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The Process of Creating Life: Nature of Order, Book 2: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (The Nature of Order)(Flexible) Hardcover – August 30, 2002

by Christopher Alexander (Author)

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Christopher Alexander's series of ground-breaking books including A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building have pointed to fundamental truths of the way we build, revealing what gives life and beauty and true functionality to our buildings and towns. Now, in The Nature of Order, Alexander explores the properties of life itself, highlighting a set of well-defined structures present in all order and in all life from micro-organisms and mountain ranges to good houses and vibrant communities.

Scientifically, The Process of Creating Life is perhaps the most exciting of the four books. How do beautiful creations come into being? Nature can make an infinite number of human faces, each one unique, each one beautiful. The same is true for daffodils, streams, and stars. But man-made creations especially the towns and buildings of the 20th century have only occasionally been really good, more often mediocre, and in the last 50 years have most often been deadly. What is the reason for the difference? It hinges on the deep nature of the processes we use. Merely understanding the geometry of beautiful and living form (the topic of Book 1) is not enough to help us create such a living geometry.

In the 20th century our society was locked into deadly processes which created our current built environment, process that most people were not really aware of and did not question. Despite their best efforts and intentions, architects and planners working within these processes could not achieve a living built environment. Life and beauty in the built world arise only from processes which allow living structure to unfold. The secret lies in knowing, as nature does, what must happen in what order: what sequence of events allows a living form to unfold successfully?

Here, in Book 2, Alexander puts forward a fully developed theory of living process. He defines conditions for a process to be living: that is, capable of generating living structure. He shows how such processes work, and how they may be created. At the core of the new theory is the theory of structure-preserving transformations. This concept, new in scientific thinking, is based on the concept of wholeness defined in Book 1: A structure-preserving transformation is one which preserves, extends, and enhances the wholeness of a system.

Structure-preserving transformations provide the means for any step-by-step process social, biological, architectural, or technical to reach configurations which are most profound, most capable of supporting life. The process of creation whether in the formation of a single object, or in the piece-meal aggregation of a town requires this sort of generative process, a careful and deliberate sequence of steps in which each step creates the context for the next one, and each next wholeness is derived from the previous wholeness. Our billions of beautiful and unique human faces come from one class of sequences.

Driven by these sequences, an initial cell differentiates again and again until beautiful and complex human beings emerge, infinitely various, always harmonious. Making changes in society, so that streets, buildings, rooms, gardens, and towns may be generated by hundreds of such sequences requires massive transformations. This book is the first blueprint of those transformations.

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 though from 1600 to 2000, have finally been united.

The Nature of Order constitutes the backbone of Building Beauty: Ecologic Design Construction Process, an initiative aimed at radically reforming architecture education, with the emphasis of making as a way to access a transformative vision of the world. The 15 fundamental properties of life guide our work and have given us much more than a set of solutions. The Nature of Order has given us the framework in which we can search and build up our own solutions.

In order to be authentically sustainable, buildings and places have to be cared for and loved over generations. Beautiful buildings and places are more likely to be loved, and they become more beautiful, and loved, through the attention given to them over time. Beauty is therefore, not a luxury, or an option, it includes and transcends technological innovation, and is a necessary requirement for a truly sustainable culture.

Table of Contents

• PART ONE: Structure-Preserving Transformations
• 1. The Principle of Unfolding Wholeness.
• 2. Structure-Preserving Transformations.
• 3. Structure-Preserving Transformations in Traditional Society.
• 4. Structure-Destroying Transformations in Modern Society.
• INTERLUDE
• 5. Living Process in the Modern Era: Twentieth-century Cases Where Living Process did Occur.
• PART TWO: Living Processes
• 6. Generated Structures.
• 7. A Fundamental Differentiating Process.
• 8. Step-by-Step Adaptation.
• 9. Always Helping to Enhance the Whole.
• 10. Always Making Centers.
• 11. The Sequence of Unfolding.
• 12. Every Part Unique.
• 13. Patterns: Rules for Making Centers.
• 14. Deep Feeling.
• 15. Emerging of Formal Geometry.
• 16. Form Language.
• 17. Simplicity.
• PART THREE: A New Paradigm for Process in Society
• 18. The Character of Process in Society.
• 19. Massive Process Difficulties.
• 20. The Spread of Living Processes Throughout Society.
• 21. The Architect in the Third Millennium.
• APPENDIX: An Example of a Living Process: Building a House.

