon layer of smooth unfolding takes place, what develops is a system of centers which is stronger, crustier, and more imbricated, and in which the centers (at first hundreds, then thousands, or tens of thousands) all reinforce and intensify each other. 65
This, I believe, is an essential model which teaches us the real meaning of living structure, and which shows us these phenomena as naturally existing phenomena of beauty which will occur without effort in any world where the wholeness is allowed to unfold smoothly and truthfully, without disturbing previously existing centers. Once this is clear, we shall then have a vision of the world in which the world itself — all of it — animals, plants, mountains, rivers, buildings, roads, terraces, rooms, and windows — is part of a single system and a single way of understanding. 83
Thus the world has entered a new phase. What is made, what is built now, what develops in the world, is governed by images and rules. It is no longer automatically governed by the existing wholeness. It is now governed by what we decide. 109
The essence of successful unfolding is that form develops step by step, and that the building as a whole then emerges, coherent, organized. The success if this process depends, always, on sequence. A building design can unfold successfully only when its features “crystallize out” in a proper order. 129
It goes on like that. It is not complicated, not pretentious, but simple and obvious. It is just common sense. 130
Thus what I have referred to as the “rough, rambling” quality of so much that is good in the environment, comes from the light-hearted yet profound adaptation which such a simple stepwise process encourages, and which a more formal or controlled design process cannot achieve. 171
Instead of using plans, design, and so on, I shall argue that we must instead use generative processes. Generative processes tell us what to do, what actions to take, step by step, to make buildings and building designs unfold beautifully, rather than detailed drawings which tell us what the end-result is supposed to be. 176
*All* the well-ordered complex systems we know in the world, all those anyway that we view as highly successful, are generated structures, not fabricated structures. 180
The step-by-step approach works. The all-or-nothing approach does not work. THis is the secret of biological evolution. During the course of evolution, the adaptation of the thousands and millions of variables that must occur to make one successful organism happens step-by-step, essentially one gene at a time. That is what makes evolution possible. It would be impossible for nature to “design” a system as complex as any organism all at once. 237
Butterfly effect, 241: If we examine a complex natural system evolving, each next stage of its evolution depends on its previous stage. Mechanistic 19th-century science created a thought-model in which the next stage would be easily predictable from the previous stage. But it turns out that the world is not like the mechanical thought-model. More sophisticated discoveries have made it clear that in a complex system the next stage is dependent on the current configuration of the whole, which in turn may depend on subtle minutiae in the history of the previous wholes, so “reave-like” that there is no way to predict the path of the emerging system accurately ahead of time.
To create a living world, successfully, we must again find ways of making all building processes move forward in this experimental, responsive fashion. That on thing alone, as a kind of bedrock for all design and all planning and all building, will change the world. 246
What steps do you take, in what order? The most basic instruction I can give you as a guide for a living process, is that you move with certainty. That means, you take small steps, one at a time, deciding only what you know. You try never to take a step which is a guess or a “why don’t we try this?” Large scale trial-and-error, shots in the dark, simply do not work. Rather, you move by slow, small decisions, deciding one thing, getting sure about it, and then moving on.
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When I say that you should move in small decisions, I do not mean that the decisions should be small in physical scale. Rather, I mean that the content of each decision should be limited to a particular subject, to some feature of the design, disconnected from other matters, and floating, to an extent, by itself. 258
We should run through the possibilities very fast, and reject most of them. If we do accept one, we should accept it, reluctantly, only when we finally encounter something for which no good reason presents itself to reject it, which appears genuinely wonderful to us, and which demonstrably makes the feeling of the whole become more profound. 258
The crux of every design process lies in finding the generative sequence for that design, and making sure that sequence is the right one for the job. [...]
Another way of saying the same thing is to observe that for many people, perhaps the most difficult thing of all in understanding living process, and in getting a proper sequence for the unfolding of the whole, is reconciling oneself to the idea of doing one thing at a time. 317
It is only in its uniqueness to unique conditions, made necessary by find adaptation, that anything takes on living form. This is true to such an extent that if the structure of uniqueness at every part does not occur within a structure, we can be sure that it is not an unfolded whole, not a living structure at all. 324
Just make it nice at every spot.
337
In any living process, or any process of design or making, the way forward, the next step which is more structure-enhancing, is that step which most intensifies the feeling of the emerging whole. 371
What matters is that the building — the room, the canyon, the paingting, the ornament, the garden — as they are created, send profound feeling back towards us. 372
What I am saying then, is that before making anything, large or small, and before each step in the process of making it — before each step — we must be able to feel its emotional substance. 383
The idea that a building becomes more “organic” if it has a more complex form, even when based on notions of the interior organization, is almost always wrong. 422
Simplicity: making the essential in life come forward, and allowing the inessential to be laid aside. 462
To understand the idea that the symmetries in a structure are “just right,” consider, for example, the flow of electricity in two parallel wires. Other things being equal, the current will flow equally in the two wires. Why is this? If we want to, we can invoke some rule like Ohm’s law or the principle of least action, to show why the wires carry the same current. But the deepest explanation, the most profound one, is simply this: There is no reason for the two wires to carry different currents, because the situation is symmetrical. Therefore, they carry the same current. In the absence of any reason, thing distribute themselves symmetrically. Asymmetries occur only where there are reasons powerful enough to generate them. 472
...the lack of need for “image,” again makes it possible for people to do just what is required, and nothing else. 478
In the 20th century we assumed that to be simple is to use drastic geometric shapes lacking in structure. Yet nature teaches us that what is truly simple — a waterfall say — is vastly complex — as a structure — and yet vastly simple in its essence. Thus we must strive for something which is utterly simple, in the sense that there is nothing unwanted there, nothing extra. At the same time we know that if we succeed in being truly simple, we reach a find filigree of level upon levels in which every part is unique, each adapted to the one unique spot in the world where it lies. 489
Frederick Taylor, mentioned 515.
The traditional process of the architect then, what is it? [...] Making, designing, building, helping. 560
The idea that feeling itself can become both criterion and instrument – that what is done, no matter how large or how small, can become personal, connected to the personal self of all human beings – and that this process then opens the door to a new form of society. That is truly revolutionary. That can shake the world. 567
What I do know, and am certain of, is that the society of the future, the long future of men and women on our planet, will – must – inevitably be carried forward by this kind of process which allows the nourishment of the individual to happen at the same time that vast, and highly technical developments occur. 569
It is the vision of a future living Earth that draws me on. Inspired by a throughly new view of structure, feuled by a view which sees living process as the origin of all life, this allows us to contemplate, for the first time, the idea that one day such living process will cover and completely generate, in biological fashion, the natural and human-made and built environment that we may ultimately learn to call our living Earth. 570