THE NATURE
OF ORDER
SOME SOBER
REFLECTIONS
ON THE NATURE OF ARCHITECTURE IN OUR TIME
Professor
Alexander was the first recipient ever of the AIA medal for Research, in 1970.
He was honored, at that time, for his “exceptional willingness to share his scientific
findings with the architectural community.” In 1996, he was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Foreword
I
have written the following article in reply to a Commentary, written by William
Saunders, and published by Architectural Record in the May issue 2002. (1) The commentary took the form of a
two-part book review, the first part dealing with a Pattern Language (a
condensed version of a long review that appeared in the Harvard Design
Magazine, Spring 2002) and the second part presented as if it were a review of The Phenomenon of Life, Book 1 of The Nature of Order. (2) However, the actual form of this
second part was that of a personal attack. It was plainly intended to bring the
book down not by argument, but by damage to my personal and professional
reputation. The commentary gives little factual indication that Mr. Saunders
has read The Phenomenon Of Life.
Certainly he did not explain or summarize the arguments the book contains, nor
did he offer any rebuttals to these arguments.
It
is unusual for a book-reviewer to avoid talking about the contents of the book
which he reviews. It suggests, to my mind, that the author either did his work
very rapidly, and did not have time to examine the book carefully, or that he
felt that The Phenomenon of Life contains material so damaging to the present
way of thinking about architecture, that it had to be destroyed, rather than
reasoned through, so as to prevent architects from reading the book at all.
If
indeed that is the case, then this attempt to hide the faults of the present
profession of architecture through bluster, is of interest, because it suggests
how isolated the profession is from recent developments in the sciences. The
book reviewed presents a proposal, ideas, and scientific evidence which, if
taken together, could have enormous implications for the practice of
architecture, and will, once taken seriously, inevitably change the nature of
architecture in society.
The
Phenomenon of Life, describes an entirely new, scientific, criterion of
architectural value. It is based on twenty seven years of carefully recorded
observation.
The
basic proposal made in the book, is that degree of life is an objective and
observable characteristic of buildings and other artifacts, that it depends on
the presence or absence of an identifiable structure which may be called living
structure: and that it is the presence or
absence of this structure which distinguishes valuable buildings from less
valuable, good architecture from bad.
And
this is real science, not phony social science, not work that only apes the
forms of scientific investigation with manner, wording, and presentation. This
is real science, in which empirical questions are being investigated, and, in
spite of their inherent difficulty, the investigations are beginning to show
sharable, empirical, results, which might, within a decade or two, begin to
have profound effect on our society. And
it is work which has massive implications for all the most basic questions of
architectural design and planning.
I
have written this book because of my wish to help set architecture on a firm
foundation: and because of my conviction that these questions lie, inescapably,
at the core of the work all of us architects do every day.
It
is presented with arguments regarding the scientific difficulty of dealing with
this topic. It is presented with hundreds of examples. It is presented with a
background mathematical theory, which has been applied to architectural
examples from buildings through history.
It
is written in simple language, with careful evolution of ideas, from
foundations and first principles, to concrete results, experimental technique,
comparison with other comparable methods used in architecture.
None of this is described,
analyzed, mentioned, or even vaguely hinted at in Mr. Saunders’s review.
There
are no facts put forward to refute the theory presented, in spite of the fact
that the book contains hundreds of pages of examples, facts, observations
appear in the book, and in spite of the fact that the topic is germane to the
interests of every architect.
After
all, if there is indeed a scientific criterion, which might be used to
distinguish living structure from non-living structure, and well enough
formulated so it could be applied to architecture, this would be momentous for
the architectural profession – and for society in general – since it would
potentially show the beginnings of a way forward from our present widely recognized
difficulty of building good environments.
So why did this writer not describe what the book really contains.
Did
Mr. Saunders avoid frank discussion of what the book contains, perhaps, simply
because an awful is visible in The Phenomenon of Life, namely: that the
criteria for living structure, if applied to current stylish architectural
productions of our era, will in very many cases arrive at negative evaluations.
Such a view, for the first time throwing objective doubt on the high priesthood
of architecture, would be consistent with opinions held by many ordinary
people who do not like the image-fed
high architecture presently supported. The possibility exists, therefore, that
if this book were to be taken seriously, either by architects, or by society at
large, then the bubble of late 20th-century architecture, and its
effort to scam the public, might, suddenly, be on the verge of being pricked.
