A New Theory of Urban Design

Christopher Alexander, Hajo Neis, Artemis Anninou Oxford University Press, 19/11/1987 – 251 páginas

The venerable cities of the past, such as Venice or Amsterdam, convey a feeling of wholeness, an organic unity that surfaces in every detail, large and small, in restaurants, shops, public gardens, even in balconies and ornaments. But this sense of wholeness is lacking in modern urban design, with architects absorbed in problems of individual structures, and city planners preoccupied with local ordinances, it is almost impossible to achieve.

In this groundbreaking volume, the newest in a highly-acclaimed series by the Center for Environmental Structure, architect and planner Christopher Alexander presents a new theory of urban design which attempts to recapture the process by which cities develop organically.

To discover the kinds of laws needed to create a growing whole in a city, Alexander proposes here a preliminary set of seven rules which embody the process at a practical level and which are consistent with the day-to-day demands of urban development.

He then puts these rules to the test, setting out with a number of his graduate students to simulate the urban redesign of a high-density part of San Francisco, initiating a project that encompassed some ninety different design problems, including warehouses, hotels, fishing piers, a music hall, and a public square. This extensive experiment is documented project by project, with detailed discussion of how each project satisfied the seven rules, accompanied by floorplans, elevations, street grids, axonometric diagrams and photographs of the scaled-down model which clearly illustrate the discussion.

A New Theory of Urban Design provides an entirely new theoretical framework for the discussion of urban problems, one that goes far to remedy the defects which cities have today.

“A new theory of urban design” – Introduction of the book

In this book we describe an experiment which we did in 1978. The experiment was extensive, and involved a large number of people, over a long period of time.

When it was finished we decided that we must write it up. It seemed too important to leave unpublished.

At the same time, it was very hard to describe exactly what we had achieved. We had a manuscript which described the experiment. But even the manuscript left it unclear just what we had achieved. During the last six years, we have come back to the manuscript from time to time, trying to decide how to describe the work we did in this experiment.

Finally, after considering many possible interpretations of what we had done, we realized that we had was, quite simply, a new theory of urban design. This isn’t something that we set out to create. And there is a danger that the title might seem pretentious – because what we have is very incomplete.

On the other hand, “A new theory of urban design” really does describe what we have, we have a formulation of an entirely new way of looking at urban design a formulation of an entirely new way of looking at urban design, together with a detailed experiment which shows, in part, what this new theory can do. The fact that the theory is – so far – still full of holes, and incomplete, doesn’t alter the fact that it is, in principle, an entirely new theory, and so, for this reason, we have let the title stand.

When we look at the most beautiful towns and cities of the past, we are always impressed by aWhen we look at the most beautiful towns and cities of the past, we are always impressed by a feeling that they are somehow organic.feeling that they are somehow organic.

This feeling of “organicness” is not a vague feeling of relationship with biological forms. It is not analogy. It is instead, an accurate vision of a specific structural qualityaccurate vision of a specific structural quality which these old towns had… and have. Namely: each of these 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.

This quality does not exist in towns being built today. And indeed, this quality could not exist, at present, because there isn’t any discipline which actively sets out to create it. Neither architecture, nor urban design, nor city planning, take the creation of this kind of wholeness as their task. So of course it doesn’t exist. It does not exist, because it is not being attempt.

There is no discipline that could create it, because there isn’t, really, any discipline which has yet tried to do it.

City planning definitely does not try to create wholeness. It is merely preoccupied with implementation of certain ordinances. Architecture is too much preoccupied with problems of individual buildings. And urban design has of dilettantism: as if the problem could be solved on a visual level, as a aesthetic matter. However, at least the phrase “urban design” does somehow conjure up the sense of the city as a complex thing which must be dealt with in three dimensions, not two.

We have therefore used the phrase urban design in the title of this book, since it seems to us that urban design, of all existing disciplines, is the one which comes closest to accepting responsibility for their city’s wholeness.

But we propose a discipline of urban design which is differently, entirely, from the one known But we propose a discipline of urban design which is differently, entirely, from the one known today, we believe the task of creating wholeness in the city can only be dealt with a process. It today, we believe the task of creating wholeness in the city can only be dealt with a process. It cannot be solved by design alone, but only when the process by which the city gets its form is cannot be solved by design alone, but only when the process by which the city gets its form is fundamentally changed.fundamentally changed.

Thus, in our view, it, it is the process above all which is responsible for wholenessis the process above all which is responsible for wholeness, not merely the form. If we create a suitable process there is some hope that the city might become whole once again. If we do not change the process, there is no hope at all.

