The Timeless Way of Building

by Christopher Alexander

Overview

The theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. Yet the power of present-day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable, even afraid, to say openly that they dislike what is happening, because they are afraid to seem foolish, afraid perhaps that they will be laughed at.

Now, at last, there is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself.

The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume in the Center for Environmental Structure series, Christopher Alexander presents in it a new theory of architecture, building, and planning which has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being.

Alexander writes, "There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. And as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195024029
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/23/1979
Series:	Center for Environmental Structure Series
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	280,653
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.40(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Christopher Alexander is a builder, craftsman, general contractor, architect, painter, and teacher. He taught from 1963 to 2002 as Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now Professor Emeritus. He has spent his life running construction projects, experimenting with new building methods and materials, and crafting carefully articulated buildings—all to advance the idea that people can build environments in which they will thrive.

Acting on his deeply-held conviction that, as a society, we must recover the means by which we can build and maintain healthy living environments, he has lived and worked in many cultures, and built buildings all over the world.

Making neighborhoods, building-complexes, building, balustrades, columns, ceilings, windows, tiles, ornaments, models and mockups, paintings, furniture, castings and carvings—all this has been his passion, and is the cornerstone from which his paradigm-changing principles have been derived.

Table of Contents

The Timeless Way

1. The timeless way ..... 3

   The Quality

2. The quality without a name ..... 19
3. Being alive ..... 41
4. Patterns of events ..... 55
5. Patterns of space ..... 75
6. Patterns which are alive ..... 101
7. The multiplicity of living patterns ..... 123
8. The quality itself ..... 137

   The Gate

9. The flower and the seed ..... 157
10. Our pattern languages ..... 167
11. Our pattern languages (cont.) ..... 193
12. The creative power of language ..... 211
13. The breakdown of language ..... 225
14. Patterns which can be shared ..... 243
15. The realioty of patterns ..... 277
16. The structure of a language ..... 305
17. The evolution of a common language for a town ..... 325

    The Way

18. The genetic power of language ..... 351
19. Differentiating space ..... 365
20. One pattern at a time ..... 385
21. Shaping one building ..... 403
22. Shaping a group of buildings ..... 427
23. The process of construction ..... 455
24. The process of repair ..... 475
25. The slow emergence of a town ..... 493
26. Its ageless character ..... 511

    The Kernel of the Way

27. The kernel of the way ..... 531

Editorial Reviews

"Excellent text for architectural theory and design—a must for design students."—Brad Grant, California Polytechnic State University

From the Publisher