There
is an additional reason for wondering what Mr. Saunders was really attempting
in his review. It is extremely odd that Mr. Saunders hides the central concept
of living structure, central to the book and to the thesis of the book, and
never once mentions it in his review. I say it is odd because in an article on
architectural value, written in 1999, Mr. Saunders explicitly mentions the
theory of living structure, (he calls it the theory of maximum aliveness) which he ascribes to “John Dewey,
D.H.Lawrence, Christopher Alexander and F.R.Leavis) (page 4), in these words:
…… and then goes on to say…”an architecture of maximum aliveness … is likely to
satisfy several (if not most) evaluative criteria at once, or to satisfy one or
to criteria to an extraordinary degree….” (3)
Since
he plainly understands the idea and has previously expressed the view, in print,
that this is one of the more important criteria for architectural value, it
becomes unclear why he would write a review ignoring the 350 pages devoted to
sober discussion of this topic, and to the scientific problems inherent in it?
It is also not clear why he would write in such a way as to obfuscate the
central empirical questions.
Possibly
the most dangerous weakness in the architectural profession today, is the
failure of the profession to have a legitimate, shared, canon of value, one
which resides in the deep feelings of ordinary people, and which resonates with
their experience. …. or to grasp publicly experienced judgments of value as issues of fact, or to respect the
values which “ordinary” members of the public have. Instead, the profession has
erred, in the past, by looking down on the public, by holding up a highly
idiosyncratic and specialized view of value, carried by “the few”, viewing the
common man as ignorant, and treating architects as people who believe they have
the right and authority and political power, to keep on ignoring public opinion
about architectural values, and pushing their own special brand of postmodern
image architecture, that is largely out of touch with every man and every woman.
It
must be said fairly, that Mr. Saunders does speak for that postmodern,
disemboweled majority of the architectural profession, who have given up
knowledge that there is truth about anything in architecture, in favor of the
notion that there are merely attitudes, opinions and disguises, and that each
person’s disguise or point of view is equally valuable. This unhealthy
position, inevitable under the impetus of Cartesian thought, is what dug the
grave for architecture during the last fifty years. Yet those who espouse it,
are wrapped in the necessity of this belief, because it is a necessary belief
to bolster and rescue the absurdity of their positions. So any line of thought
which actually suggests that feeling, quality, are objective, must be anathema
– because to admit the objectivity of these matters, would lay bare the poverty
of their conceptions, and expose the whole profession and its activities, in
the 20th century, as a hollow sham.
What,
then, is the actual content of Book 1, THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE, which Saunders
has failed to describe, or to address, preferring to dismiss it, facetiously,
with vague waffle? The thesis is
straightforward. It says that the positivistic separation of fact from value,
and the notion that only facts can be objective while judgments of value can
only be personal matters of opinion, is flawed, and that there is a scheme of things, in which judgments of value may
be examined empirically: and that when so examined, the feelings of
ordinary people, about value, when made in a certain special way, provide a
plenum of judgment which is stable, and reliable, from person to person, and --
by the way -- conspicuously different in content from the notions of value
which are prevalent among leading architects today.
There
is a second part of this thesis: namely, that the value which is identified by
these empirical methods, is generated by an identifiable, repeated structure
that may be identified mathematically, and seen, repeatedly, in all naturally
occurring structure, and especially in those structures which are commonly held
to have life. By comparison with this class of structures, the structures put
forward by architects of recent decades, are often lacking in life, and rather belong to a class of structures which
must be considered dead.
The
key issue, of course, is that both the original thesis itself, and the
secondary observation, just mentioned, are supported by a wealth of empirical
evidence, according to experiments which can be reported, and checked easily.
The experimental procedures involved are unusual, but there are, nevertheless,
sharable, and repeatable experiments. It should be said at once that the
experiments are not opinion surveys, but rather experiments which use
subjective judgments of a very special controlled sort, to obtain measures of
life in things, events, and situations.
Thus
the whole scheme of things, in which value takes on a new form, and in which
judgments of value about buildings, can be checked and discussed in reasonable
language, has experimental standing, and would have – if found reliable –
enormous impact on the present and future conduct of architecture.