This book is a first step in defining such a process.

Christopher Alexander is Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is the father of the Pattern Language movement in computer science, and A Pattern Language, a seminal work that was perhaps the first complete book ever written in hypertext fashion.

He has designed and built more than two hundred buildings on five continents: many of these buildings lay the ground work of a new form of architecture, which looks far into the future, yet has roots in ancient traditions. Much of his work has been based on inventions in technology, including, especially, inventions in concrete, shell design, and contracting procedures needed to attain a living architecture.

He was the founder of the Center for Environmental Structure in 1967, and remains President of that Company until today. In 2000, he founded PatternLanguage.com, and is Chairman of the Board. He has been a consultant to city, county, and national governments on every continent, has advised corporations, government agencies, and architects and planners throughout the world.

Alexander was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996, is a fellow of the Swedish Royal Society, has been the recipient of innumerable architectural prizes and honors including the gold medal for research of the American Institute of Architects, awarded in 1970.

He was born in Vienna, Austria in 1936. He was raised in England, and holds a Master's Degree in Mathematics and a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from Cambridge University, and a PhD in Architecture from Harvard University.

In 1958 he moved to the United States, and has lived in Berkeley, California from 1963 until the present.

... His grasp of the fundamental truths of traditional ways of building, and his understanding of his understanding of what gives life and beauty and true functionality to towns and buildingswhat gives life and beauty and true functionality to towns and buildings, is put forth in a context that sheds light…

... The venerable cities of the past, such as Venice or Amsterdam, convey a feeling of wholeness, an organic unity that surfaces in every detail, large and small, in restaurants, shops, public gardens, even in balconies and ornaments. But this sense of wholeness is lacking in modern urban design…

OVERVIEW

Here is acclaimed architect Christopher Alexander's four-volume masterwork: the result of 27 years of research and a lifetime of profoundly original thinking.

Alexander has advanced a new theory of architecture, matter, and organization, that has attracted thousands of readers and practical followers throughout the world. His grasp of the fundamental truths of traditional ways of building, and his understanding of what gives life andhis understanding of what gives life and beauty and true functionality to towns and buildingsbeauty and true functionality to towns and buildings, is put forth in a context that sheds light on the character of order in all phenomena. Taken even further, hundreds of examples are given to show how the theory has been put to use in his many projects around the world.

The four books of The Nature of Order redefine architecture for the 21st century as a field, as a profession, as practice and as social philosophy. Each of the books deals with one facet of the discipline. This worldview provides architecture with a new underpinning, describing procedures of planning, design, and building, as well as attitudes to style, to the shapes of buildings, and to the forms of urbanization and construction. Here is an entirely new way of thinking about the world. As one writer has expressed it, "The books provide the language for the construction and transition to a new kind of society, rooted in the nature of human beings."

The four books, each one an essay on the topic of living structure, are connected and interdependent. Each sheds light on one facet of living structure: first, the definition; second, the process of generating living structure; third, the practical vision of an architecture guided by the concept of living structure; and fourth, the cosmological underpinnings and implications brought into being by the idea of living structure.

The books offer a view of a human-centered universe, a view of order, in which the soul, or human feeling and the soul, play a central role. Here, experiments are not only conceivable in the abstract Cartesian mode, but a new class of experiments relying on human feeling as a form of measurement, show us definitively the foundation of all architecture as something which resides in human beings. Whether this "something," which is demonstrated and

discussed throughout the four books, is to be regarded as a new entity underlying matter, or what used to be called the "soul," is left for the reader to decide.

Taken as a whole the four books create a sweeping new conception of the nature of things which is both objective and structural (hence part of science) – and also personal (in that it shows how and why things have the power to touch the human heart). A step has been taken, through which these two domains – the domain of geometrical structure and the feeling it creates – kept separate during four centuries of scientific thought, have finally been united.

The four volumes can be read separately, independently, and in any order. However, it is together as a whole that they have their greatest impact. For each book explores comprehensively different aspects of the coherence of our universe, and brings us at last to being at one with it.

These concepts reach far beyond the field of architecture. Scholars and practitioners in many fields are finding the relevance of these ideas to their own areas of study and practice - physics, biology, philosophy, cosmology, anthropology, computer science, and religious studies, to name a few.

http://www.natureoforder.com/overview.htm

For a description of each of the four books, please use these links.

Book 1:The Phenomenon of Life

Book 3:A Vision of a Living World

Book 2:The Process of Creating Life

Book 4:The Luminous Ground