Editorial Reviews

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...Alexander's approach presents a fundamental challenge to us and our style-obsessed age. It suggests that beautiful form can come about only through a process that is meaningful to people...""- Thomas Fisher, Former Editor, Progressive Architecture;

""Alexander's genetic scripts are likely to... play a role so fundamental in the future,that their widespread use cannot even be imagined today. This will change the world as effectively as the advent of printing changed the world.""- Doug Carlston, Co-founder, Broderbund Software, Founder & CEO, icPlanet.com;

""...I can think of no one, certainly no one in the last thirty or so years, who has produced a deeper, more profoundly meaningful, visionary and lasting body of work that both unifies and transcends science and spirituality, than Christopher Alexander.""- Andy Ilachinsky, Theoretical Physicist;

""Five hundred years is a long time, and I don't expect that many of the people I interview will be known in the year 2500. Alexander may be an exception.""- David Creelman, Author, Interviewer, and Editor, HR Magazine""...I believe Alexander is likely to be remembered most of all, in the end, for having produced the first credible proof of the existence of God...""- Eric Buck, Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky - -

About the Author

Christopher Alexander is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, architect, builder, and author of many books and technical papers. He is the winner of the first medal for research ever awarded by the American Institute of Architects, and after 40 years of teaching is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Center for Environmental Structure
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 30, 2002
Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 631 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0972652922
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0972652926
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.65 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.99 x 1.2 x 10.98 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #505,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #98 in Architectural Criticism
- #160 in Landscape Architecture (Books)
- #202 in Urban & Land Use Planning (Books)

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For nearly 50+ years Christopher Alexander has challenged the architectural establishment, sometimes uncomfortably, to pay more attention to the human beings at the center of design. To do so he has combined top-flight scientific training, award-winning architectural research, patient observation and testing throughout his building projects, and a radical but profoundly influential set of ideas that have extended far beyond the realm of architecture.

In the process Alexander has authored a series of groundbreaking works, including A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction and The Timeless Way of Building. His most recent publication continues that ground-breaking work, the four-volume book set, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, incorporates more than 30 years of research, study, teaching and building. It was described by Laura Miller of the New York Times “the kind of book every serious reader should wrestle with once in a while: [a] fat, challenging, grandiose tract that encourages you to take apart the way you think and put it back together again.”

Alexander was born in Vienna, Austria and raised in Oxford and Chichester, England. He was awarded the top open scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1954, in chemistry and physics, and went on to read mathematics at Cambridge. He took his doctorate in architecture at Harvard (the first Ph.D. in architecture ever awarded at Harvard), and was elected to the society of Fellows at Harvard University in 1961. During the same period he worked at MIT in transportation theory and in computer science, and at Harvard in cognitive science. His pioneering ideas from that time were known to be highly influential in those fields.

Alexander became Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley in 1963, and taught there continuously for 38 years, becoming Professor Emeritus in 2001. He founded the Center for Environmental Structure in 1967, published hundreds of papers and several dozen books, and built more than 200 buildings around the world.

Alexander is widely recognized as the father of the pattern language movement in computer science, which has led to important innovations such as Wiki, and new kinds of Object-Oriented Programming. He is the recipient of the first medal for research ever given by the American Institute of Architects, and he has been honoured repeatedly for his buildings in many parts of the world. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 for his contributions to architecture, including his groundbreaking work on how the built environment affects the lives of people.

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Hunter Hastings
From philosophy to value
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I am a latecomer to Christopher Alexander, and a total convert. My field is economics and value creation. When I read “The Nature Of Order”, I think “The Nature Of Value”. The path that Alexander follows from architecture to philosophy and then from philosophy to building is the same path economists follow from philosophy to value, and from value to economics. Reading Alexander is very soothing and grounding.

