Christopher Alexander - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Christopher Alexander in 2. Christopher Wolfgang Alexander (born 4 October 1. Vienna, Austria). His theories about the nature of human- centered design have had notable impacts across many fields beyond architecture, including urban design, software, sociology and other fields. More recently he published the four- volume The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, about his newer theories of . He spent much of his childhood in Chichester and Oxford, England, where he began his education in the sciences. Alexander, particularly in his A New Theory of Urban Design (Alexander. Christopher Alexander; community design; environmental wholes. Books shelved as urban-design. A New Theory of Urban Design. A New Theory of Urban Design has 139 ratings and 7. Christopher Alexander made his name in the 70s andearly 80s as a challenging radical theorist and practitioner of urban design. Trivia About A New Theory of U. Christopher Alexander - a theory of incremental design. A New Theory of Urban Design (New York: Oxford University Press. Christopher Alexander, 'A New Way of Looking'. He moved from England to the United States in 1. Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to Berkeley, California in 1. Professor of Architecture, a position he would hold for almost 4. In 2. 00. 2, after his retirement, Alexander moved to Arundel, England, where he continued to write, teach and build. Alexander is married to Margaret Moore Alexander, and he has two daughters, Sophie and Lily, by his former wife Pamela. Education. In 1. 95. Trinity College, Cambridge University in chemistry and physics, and went on to read mathematics. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Architecture and a Master's degree in Mathematics. He took his doctorate at Harvard (the first Ph. D. During the same period he worked at MIT in transportation theory and computer science, and worked at Harvard in cognition and cognitive studies. Alexander was elected Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University 1. First Medal for Research by the American Institute of Architects, 1. Swedish Royal Academy, 1. Best Building in Japan award, 1. ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) Distinguished Professor Award, 1. 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. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. A New Theory Of Urban Design Christopher Alexander Pdf FilesAnd, 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. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1. The work originated from an observation that many medieval cities are attractive and harmonious. The authors said that this occurs because they were built to local regulations that required specific features, but freed the architect to adapt them to particular situations. The book provides rules and pictures, and leaves decisions to be taken from the precise environment of the project. It describes exact methods for constructing practical, safe and attractive designs at every scale, from entire regions, through cities, neighborhoods, gardens, buildings, rooms, built- in furniture, and fixtures down to the level of doorknobs. A notable value is that the architectural system consists only of classic patterns tested in the real world and reviewed by multiple architects for beauty and practicality. The book includes all needed surveying and structural calculations, and a novel simplified building system that copes with regional shortages of wood and steel, uses easily stored inexpensive materials, and produces long- lasting classic buildings with small amounts of materials, design and labor. It first has users prototype a structure on- site in temporary materials. Once accepted, these are finished by filling them with very- low- density concrete. It uses vaulted construction to build as high as three stories, permitting very high densities. This book's method was adopted by the University of Oregon, as described in The Oregon Experiment (1. It has also been adopted in part by some cities as a building code. The idea of a pattern language appears to apply to any complex engineering task, and has been applied to some of them. It has been especially influential in software engineering where patterns have been used to document collective knowledge in the field. A New Theory of Urban Design (1. An account of a design studio conducted with Berkeley students, it shows how convincing urban networks can be generated by requiring individual actors to respect only local rules, in relation to neighbours. A vastly undervalued part of the Alexander canon, A New Theory is important in understanding the generative processes which give rise to the shanty towns latterly championed by Stewart Brand. In it, he puts forth a new theory about the nature of space and describes how this theory influences thinking about architecture, building, planning, and the way in which we view the world in general. The mostly static patterns from A Pattern Language have been amended by more dynamic sequences, which describe how to work towards patterns (which can roughly be seen as the end result of sequences). Sequences, like patterns, promise to be tools of wider scope than building (just as his theory of space goes beyond architecture). The online publication . He also uses the project to connect with themes in his four- volume series. He contrasts his approach, (System A) with the construction processes endemic in the US and Japanese economies (System B). As Alexander describes it, System A is focused on enhancing the life/spirit of spaces within given constraints (land, budget, client needs, etc.) (drawings are sketches - decisions on placing buildings, materials used, finish and such are made in the field as construction proceeds, with adjustments as needed to meet overall budget); System B ignores, and tends to diminish or destroy that quality (architect responsible for drawings which the builder uses to build structures at the lowest possible cost). In the last few chapters he describes . Alexander's built work is characterized by a special quality (which he used to call . This quality is found in the most loved traditional and historic buildings and urban spaces, and is precisely what Alexander has tried to capture with his sophisticated mathematical design theories. Paradoxically, achieving this connective human quality has also moved his buildings away from the abstract imageability valued in contemporary architecture, and this is one reason why his buildings are under- appreciated at present. The daunting challenge for architects then, if such a thing is even possible to realise, would be to recreate in a more contemporary idiom both the richness and quality of experience suggested by the pattern language. For example, in the UK the developers Living Villages have been highly influenced by Alexander's work and used A Pattern Language as the basis for the design of The Wintles in Bishops Castle, Shropshire. Alexander's mathematical concepts and orientation were similar to Edsger Dijkstra's influential A Discipline of Programming. In it, Alexander describes deep ties between the nature of matter, human perception of the universe, and the geometries people construct in buildings, cities, and artifacts. He suggests a crucial link between traditional practices and beliefs, and recent scientific advances. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 1. 4 April 2. The Hillside Group, 2. Slate, 2. 00. 9: Do You See a Pattern?^ ab. Nikos Salingaros, . Communications H Kilov. Workshop on ODP for Enterprise Computing 2. Cite. Seer. X: 1. Peter Naur proposed in 1. Christopher Alexander's work. A Discipline of Programming (Facsimile ed.).
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