This
thesis, momentous if true, and especially momentous for architecture, is
clearly stated, and clearly argued in this first book of The Nature of Order. It is not
summarized, or discussed, in any form, by Mr. Saunders.
Scientifically
speaking, what is the origin of living structure? Where does it come from? And
how may it be defined, to be accessible to discussion, experiment, debate.
The
core of it resides in the idea of wholeness. In the last two decades,
physicists and other scientists and philosophers of science have begun to
discover that a wholeness-based view of the world is, essential to proper
understanding of the purely physical universe. A view of wholeness as an
existing, guiding structure is essential in quantum physics; essential in
biology; essential in ecology; in one form or another, essential in almost
every branch of modern science. Yet even in these rather precise fields, it has
been difficult to forge a scientifically precise concept of wholeness. The idea
places demands on science which stretch the very notions of scientific inquiry,
since they require a view in which value, and the notion of the whole, and the
inclusion of the observer in the description of what is observed, seem to be at
odds with scientific method; yet must be included in order to reach results.
For
scientists, it has therefore become necessary to find new methods of inquiry
and observation, in which the whole, the self, feeling, and value, play a role
within the very act of observation – yet – if it is to be part of science –
these inclusions must leave science objective, unbroken, and reliable.
The
conception, experimental techniques, and even the way to modify our essentially
Cartesian view, so that it can admit self, “I”, and feeling – are
extraordinarily difficult. Yet they are necessary for the progress of science.
They
are necessary, too, for the progress of architecture. This subject is of the
greatest importance to architects and to architecture as a discipline – since
every time we build a building, it is the degree of participation in the
greater wholeness of the world around it, which will determine its success,
harmony, and degree of life.
Why
is this so important for architecture? The harmony of a given road or building
with its landscape can only be understood, and made profound, if we have a
picture of the wholeness that is being harmoniously adapted. The adaptation of
the light and movement in a building lobby can only be understood if, once
again, we have a picture of the structure of the whole which is supporting the
adaptation. A window in a wall – its well-placed, well sized, well designed,
according to its harmony within the whole – and to do it well, we need to
understand the whole. I remember Peter Eisenman telling me that he was not
interested in harmony.! Because the world is so tormented, he wants to express
the torment. Well, bully for Mr. Eisenman. Not so bully for the unfortunates
who have to inhabit his buildings.
Yet,
important as it is, for some odd reason architects have been among the last to
wake up to the world-wide intellectual and cultural movement in the
sciences which seeks understanding of
the concept of wholeness and the whole -- and have been, and still are, extraordinarily hostile to this conception.
I
well remember how my faculty colleagues at Berkeley reacted with intense
hostility, when twenty-five years ago I first began speaking about wholeness as
a necessary basis for architecture at faculty meetings. The very word
“wholeness” incensed some of them and made them furious, maddened, as though it
was a personal attack on them. And, sadly, it did not stop at that. In 1989 our
chair, Howard Friedman, dared to propose that wholeness should, as a subject of
study, be included in the Berkeley architectural curriculum. At the next
faculty meeting, he was subjected to a vitriolic personal assault made against
him by one of our faculty. As a result of the intensity of this verbal assault,
the faculty meeting broke up. But before the faculty had even left the room,
within the next few minutes Howard had a fatal heart attack. He was taken to
hospital and died shortly afterwards.
Such
a tragic event will not make the
subject of wholeness and value go away. It merely indicates how much
antagonism the concept can generate, possibly because it threatens to go deep
into the fabric of present day practice and assumptions. It is painful to face
the fact that Mr. Saunders’s attack on my book which deals with the same
subject, has a similarly irrational attack-dog quality.
The
reviewer was asked to review a serious book which makes a start, trying to
express, in scientific language, the foundations of a new view of wholeness
which might, if successful, bring help and new perspective to architecture. But
instead of giving sober reflection to the intensely difficult scientific and
architectural problems (many of which are described in the book), he chose
merely to try and destroy the author
instead of the arguments (which he
did not present). Perhaps he hopes that this strategy will make the topic
disappear altogether.
But
the topic remains momentous.
A
Vision Of Architecture As A Discipline Which Heals The World.
