Importance: 30%
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Christopher Alexander (Architect, Author) lays out a huge perspective on how the built environment interacts with the human wellbeing and functioning of society. This also bleeds into claims on cosmology and the order of the universe and humanity.
Website that has overviews of the Books: Nature of Order Website
idea for research
it seems to me there is great congruence between the ideas of quality of life and wholeness described by Alexander and the biblical principles of shalom and righteousness. It would be interesting to line them up next to each other and see just how similar and different they are. Because if you could sub in the idea of shalom in describing the process of creating living centers that would be a much more profound and far reaching understanding of our corom mundo work than the typical ministering to felt needs or providing public services. Rather all work could be seen as pushing toward peace and righteousness in a way that one day when Jesus returns will not be separated into temporal and spiritual or before man or before God when Jesus returns. But for now we just get to see the starting of there overlap
Book One: The Phenomenon of Life
So far I am impressed with his down to earth approach
This perspective is by definition anti post modern. He seeks to form a perspective that brings value judgements about the life and health of the built environment out of private opinion and into objective discussion that can be argued for and presented
The basis is of his work starts from the assumption that 90% of human feeling is the same across humanity no matter culture or background.
He then makes two overarching claims
- all matter has some element of life and is more or less alive depending on how it is organized and used
- All matter and space has some sense of self. Not totally clear on what he means by this yet but think it has something to do with reflection of human nature in what we build
Major argument is that Descartes and u thought has basically made the world nothing more than a mechanical machine that can be explained based on what things do. He calls this the mechanistic worldview. This worldview makes it impossible to have any truth claims about anything besides pure mechanical functions.
What he argues is that this basically creates a completely chaotic world where everyone has their own value arguments and just kinda chooses a random value to work from. This creates not way to actually have any coherent community or progress together because value is all about personal opinion rather than what is actually good or whole.
This applies to architecture with the real lived environment of our world just falling into haphazard chaos with no way to have a conversation that finds real common ground.
Lays out a new way of understanding science and scientific inquiry that includes being able to make truth claims about the value of things. The wholeness, life and harmony of objects are things that can be understood and investigated.
So order then is about a lot more than the laws of physics or mechanical forces
Perspective
I think what excites me about this perspective so far is that it actually brings a practical understanding of biblical righteousness into the world we live in every day. Like from this perspective you could absolutely speak in terms of if something is right or not in a more wholistic sense than just morally or mechanically.
The Quality of Life in the Built Environment
Defines life as not an organic living organism but that everything has some degree of life from a rock to a crab everything has life in it. Interesting take not sure I’m totally sold yet and need to think through how that fits with biblical descriptions of life
So I like it more than I thought it’s about the human feeling of life in things that we have a certain emotional resonance with things like waves that is not present in just any form of water. Not anything to do with an animistic sense of things actually being biologically alive but our human reaction to things
A way to talk about this is felt life: The Quality of Life in Environments and Objects
This quality is put forward as an objective empirical quality that is a structure within space itself. It is in the organization and arrangement of matter that gives something more or less life in it.
This is a quality that we can perceive with our gut feeling when we ask. Which has more or less life? It is a reality of the universe that can challenge even the most empirical facts based person. The life of things is there whether we like it or not and is outside the individual.
This differentiation in degrees of life is argued to not be a private subjective judgement but an objective and homogeneous interpretation common to humans as a whole
the Fundamental Hypothesis
What we call “life” is a general condition which exists, to some degree or other, in every part of space: brick, stone, grass, river, painting, building, daffodil, human being, forest, city. And further: The key to this idea is that every part of space - every connected region of space, small or large - has some degree of life, and that this degree of life is well defined, objectively existing, and measurable.
