Weeknotes #6: Nature of Order — Book Two, Process of Creating Life
Notes on the Nature of Order Seminar series — part of the Building Beauty Post-Graduate Diploma in Architecture. A weekly running reflection for myself, for friends, and for those curious about Christopher Alexander’s work and its importance in shaping a healthy, living world.
12 November, 2020. It is the 6th seminar, in which:
- We read the first 173 pages of the Nature of Order, Book Two: The Process of Creating Life
- We read pages of 20–34 of Muni and Narendra’s volume, The Discovery of Architecture
- Alexander shifts from a static view of life to a process-oriented conception of wholeness
- We examine the critique of architecture implied in the idea that an architect must be able to orchestrate the process of building to create living structure
- I have a slow and trying time getting this week’s notes together due to unforeseen circumstances; it is a little disjointed
The Process of Creating Life
In the first 170 pages of Book Two, Alexander makes two major moves:
First, he focuses us now on process instead of a static analysis of the environment, along the way recasting the Fifteen Fundamental Properties as the 15 types of structural transformations that occur in a living process — the Principle of Unfolding Wholeness.
Second, he shows us a set of images, buildings, objects, and environments that are of the modern world, and yet, are alive (there are examples of living places created by real unfolding processes, not many of them from formal architectural practice.) This prompts seminar discussion and a thread of personal reflection on the role and responsibility of creating a humane world, and the critique of the modern establishment inherent in Alexander’s worldview.
Unfolding Wholeness, Criticality of Process
Life cannot be viewed or seen in the static. The 15 properties are an initial lens, but to create life, process is paramount. Step by step. Allowing the wholeness to unfold, the field of centers to get progressively stronger.
Yodan shows us a simulation of the formation of Amsterdam, and we discuss how this process has the character of unfolding as Alexander describes. Rather than a formal master plan, the actual process of how the city was formed — how water was pumped and moved to create land and canals — created the structure of the city, adapted each new step to the whole configuration that existed at that moment.
Alexander draws on the idea of the processes that create natural structures, and essentially says that we cannot create a lively and vibrant architecture in the world unless we can do it in a similar way. That is: at each step, adapting the larger whole to its surrounding context and to the new conditions created by the previous step. One other example that Alexander cites is the embryo of a frog as it develops. Again, no master planner has laid out all of the systems that need to exist for a frog to live; rather, the instructions and unfolding processes that occur in an embryo start with the whole and slowly differentiate it into existence.
We see the same force of differentiation at play in the development of a Salamander from embryo:
Imagine, what our buildings and our cities and streets and rooms could be, if we could develop them in this manner. The tension in approaching this type of process-first thinking is the necessity to take and reconcile a whole and coherent multi-level view: to understand the configuration of the whole and its latent centers at each level of scale. To know which decision is the right decision to make next, and then to choose and act on it.
It’s wonderfully liberating and daunting: do one thing right now that makes the whole more successful and more alive. And then do it again. At each moment, zoom out and take in the whole, zoom in to the most important latent center[s], doing whatever is possible to strengthen the area in focus through one of the fifteen transformations, bringing the larger configuration more alive…
Discovery of Architecture
It’s also not so easy to take this task on. Muni and Narendra present from a short selected reading in the Discovery of Architecture. While Alexander talks about process, here we are looking at some of the classifications and implications of built structure that drastically change our ability to control the process. Muni and Narendra discuss some key threads from the next section of DoA: Agency, Type of construction, Type of building, Scale of building, Universal awareness (the philosophical practice of building.)
Our techniques of construction and scale of building have advanced rapidly, while our agency to build (as individuals) and our shared and universal awareness of what building is has decreased. It creates a clear tension: smaller scale buildings in traditional environments, with less rigid modes of construction, enabled much more agency, and control over the process of construction.
The conditions in which we engage in the act of building are so deeply different from how we used to build. And it’s not that we ought to hold conservatively to traditional architecture, but that in traditional and vernacular buildings we find so much more freedom and life. The types of construction, the scale of buildings, the techniques and methods of construction lent themselves to the types of processes that could create more whole and living environments. Places where humans had agency and could feel free. Too often we mistake a desire for those qualities as a desire to return to the traditional — it’s an unfortunate artifact of our current systems of production that modern building contains so little freedom and life.
Reflecting on Alexander’s Architectural Perspective
When we look clearly at the principles Alexander puts forth and what he is trying to achieve—lively, healthy, whole structure in the world—we find that it is in fact a forward looking and progressive architecture: it puts people and life first.
It just so happens, as we see again and again, that modern processes of building are generally incapable of allowing true and successful unfolding to occur. It will require technological and procedural advancement to create well-adapted buildings in the modern world.
Are architects to blame? We take this topic on in seminar. The increasingly strong focus on process highlights an interesting distinction in Alexander’s critique of modern architectural output — a moral critique of [a class of] architects, a silent critique of architecture as an established institution, and an implicit critique of the world systems and values that are complicit in manufacturing dead and artificial structure across the face of the planet.
Values
On the one hand, there is the issue of values. This is the line of argument we see leveled at Eisenman in the famous debate: how could one want to create dissonance and discomfort in the world? How, in the state of modern society & the shape of our world, could we value anything but an attempt at a living architecture, a way to shape the world such that it can heal and nourish us, that it can allow the human spirit to connect, to swell, to deeply feel?
