The Idea of Architecture, The User As Inhabitant: Design through a Christopher Alexander Lens

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Wright Steenson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Christopher Alexander

A FULL HOUSE

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Jaap Pelgrim Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Christopher Alexander

A fictional child knows which buildings suit him.  He talks with an anthropologist, an historian, an architect, and a depth psychologist:  he wants to know why some buildings suit him while other buildings don’t.  The child’s own experience corresponds with the experience that led Christopher Alexander to undertake his research.  We can recognize this child in ourselves. 

THE DYNAMIC OF ADAPTIVE SHELTER: SEBUAH WADAH ADAPTIF-DINAMIS DI KAMPUNG NELAYAN, KAMAL MUARA

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1127
Author(s):  
Fransisca Handayani ◽  
Alvin Hadiwono
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Adaptive Dynamic ◽  
Community Activities ◽  
World Today ◽  
Christopher Alexander ◽  
The World ◽  
Natural Characteristics

"Dwelling" basically means living in a place. However, Dwelling itself has a broader meaning when we understand how humans decided to inhabit. In the book The Nature of Order, Christopher Alexander says "Dwelling is Living-Structure" which means to live is a life participating in a living-structure. This quote directly describes a relationship between nature and humans in the process of living. Seeing the conditions that exist in the world today, there are many aspects that can affect the way humans will live in the future. One of the problems that humans have to face is climate change which causes sea level rise. Realizing that humans must face these events and know that in reality, humans cannot be separated from their natural surroundings, "The Dynamic of Adaptive Shelter" was designed with the aim of wanting to unite aspects of habitation (especially nature and humans) as well as provide solutions for buildings that are adaptive to sea level rise. Located in Kamal Muara, North Jakarta, this project begins by studying the selected site, community activities, the shape of the buildings around the site, as well as the natural characteristics around the site, as a method that refers to a quote from Martin Heidegger's book about "the thing It-self". Referring to the results of the selected site, this project is complemented with programs that are suitable for the activities of the residents of the area and have been developed with systems which can adapt to the issue of sea level rise. Keywords:  Adaptive-Dynamic; Coastal; Dwelling; Fishermen ; Sea Level Rise Abstrak“Dwelling” atau Berhuni pada dasarnya memiliki arti hidup pada suatu tempat. Namun Dwelling sendiri memiliki arti yang lebih luas saat kita memahami awal mula manusia memutuskan untuk berhuni. Dalam buku The Nature of Order Christohper Alexander mengatakan “Dwelling is Living- Structure” yang berarti berhuni adalah hidup berpartisipasi dalam Struktur-kehidupan (Living- structure). Kutipan tersebut secara langsung menggambarkan sebuah keterkaitan antara alam dan manusia dalam menuju proses berhuni. Melihat kondisi yang ada didunia saat ini banyak aspek yang dapat mempengaruhi cara manusia berhuni dimasa depan. Salah satu permasalahan yang harus dihadapi manusia adalah perubahan iklim yang menyebabkan kenaikan permukaan air laut. Menyadari bahwa manusia harus menghadapi peristiwa tersebut dan mengetahuni bahwa pada dasarnya dalam proses berhuni manusia tidak terlepas dari alam sekitarnya, “Wadah Adaptif- Dinamis” dirancang dengan tujuan ingin mempersatukan aspek-aspek berhuni (khususnya alam dan manusia) dan juga memberikan solusi akan bangunan yang adaptif akan kenaikan permukaan air laut. Berlokasi di Kamal Muara, Jakarta Utara proyek ini diawali dengan mempelajari site terpilih, aktivitas masyarakat, bentuk bangunan sekitar tapak, dan juga karakteristik alam sekitar tapak, sebagaimana metode yang mengacu pada kutipan buku Martin Heidegger tentang “the thing It-self”. Mengacu pada hasil analisis tapak terpilih, proyek ini dilengkapi dengan program-program yang sesuai dengan aktifitas penduduk daerahnya dan telah dikembangkan dengan sistem-sistem yang mana dapat beradaptasi dengan kondisi alam sekitar dan menjawa isu akan kenaikan permukaan air laut.

A City is Not a Semilattice Either

1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
F Harary ◽  
J Rockey
Keyword(s):  
Graphical Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Natural Form ◽  
Mathematical Definition ◽  
Christopher Alexander ◽  
Structural Configurations ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

In 1965 Christopher Alexander took the original step of analysing the city in graph theoretical terms and concluded that its historical or natural form is a semilattice and that urban planners of the future should adhere to this model. The idea was well received in architectural circles and has passed without serious challenge. In this paper, the value of such analysis is once again emphasized, although some of Alexander's arguments and his conclusions are refuted. Beginning with an exposition of the relationship between the graph theoretical concept of a tree, and the representation of a tree by a family of sets, we present a mathematical definition of a semilattice and discuss the ‘points’ and ‘lines’ of a graph in terms of a city, concluding that it is neither a tree nor a semilattice. This clears the ground for future graphical analysis. It seems that even general structural configurations, such as graphs or digraphs with certain specified properties, will fail to characterize a city, whose complexity, at this stage, may well continue to be understood more readily through negative rather than positive descriptions.