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Taylor Ellwood
Life design in architecture
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2022
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
This is another amazing book in this series that explores how architectural design can be used to create a living space. What I found most interesting was how the author wove in multiple disciplines and schools of thought into this work. I read this book over the course of a couple years because it really requires some digestion and perspective, especially if you’re not an architect, which I am now. I nonetheless find the insights are relevant to my own practices and am thankful for this book.

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Dan Novak
pointing the way
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2019
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
A work of magisterial magnificence, laying the conceptual and architectural foundations for a 21st century that has found its bearings...

- Dan Novak

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Nikos A. Salingaros
A Landmark Book
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2003
Format: Hardcover
Review by Nikos A. Salingaros.
PART A. REVIEW FOR ARCHITECTS.
Contemporary architecture is increasingly grounded in science and mathematics. Architectural discourse has shifted radically from the sometimes disorienting Derridean deconstruction, to engaging scientific terms such as fractals, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and evolving systems. That's where the architectural action is -- at least for cutting-edge architects and thinkers -- and every practicing architect and student needs to become conversant with these terms and know what they mean. Unfortunately, the vast majority of architecture faculty are unprepared to explain them to students, not having had a scientific education themselves.
Here is an architecture book by an architect/scientist, just in time to help architects in the new millennium. Alexander discusses many of the scientific terms arising in cutting-edge architecture, and explains them to those who don't have scientific training or advanced mathematical knowledge. We find discussions of the evolution of forms; the importance of process in design; iteration; genetic algorithms; sequences of transformations; different levels of scale (i.e. fractals); etc. They are explained here by an architect who is also a scientist, because he wants to change the way architects think and build. Alexander is not merely popularizing other scientists' results and making them accessible to architects: he is in fact presenting new and original scientific work that ties many of these concepts together in a way that will be useful to architects.
Alexander spends many of the 636 pages of this book talking about PROCESS. He describes the sequence of steps leading to a built form, and how each step depends on all previous steps. Alexander distinguishes between good and bad sequences of steps, where the latter are marked by some disruptive discontinuity, and which, as a result, cannot lead to coherent form. It follows that the method of design taught in architecture schools for decades -- "conceive an interesting image in your mind, then impose it onto the environment" -- is wrong. ALEXANDER ARGUES THAT COHERENCE CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED EXCEPT BY THE SEQUENCE METHOD. Don't forget this is the Alexander who wrote "A Pattern Language", an equally revolutionary book. Therefore, every architect, especially those whose own design methodology clashes with Alexander's ideas, is well advised to become aware of what he says instead of simply dismissing him offhand.
The present volume is the second of four. I believe that, with some effort, it can be read independently from the first volume (not that I am suggesting this, but merely to encourage people to plunge into Volume 2 immediately). This is the one of the four volumes that is most likely to appeal to those who are already interested in and actively working in applying the New Sciences to architecture. I therefore urge innovative architects and architecture students to read this book. In my opinion, it should enlighten everyone's conception of the design process, and help to initiate a reexamination in one's mind of how new ideas for structures and buildings are generated. This book might well influence in a major way how buildings of the future are designed and built, hence how they will look. No-one who thinks deeply and conscientiously about design today should pass it by.
PART B. REVIEW FOR SCIENTISTS.
Alexander is famous in the architectural world, yet he trained in Physics and Mathematics in Cambridge, and was part of the group of scientists who developed systems theory along with Herbert Simon. He has been investigating the interaction between science and architecture all of his life, and the four-volume work "The Nature of Order" contains the results of his researches. Volume 2, in particular, contains the most science. It may surprise many professional scientists that Alexander has managed to conceive of new results by applying architecture to science, surely a development that is as unexpected as it is novel.
This book contains interesting scientific insights. For example, already by page 42, Alexander proposes a radical rethinking of the standard Neo-Darwinian synthesis. He suggests that, based on a broad range of examples, evolving form in any context is driven just as much by intrinsic long-range forces having to do with geometrical configurations, as by the usual random Darwinian selection process. He thus takes suggestions by Stuart Kauffman and Brian Goodwin and develops them into a proto-theory of morphogenesis. It is not complete, and Alexander knows that, but I believe that the evolutionary biology community will get very excited about this idea. He supports his arguments by using phenomenology, and providing a theoretical basis wherever he can. I believe we are going to see a lot of activity, as ideas from this book inspire other authors to try to prove or disprove them. All of that is healthy, and will eventually establish Alexander as a contributor to scientific thinking.
My own favorite part is the discussion of how generative sequences break symmetry: instead of producing identical components (i.e., windows, houses, office blocks, apartments), the same generative process gives rise to similar types of complex objects that are individualized and thus distinct. This helps us to understand natural complexity, where adaptation does indeed produce diversity within the same typology. The underlying problem is how to correlate the different scales in a complex system, hitherto unsolved in any discipline. Therefore, this discussion is of great interest to computer scientists, who are grappling with modularization in software so as to handle the increasing complexity of code.
I am a scientist, and I have profited from Alexander's efforts to understand very deep problems in complexity. The price to pay is having to read through all the architectural examples (which may or may not be of interest to many scientists). Alexander is like a moth circling around fascinating problems. Even when he does not give a solution, his circling in fact identifies the problem, and by approaching it, he gives nontrivial hints towards its eventual solution. And, don't forget that it's the architectural stuff that's going to inspire architects to build a more beautiful world for the rest of us.

