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 while other changes will break it.
By living process, Alexander means “any chain of differentiating steps, each of which carries out the center-intensifying process by means of the fifteen transformations, applying them, iteratively, to the whole” (p. 217).
The unfolding process cannot be applied from an architect’s master plan, developed several states away. It must be done step-wise and on the building site because each transformation needs to strengthen and amplify the previous state. Along the way there will be obstacles to work around, the way a tree’s roots grow around a rock that is in their path or a flower bends to seek the sunlight. These diversions add to the sense of life in the whole structure.
“The essence, in all cases of unfolding, is common sense. You want to make a house. At each moment, you ask yourself, What is the most important thing I have to do next, which will have the best effect on the life of the house? Then you do it” (p. 130).
The Nature of Order, Book Two, The Process of Creating Life
By Christopher Alexander
Amazon Link
Other Books in the Series
The Nature of Order, Book One, The Phenomenon of Life
