Christopher Alexander
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Organic Urban Forms and How To Make Them
Christopher Alexander is to me the closest that any well known researcher has come to considering how that feeling of organicness exuded by the most attractive towns and cities may be closely related to Deterministic Chaos. He does not use such a term for it of course but it may be that his work can be re-assessed in its light. Indeed, I would suggest that, whilst not acknowledged in the literature on Deterministic Chaos, Alexander may well turn out to have been a very early researcher into this concept. Alexander has tried to produce urban form that is as organic in feeling as any of those other beautiful towns and cities seem that he admires and that seemed to have developed without apparent effort. How he does this has of course nothing to do with applying known techniques of economics, town planning, architecture or any other modern process of construction and design. For that reason his ideas remain curiosities; admired but not practised.
Christopher Alexander was born in England but has worked mostly in America. He is not well known outside of academia but is well respected within. Considered to be a maverick, he published, to some, weird ideas about how to do Architecture and Urban design. His writings were mainly in the 1960's and 70's. e.g.
"A City is Not a Tree"
"A Pattern Language" and the one most relevant here;
and more recently;
"A Theory FOr Urban Design"
Of course, attractive irregularity is nothing new in architecture or urban design and has its fashionable moments. There have been many exponents of the value of the incremental, the organic and the inherent qualities of the vernacular. However, Alexander is different as he deliberately tries to separate design from form.
* "This feeling of 'organicness', is not a vague feeling of relationship with biological forms. it is not an analogy. It is instead, an accurate vision of a specific structural quality which these old towns had ... and have. Namely: Each of the towns grew as a whole, under its own laws of wholeness ... and we can feel this wholeness, not only at the largest scale, but in every detail: in the restaurants, in the sidewalks, in the houses, shops, markets, roads, parks, gardens and walls. Even in the balconies and ornaments."
Seek him out, for a different perspective on the world.
Christopher Alexander is to me the closest that any well known researcher has come to considering how that feeling of organicness exuded by the most attractive towns and cities may be closely related to Deterministic Chaos. He does not use such a term for it of course but it may be that his work can be re-assessed in its light. Indeed, I would suggest that, whilst not acknowledged in the literature on Deterministic Chaos, Alexander may well turn out to have been a very early researcher into this concept. Alexander has tried to produce urban form that is as organic in feeling as any of those other beautiful towns and cities seem that he admires and that seemed to have developed without apparent effort. How he does this has of course nothing to do with applying known techniques of economics, town planning, architecture or any other modern process of construction and design. For that reason his ideas remain curiosities; admired but not practised.
Christopher Alexander was born in England but has worked mostly in America. He is not well known outside of academia but is well respected within. Considered to be a maverick, he published, to some, weird ideas about how to do Architecture and Urban design. His writings were mainly in the 1960's and 70's. e.g.
"A City is Not a Tree"
"A Pattern Language" and the one most relevant here;
and more recently;
"A Theory FOr Urban Design"
Of course, attractive irregularity is nothing new in architecture or urban design and has its fashionable moments. There have been many exponents of the value of the incremental, the organic and the inherent qualities of the vernacular. However, Alexander is different as he deliberately tries to separate design from form.
* "This feeling of 'organicness', is not a vague feeling of relationship with biological forms. it is not an analogy. It is instead, an accurate vision of a specific structural quality which these old towns had ... and have. Namely: Each of the towns grew as a whole, under its own laws of wholeness ... and we can feel this wholeness, not only at the largest scale, but in every detail: in the restaurants, in the sidewalks, in the houses, shops, markets, roads, parks, gardens and walls. Even in the balconies and ornaments."
Seek him out, for a different perspective on the world.