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J. Haklik
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2015
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Gift for environmentalist

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Robb
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2015
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Magnificent

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Joyce
An exceptional man
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2012
Format: Hardcover
I discovered Christopher Alexander around 1986 when I read A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building. A Pattern Language was our guide in designing our strawbale house, built in 1997. I fell in love with him then, and these books simply increased my profound admiration for him and joy in his work.

Christopher Alexander is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an architect, a builder, and the author of many books and technical papers. He is the winner of the first medal for research ever awarded by the American Institute of Architects, and after 40 years of teaching is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He trained in Physics and Mathematics at Cambridge and was part of the group of scientists who developed systems theory along with Herbert Simon. He has been investigating the interaction between science and architecture all of his life, and this beautiful four-volume work contains the results of his research.

Although many of Alexander's ideas are subtle and require thoughtful reflection, the basic thesis of these four volumes might be stated: everything that exists contains "life," and the degree to which "life" is manifest in any particular can be "objectively" determined by probing one's "subjective" world.

Book Two "invites us to reconsider the role and importance of process and how it is living or not. . . The lifeless buildings and environments which have become common in modern society are not merely dead, non-living structures. They are what they are precisely because of the social processes by which they have been conceived, designed, built, and paid for." When Alexander contracts to build something, he and his associates meet constantly with those who will use the structure in what he calls generative process, making step by step adaptations so that the results unfold. He says that it is "possible to create a highly general generative sequence . . . definable and predictable in the steps that must be followed. . . Just so, a single generative sequence for houses can generate a million unique houses, each one highly successful in meeting the special needs of special individuals and families: and each one well adapted to the particular site where it occurs, thus - at least in part - healing the land." By "feeling" he means adherence to the whole. Not a touchy-feeling thing, but serious connection with the whole which results in a wholesome feeling in the person. He notes that a feeling-guided process was typical in most human societies in Earth's history, which should give us pause in dismissing it too quickly. He sees what he calls a feeling-based process as necessary to produce "living" structure and he would have future society carried by this kind of nourishing, fun, effective process.

Christopher Alexander's tireless work, his brilliance, his humility, his humanity give me deep hope in a time when it is so easy to lose heart. These are books to be read slowly, savored. One reviewer suggested that this is one of the few works to be remembered 500 years hence. I suggest that it is one of the works to be read and absorbed now in order for there to be a 500 years hence for us.

I have reviewed Books One, Three, and Four at their respective sites.

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JKN
The author has a unique take on the nature of design.
Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2019
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
What a refreshing take on the nature of design. I could figure what the author is trying to get at conceptually. But I think the text acts like a mental exploration for him to resolve what he is trying to state. It's like he doesn't quite know how to explain what his idea is, so the presentation to a reader is not clear.

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The Process of Creating Life: Nature of Order, Book 2: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (The Nature of Order)(Flexible) Hardcover – August 30, 2002

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