The
essence of the situation is an entirely different way of looking at
architecture, in which every action, small or middle-sized or large, is
governed by one all-embracing rule: “Whatever
is done must always be done in such a
way as to provide maximum possible healing of the whole: the land, the people,
the existing structure of the city.”
This
rule is then to be applied when a window is placed in a wall; it is applied
when a building is placed on a street; it is applied when a neighborhood is
constructed or reconstructed in a city. In every case, what is paramount is the
healing of the whole, the living wholeness of the earth, in that quarter, and
the love and dedication which sustains it and preserves it and extends it.
This
is entirely – totally – different from the present conception in which each
thing done lives largely for itself: in which development, stylishness, and
profit, are the guiding motives.
It
is a new conception in which a new triad (Wholeness - Healing -
Structure-preserving transformations) governs and replaces the old triad (Style
- Profit - Advertising and Marketing advantages obtained through design), which
governs all classical postmodern architecture of the mainstream today.
These
are two different worlds: and no matter how much talk there may be, today,
about ecology it is the second of these triads which ruled the architecture of
the second half of the 20th century, in the 2% of the world where
architect-designed buildings play a role.
The
Earth, the city, the metropolis, may be shaped instead by a process focused on
life, and on the healing of the Earth’s surface, in metropolitan areas, and in
nature, to work towards a living structure. In that case, the geometry, the
design, the construction processes, will all be different – and what we now
think of as architecture, will be given up in favor of a new vision, which is
aimed primarily at the good of the Earth, and at its people, and the places,
and animals, and stones of earth.(6)
Mechanistic
philosophy and the present arbitrary views of value that hold sway in
architecture today are intimately connected.
First,
the developer’s ideal of profit, and the profit oriented approach to
architecture, building, and planning, inevitably work against wholeness, and
against the healing of the earth. That is because the goals of value that can
be stated within concepts of mechanism, are inherently unable to increase
wholeness, or to heal systems.
Second
, the very idea of healing, presupposes that we know what it means to
heal, what health is, what, therefore, wholeness is. Still more vital, when
thinking and speaking in the framework of a mental world governed by mechanism,
any thought of value becomes an arbitrary, value impressed on the logic of the
machine, external to it , and arbitrary therefore, in every respect that can be
entertained or thought within the mechanistic world.
So,
our values in architecture during the last fifty years, have been arbitrary,
because they have been invented arbitrarily. They are protected by
professionals only because they serve the goal of capital-induced development –
the postmodern architect’s bread and butter. So the values which have been
created – the post modern images – like all other passing styles and images –
work for capital, for profit, for development, but against wholeness, against
health, against the well-being of the earth.
That
is the literary and artistic heritage now being taught in schools of
architecture, and now propagated through architects buildings that serve the
process of capital induced development.
This
heritage does not serve wholeness. It does not serve the whole. It does not
help to heal the world, or to rebuild Earth as a place where bees, people,
breezes, stones, and lizards can run free… nor the starlings, spiders, urban
foxes, water , businesses, restaurants, and taxicabs that populate the city.
I
have spent my life, trying to find a sharable, rational, scientific model which
brings this topic of life, wholeness, and harmony, into the open – especially
as it touches the geometry of buildings, so that it allows us to share
discussion and observation of its effects.
It
is in our power to take an alternative path, one in which every single act of
building, design, ornament, economic improvement – is always done in such a way
as to be part of the healing of the Earth.
This is possible even in the high-density metropolis, since there, too,
we are capable of making nature.
But
we cannot achieve this, or even move in this direction, without a respect for
wholeness, made clear as a concept, and formulated so that it transcends all
our current pretensions, concepts, and short term ideals.
The
future lies with profound understanding of wholeness as a concept, and as a
basis for practice. Turning away from it is more than just short-sighted. It
would be a tragedy for architects to inflict further damage on the troubled
Earth.
Going
the other way, in search of a viable, scientific view of life, which can become
a basis for our architectural practice, is more moral than what we do now, more
just, more beautiful. It goes more to the service of life. And all those who
practice such a revised form of architecture, will probably feel more wholesome
in themselves.
When
the life of the environment plays such a fundamental role in the well-being of
the Earth, and when science itself is struggling to understand the nature of
wholeness in the majority of new scientific fields, it would be a great pity if
a philistine attack on necessarily preliminary efforts to make progress in this
direction, were to keep architecture as the last of the philosophical dinosaurs
from the mechanistic age.