- Nature of Order, bk1., p. 77
Perspective
An important note in the whole conversation of the quality of life and the ordering of centers is that humans can easily trick ourselves and redefine what is “life” or what we feel is right. Therefore it is important from a Christian perspective to acknowledge that we do have a kind of fundamental feeling of what is right and wrong, or what has more life in it. But it is vital to consult that feeling as a secondary measure to God’s definition of what is rightly ordered or not.
This means that the objectivity that he argues for in the prescience of life cannot stand only on personal senses but primarily on the word of God.
Another way to connect this is that the quality of life is also a way to tangible see and perceive righteousness around us. In other words, we could say that things that are rightly order, or righteous, will by nature of their good order be full of more life and wholeness.
The Wholeness of Space
Moving to the abstract idea that this quality of life is composed of ״the wholeness” and centers.
The wholeness is the overall cohesiveness and interrelated nature of everything. Basically the idea that building function as a whole. Even the earth functions as a whole and therefore humans are affected by the environment in which we live and create. We are not unattached but are to a certain extent influenced and contingent on our environment.
General idea of wholeness
the wholeness in any part of space is the structure defined by all the various coherent entities that exist in that part of space, and the way these entities are nested in and overlap each other. - Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 81
Argues that the strength of various entities that make up a whole can actually be mathematically calculated making them real aspects of the space in which they exist rather than just some random concept or differentiation.
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the wholeness is made of parts; the parts are created by the wholeness.
- Nature of order, bk 1., p. 84
The Whole Made Up of Centers
What is a Center?
Each one of these entities has, as its defining mark, the fact that it appears to exist as a local center within a larger whole. It is a phenomenon of centeredness in space.
I am not referring at all to a point center like a center of gravity. I use the word center to identify an organized zone of space - that is to say a distinct set of points in space.
When I call the pond a center, the situation changes. I can then recognize the fact that the pond does have existence as a local center of activity: a living system. It is a focused entity. But the fuzziness of its edges are becomes less problematic. The reason is that the pond, as an entity, is focused towards its center. It creates a field of centeredness. But, obviously, this effect falls off.
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 84
More expanded notes on centers: Thinking of Spacial Relationships as Centers
What is Wholeness?
My answer is that the wholeness is not merely a way of focusing on the gestalt of a thing, but is instead a real structure, an actual “thing” in itself…. This wholeness gets its strength from the coherent spatial centers of which it is made. If there are roses around a front door of a cottage, that is what you remember.
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 90
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The wholeness of any portion of the world is this system of larger and smaller centers, in their connection and overlap. Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 90-91
He also makes the point that there are obvious centers formed by clear features of an environment but there are also more hidden ones formed by things like negative space or lighting
Centers are not connected to categories and words we have to define things directly. But is rather based on the way things hang together physically. That means sometimes the largest centers in an area may be the lack of anything in a section which creates a center. Or the combo of two or parts of things that from a center. An example he uses is a wide open space that includes the road and the grass along it. Or the big foliage of a tree but not necessarily the trunk.
The importance of this is that it is focused on the deep meaningful and functional areas in a space that are not easily changed by just little design details but give the space its character feeling, and functional structure. These don’t always have convenient names
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(Centers) control the real behavior of the thing, the life which develops there, the real human events which happen, and the feelings people have about living there. Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 95
Wholeness as a Fundamental Structure
I propose a view of physical reality which is dominated by the existence of this one particular structure, W, the wholeness. In any given region of space, some subregions have higher intensity as centers, others have less. Many subregions have weak intensity or non at all. The overall configuration of the nested centers, together with their relative intensities, comprise a single structure. I define this structure as “the” wholeness of that region. Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 96
He argues that this is a neutral structure that does not base the goodness and beauty of a space on a philosophy or opinion but the objective presence or lack of life giving wholeness.
Quick definition of Wholeness
the system of centers created by the spatial configuration of the (space). -Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 98
He argues that the wholeness exerts influence on every level of scale down to how elections function all the way up to the cultural context of a country or part of the world. Therefore the wholeness can affect culture and culture can create and define different centers. Like Asian cultures being comfortable squatting with western ones not so much
Centers are also embodied in social life like how meals are eaten, or welcoming and leave taking happens. As well as by changing and event like entities like sun beams or momentary meetings.