Models of Self-Replicators

2010 ◽  
pp. 282-314
Author(s):  
Eleonora Bilotta ◽  
Pietro Pantano
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
External World ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Christopher Alexander ◽  
On Line ◽  
Instinctive Behavior ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
The Way

Structural models and patterns are vitally important for human beings. From birth, we base our emotional and cognitive representations of the external world on species-specific signals (the human face) and exploit these signals to structure our instinctive behavior. The creation of cognitive patterns to represent the world lies at the very heart of human cognition. It is this process that underlies our efficient use of signs, our ability to communicate with natural languages and to build cognitive artifacts, the way we organize the external world, and the way we organize external events in our memories and our flow of consciousness. Patterns are sometimes called schemas, or models, and discussed in terms of a gestalt (Piaget, 1960; 1970; Koelher, 1974). In the middle ages a pattern meant “the.original.proposed.to.imitation;.the. archetype;.that.which.is.to.be.copied;.an.exemplar” (from the On Line Etymology Dictionary). Modern use dates back to the XVIII century. In 1977 Christopher Alexander introduced a new way of using the term in architecture. For Alexander, a pattern was a model used to encode and organize existing knowledge, avoiding the need to reinvent the knowledge every time it was needed. For Alexander a pattern was “a three part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution” (Alexander et al., 1977).

scholarly journals Living Structure Down to Earth and Up to Heaven: Christopher Alexander

Urban Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Physical Phenomenon ◽  
Scaling Law ◽  
Mathematical Concept ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
Christopher Alexander ◽  
The World ◽  
Structural Nature ◽  
Small Things

Discovered by Christopher Alexander, living structure is a physical phenomenon, through which the quality of the built environment or artifacts can be judged objectively. It has two distinguishing properties just like a tree: “Far more small things than large ones” across all scales from the smallest to the largest, and “more or less similar things” on each scale. As a physical phenomenon, and mathematical concept, living structure is essentially empirical, discovered and developed from miniscule observation in nature- and human-made things, and it affects our daily lives in some practical ways, such as where to put a table or a flower vase in a room, helping us to make beautiful things and environments. Living structure is not only empirical, but also philosophical and visionary, enabling us to see the world and space in more meaningful ways. This paper is intended to defend living structure as a physical phenomenon, and a mathematical concept, clarifying some common questions and misgivings surrounding Alexander’s design thoughts, such as the objective or structural nature of beauty, building styles advocated by Alexander, and mysterious nature of his concepts. For this purpose, we first illustrate living structure—essentially organized complexity, as advocated by the late Jane Jacobs (1916–2006)—that is governed by two fundamental laws (scaling law and Tobler’s law), and generated in some step by step fashion by two design principles (differentiation and adaptation) through the 15 structural properties. We then verify why living structure is primarily empirical, drawing evidence from Alexander’s own work, as well as our case studies applied to the Earth’s surface including cities, streets, and buildings, and two logos. Before reaching conclusions, we concentrate on the most mysterious part of Alexander’s work—the luminous ground or the hypothesized “I”—as a substance that pervasively exists everywhere, in space and matter including our bodies, in order to make better sense of living structure in our minds.

scholarly journals A Search for Beauty/A Struggle with Complexity: Christopher Alexander

Urban Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gabriel ◽  
Jenny Quillien
Keyword(s):  
Modern World ◽  
Constant Return ◽  
Christopher Alexander ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Village ◽  
Work Done

Beauty. Christopher Alexander’s prolific journey in building, writing, and teaching was fueled by a relentless search for Beauty and its meaning. While all around him the world was intent on figuring out how to simplify, Alexander came to embrace complexity as the only path to his goal. The Beauty and life of that which he encountered and appreciated—an Indian village, a city, a subway network, an old Turkish carpet, or a campus—lay in its well-ordered complexity. As a designer and maker he found that simplicity came from choosing—at every step—the simplest way to add the necessary complexity. The failure of so much of our modern world, in Alexander’s eyes, was oversimplification, wantonly bulldozing context, misunderstanding the relationships of part and whole, ignoring the required role of time in the shaping of shapes, and ultimately dismissing, like Esau, our birthright of Value in favor of a lentil pottage of mere Fact. Ever elusive, Beauty demands of her suitors a constant return of attention to see what might be newly revealed, and Alexander duly returned again and again in pursuit of the mystery. In this essay—essentially biographical and descriptive of one man’s endeavors—we examine the full arc of his work from dissertation to most recent memoir. We don’t shy away from his failures, and we don’t simplify his journey. We leave work done by other scholars for another day. We reach no conclusion, rather, we invite readers to reflect on what Alexander’s lifelong effort suggests to them about their own path, their own sense of aesthetics and order, innate cognitive shortfalls, and professional blind alleys.

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