…the fact is that people who believe as you do are really fucking up the whole profession of architecture right now by propagating these beliefs. Excuse me, I’m sorry, but I feel very, very strongly about this. It’s all very well to say: “Look, harmony here, disharmony there, harmony here — it’s all fine.” But the fact is that we as architects are entrusted with the creation of that harmony in the world.
(excerpt from Debate with Peter Eisenman)
Alexander’s entire mission in the nature of order is to show us, based on the facts of human connection and the nature of order underlying our reality, that there really can be no other criteria or purpose for an architecture’s success, for value, than life.
Any architect who does not value the life of structure, who does not strive to create whole and healthy buildings meant to nourish and enliven their users, are derelict in their duty to humanity. (It is a powerful argument for those already convicted or inclined to agree, and not an easy appeal to those whose works have been created, or who have been educated, under a different value system…)
The Role of Architecture
But even for those in the Alexandrian orbit, or those who intuitively work to make beautiful architecture that somehow connects to the human soul with deep feeling, it is not particularly easy — perhaps no longer generally possible — to build and unfold living structure. And this is because the process, not any act of design, is paramount in creating living structure, and it is a rare architect who can really control and shape the reality of the process of building. We see this literal struggle in Alexander’s book, Battle: a well-developed set of industrial defences [cf. Chris Argyris’ idea of “organizational defences”] including sabotage and Yakuza threats continually work to wrest control of the process away from the architect.
And so — is the architect really to blame? This is the thread that Yodan brings us back to in seminar. If values are aligned, then the process, not the individual, is what a constructive critique targets. And we can examine the process for the role that modern architecture takes, and also the wide range of outside forces that co-evolve and shape architecture’s role in the larger process of constructing our built world.
An image, a drawing, handed over to highly specialized tradesworkers who are not in a position to adapt the evolution of the structure for conditions on the ground cannot become alive. It is doomed to remain sterile, driven by a process that values expedience and economic efficiency over human feeling. It’s not that drawings are bad, it’s just that, a design developed in drawing, and not developed with respect to the conditions on the ground, bakes in hundreds, thousands, even more mistakes at each step of the way. This way of working is enshrined in the traditional AIA contract structure, and is a reason Alexander focuses his attention and energy on the contract structures necessary to gain control of the building process in both Battle and The Mary Rose Museum.
What does it mean for our world when the people who design our buildings have no part in making them with their hands? And when the people and machines that build them have no agency or mechanism for feedback, no way to guide the unfolding of structure to correct the mistakes inevitably made in drawing and design?
The Maker
In the Alexandrian view of the world, the architect, entrusted with the creation of harmony in the structure of the world, must take on a role closer to that of a master builder, responsible for creating the process by which buildings unfold. The architect as a builder is deeply involved in decisions about how the thing is to be built, because in a living architecture, it is the process that dictates what can be adapted, when, and the quality of final form achieved in the building.
He can make this critique because his projects have all come from this place. As as I understand it, all CES projects in Berkeley worked under the same principle: we must be able to build the thing, so we can deeply and intimately understand the details and control how the thing unfolds, ensure the coherent character of the larger whole unfolds successfully throughout the life of the project.
But there’s something else that building provides: control, yes, but perhaps that’s not even so important, as the sensibility and care developed through the act of making. A deep and internalized attention to detail and understanding of the real constraints of a project, never present when it only exists as image.
People who make have a greater and more immediate sensibility for the real challenges that the process of making creates, a sharper sense for what ‘good’ is. Which stems from and leads into a dangerous and speculative territory of personal anecdote:
- The moment I tried to draw the geometric designs found in traditional geometric carpets, I could see more deeply, suddenly gained an immense appreciation for the complexity of the work that could not have been considered until an embodied attempt at creating similar geometric structure…
- A few years into learning to play the banjo, clawhammer style, I found a new depth of beauty and feeling in the songs I had previously enjoyed listening to: the best and most grounding of them resonated with the entirety of me, I could feel some small piece of the reality and reverence that must have been the performer’s inner state…
- 8 years in to Brazilian jiu-jitsu practice, with a slow and eventual knowledge of the stressors and limits and capabilities of the body, I have a depth of appreciation for feats of athletic coordination and grace that would have never before been possible: now I understand, with a striking and calming clarity, just how far removed my own capabilities are from those athletes, gymnasts, dancers, and fighters who we see perform with an effortless grace…
- And after a year as a design researcher observing tradework on large construction sites in America, trying to imagine how the hell these buildings came together, juxtaposing the felt reality of those buildings with the experience of towns and temples and inns in rural Japan, I began to see a glimpse of the enormity of the task of creating buildings, cities, and streets that are truly alive…
Alexander’s conception of a living process, of unfolding wholeness, comes the practice of building. From the perspective of a true maker. To what degree must one be a maker, must one have embodied or mentally enacted the process of building, to see it with the same sense of honor and reverence?
Closing
At the end of seminar, Nikos Salingaros gleefully provokes the group:
The people who created Amsterdam were just as immoral as the people who built Hudson Yards.
But Amsterdam is beautiful, and Hudson Yards is not. Why not?
And what do we do about it?
And that’s Week 6 in the books. See you next week.
Thanks to Building Beauty for creating the Nature of Order reading seminar, and keeping it a free and publicly accessible part of the program.