Summary
Basically he is trying to get at a system that can talk about the interaction and formation of the built environment with human life and culture on every level. These are ridiculously complex things on their own so it makes sense that trying to understand their interactions is as difficult and abstract as it is so far.
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I believe that all centers that appear in space - whether they originate in biology, in physical forces, in pure geometry, in color - are alike simply in that they all animate space. It is this animated space that has its functional effect upon the world, that determines the way things work, that governs the presence of harmony and life.
- Nature of Order, Bk 1., p. 106
I like the idea of wholeness and centers over all. the one thing that I think I have an issue with is the divorce of wholeness from morality. I think that using this from a Christian perspective means that there is a difference between healthy and unhealthy “wholeness” because an unhealthy wholeness will by nature create a system of centers that is unhealthy like wise with healthy. So you can’t just totally just jump off into the eastern “the world is what it is” kind of mentality which I don’t think is his point but we will see as we go
I think I see why he makes the point that it is neutral. Because he argues that the idea of wholeness is a neutral structure present every where in the world. So good or bad there is always a wholeness because it is a structured way of seeing things not a moral or value driven concept
Off of this he argues that the quality of life is also a structural phenomenon that can be discerned from within a wholeness.
Key ideas connecting this all:
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- Centers themselves have life.
- Centers help one another: the existence and life of one center can intensify the life of another.
- Centers are made of centers (this is the only way of describing their composition).
- A structure gets its life according to the density and intensity of centers which have been formed in it
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 110
A center is not made of other smaller different parts but centers are made of centers and make up other larger centers. The basic argument is that we cannot subdivide wholeness into discreet categories or smaller things but that all things share this common structure or forming into centers.
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The nature of these centers can therefore be understood only reflexively, or recursively. This is one reason wholeness looks so mysterious to those who are wedded to mechanistic thought.
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 116
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Centers are always made of other centers. A center is not a point, not a perceived center of gravity. It is rather a field of organized force in an object or part of an object which makes that object or part exhibit centrality. This field-like centrality is fundamental to the idea of wholeness.
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 118
Argues that the circularity of wholeness and centers is not a logical mistake but an essential point in order to actually understand it.
Another way to see centers is as a “field of force in space.” Centers are more than just nested centers but also help each other in an organized structure to create the field effect of centeredness.
Definition of Centers as Fields
Each center is a field of other centers.
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 120
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A rough rule of thumb, we may keep hold of the idea that centers are coherent entities, often marked by local symmetry, by differentiation, by the presence of a boundary, and by convexity, which coordinate to cause a field effect.
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 121
Argues that centers change and support each other so that their level of life and what they “are” is completely different when surrounded by different centers.
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The concept of life or living structure - as something caused by the density of living centers in any given wholeness - explains life and function in a large variety of cases
- Nature of Order, bk 1., p. 134
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the idea of life as something which may occur in any spatial system, and suggested that the degree of life which appears in a things depends on the life of its component centers and their density. Thus, broadly, we have a theoretical scheme in which the life of a thing, or building, or system, depends on the extent to which the centers in this thing cohere and help each other.
- Nature of Order, Bk 1., p. 144
He continues to develop this line of thinking into a full blown system of analysis by outlining fifteen attributes or relationships that help centers create more life within each other.
This is the basic list:
- Levels of Scale
- Strong Centers
- Boundaries
- Alternating Repetition
- Positive Space
- Good Shape
- Local Symmetries
- Deep Interlock and Ambiguity
- Contrast
- Gradients
- Roughness
- Echos
- The Void
- Simplicity and Inner Calm
- Not-Separateness
Here are specific notes on each centers relationship: The Ways Centers Help Each Other Have More Life