What,
then, Are The Implications Of Wholeness
Based Architecture On Our Prevailing Architectural Values
The
theory is so rich in detail, that we may draw extraordinary consequences from
it. These are presented in volumes 2, 3 and 4 – not yet reviewed by Mr.
Saunders or by the AIA. These consequences from theory have implications for
the processes which a successful architecture must use, to reach buildings
which have life. (4)
They
have implications which dictate some, and eliminate other, relationships
between design and construction, as a necessary part of architecture. (5)
It
has implications for the involvement of people, in the design of buildings, and
for the detailed ways in which this involvement is likely to be successful, or
unsuccessful.
It
has implications for the flow of money. It has implications for the handling of
architectural detail, and for the successful integration of structural
engineering, into the framework of design.
It
has enormous implications, too, for the unholy alliance between architects and
developers: an unholy alliance, possibly the darkest secret in the history of
modern architecture, and one which has made architects little more than
salesmen, writing advertisements several hundred feet high, claiming to be art,
yet actually designed mainly as sign language to stimulate the flow of money
into the developer’s pocket.
It
affects virtually every part of the profession we now know as architecture, and
it indicates necessity for change, in almost all of them.
There
is no question, that under the impact of this theory, architecture will be
deeply changed: and it will be changed, for the better.
A
Note On Science
It
may be worth concluding with a short statement about what science is, and what
it is not.
You
are doing science, when you figure out how something works. Especially, if you
figure out how something works, that people have not figured out before. You
don’t need to dress it up, you just need to work it out.
All
the rest is dressing. Pompous language, format of summary and text and
findings, footnotes, erudite references, carefully marshaled precedents ... all
those are the trappings of science, the appearance of science, not science
itself. Too often the trappings and appearance are presented making something
seem like science: but it is rare that someone actually figures out how
something works.
The
material in the Phenomenon of Life, and the material in a Pattern Language 25
years earlier, are both science. In both cases, partial workable answers have
been given to questions about the way the structure of the environment affects
people. In both cases we did, to a first approximation, genuinely figure how
this works. It would have been possible, in both cases, to dress it up the
actual discoveries in fancy dress: but it would not have changed the actual
discoveries very much.
For
example, it would have been possible to dress the 253 patterns in a pattern
language, as anthropology – thus giving them the dressing of science,
references, language and so on. It might have helped create an illusion of
science. But it would not have changed the fact that we did genuinely work out,
in part, how the environment supports human life in society. Of course not all
253 patterns are equally profound: but in nearly all of them something has been figured out about how the
world works, and we knew more about it after the work was done than we did before. And because it is published in an
available form, we know it for always – or until someone else goes further, and
finds out more exactly, or more deeply, how those things work.
In
The Phenomenon of Life other, deeper, discoveries are presented. They would not
be made more significant by anthropological dressing, or psychological
dressing. They stand by themselves, and the reader can see that, easily, by
studying the text. There will be time for scientific fancy dress later, when
the hard work of going into more detail, and doing more careful experiments,
really begins. But the really hard work has been done. It is a pity that Mr.
Saunders couldn’t see it.
The
slighting references to “bad science” which appear in Mr. Saunders article,
only betray a rather undergraduate notion of what science is, and how it is
done.
The Phenomenon of Life defines criteria for life
in buildings, and replicable tests for deciding how much living structure
exists in different buildings. Of course the appearance of a real test of value
in architecture may give the sweats to the profession; but if the profession is
worth its salt, and they fear the concept, they can disprove the argument
rather than failing to see the point. This is an invitation for adult debate.
Notes
(1) Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order,
Book 1: The Phenomenon of life, CES Publications, 2003.
(2) William S. Saunders, “From Taste to
Judgment” Harvard Design Magazine, Winter-Spring, 1999, number 7.
(3) William S. Saunders, “A Pattern Language:
reviewed” Harvard Design Magazine, Winter-Spring, 2002, number 16.
(4) Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order,
Book 2: The Process of Creating Life, CES Publications, 2003.
(5) Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order,
Book 3: A Vision of a Living World, CES Publications, 2003.
(6) Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order,
Book 4: The Luminous Ground, CES Publications, 2003.