Here are two delightful animations that illustrate the idea of structural unfolding popularized by Christopher Alexander. They are fun to watch. And thought-provoking. A Matter of Form by Rene Jodoin A Geometry of Circles by Philip Glass Via Kottke
I once read a story about NASA engineers working on one of the first research satellites. They spent a long time trying to design a motorized system to deploy the solar panels that would power the satellite. Every solution they came up with was too complicated, too big, or required batteries that were too heavy.…
If we design and construct buildings to suit our purposes, why do some buildings adapt with us as our purposes change, but other buildings refuse to change? That’s the question Stewart Brand asks in this six part series created by the BBC, based on his book How Buildings Learn. Over the course of the series…
There has been a fair amount of buzz around Automattic’s acquisition of the ActivityPub for WordPress Plugin. There are also a good number of tutorials on how to install, activate, and set up the plugin. But I haven’t seen a lot about why you would want your blog to be part of the “fediverse”, or…
In order to make something that feels truly “alive” at the deepest level it can help to imagine that you are “making a gift to God.” At each step of the making process you evaluate which option is the most authentic or “true” by evaluating how well it brings out the spirit of the thing…
An act of creation is not just about making something new, something that never existed before. It’s also about the impact that the created object has on its surroundings. Think about public sculpture that is placed on a highway median simply because the space is available and the city council believes that art will “class…
Early in his career as an architect Christopher Alexander began to notice that certain buildings, plazas, and parks had a transcendent quality. They were more interesting to look at, and felt better to be a part of, than many other buildings. There was a vibrancy and presence to this structures that set them apart. But…
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,…
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…
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…
