Evergreen notes that (hopefully) improve with age
This is the fourth part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this fourth book introduces a second aspect of living structure, and that’s the essence of the “Self.” When a building or a work…
This is the third part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this third book he presents practical examples of projects that he has participated in. He shares experimental processes and methods. At the heart…
This is the second part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this second book he goes into more detail about the unfolding process and how certain changes of form will preserve the inherent structure…
This is the first part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this first book he explores this quality of life, and how it can be found in everything from forests to minerals. For example,…
There is a distinction between life and things that are alive. Life includes things that are are alive, cats. It also includes things that are not alive but are the byproducts of life processes – sofas. And in between are viruses – organisms that have no homeostasis and cannot reproduce without host cells – meaning…
Almost all of us have a sense of awe when we see a magnificent sunset or walk through a dense forest. We have the same feeling when we visit a great cathedral or see a work of art. There is something about the colors, the complexity, the arrangement, the variation, that strikes us deeply but…
One of the things that surprised Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi when he was doing surveys about pleasure and enjoyment was the universal agreement on what constituted an enjoyable experience. He found that people from all cultures, all stages of life shared the same sense of what made an activity truly enjoyable. Moreover, widely differing activities from art…
If we think about structure and space in different ways than we are accustomed to, we start to see that structures that we previously regarded as inanimate actually do have degrees of life. In fact there is not a clear distinction between things that are alive and things that are not alive. It is actually…
If we want to build structures that feel alive we will have to get past the idea that “form follows function,” a mechanistic notion that mainly considers physics, and start thinking of life and order as essential properties of structure. This new view will take into consideration the wholeness of the structure, not just how…
All space and matter has some degree of life in it. This is the proposition that Christopher Alexanader makes in The Nature of Order, Book One, the Phenomenon of Life. This life is observable and testable. There seems to be a nearly universal agreement among people when they see particular works of architecture, art, elements…
Between 1972 and 1981 patients having the same type of gall bladder surgery were studied to see whether or not natural settings had an impact on recovery. Twenty three patients had a window with a view of nature. Twenty three patients had window with.a view of a brick wall. Those with the view of nature…
A study by Texas A&M found that interaction with plants and green spaces had demonstrated benefits across six quality of life constructs. The paper gathers research on an even broader array of benefits, including: One of the undelying focsuses of the paper is how green space can be incorporated into architecture and ubran design in…
Having a connection to green space can have powerful benefits for one’s physical and mental health. For instance, patients with a view of nature have better outcomes than patients with a view of a wall. Interaction with plants can help to improve all six quality of life areas: Because of these benefits an increasing number…
Two ways to go about knowledge sharing in the workplace are through narrated work or through observable work. The concepts are similar but there are important differences. Observable Work = Work in Progress Keeping your work-in-progress and other files on a company shared drive is one way to make your work observable. People can not…
Frand and Lippincott suggested eight tactics for processing information whether it was digital, analog or based on experience. The tactics are based on the “knowledge spiral” proposed by Nonaka and Takeuch. Note that items 1 and 7 are similar in that they establish a set of criteria for the type of information that goes into…
