Christopher Alexander
Architect
1936-10-04 – 2022-03-17
Christopher Alexander was an Austrian-British architect and design theorist known for A Pattern Language and his influential work on architecture and urban design methods. His ideas also influenced software design patterns.
Quotes by Christopher Alexander
-
When you make something, cleaning it out of structural debris is one of the most vital things you do.
Read quote -
In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.
Read quote -
A building or a town will only be alive to the extent that it is governed in a timeless way. It is a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it.
Read quote -
But in practice master plans fail - because they create totalitarian order, not organic order. They are too rigid; they cannot easily adapt to the natural and unpredictable changes that inevitably arise in the life of a community.
Read quote -
There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever 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.
Read quote -
This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it.
Read quote -
To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name. There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.
Read quote -
Drawings help people to work out intricate relationships between parts.
Read quote