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Notes on the Synthesis of Form
“These notes are about the process of the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function.” This book, opening with these words, presents an entirely new theory of the process of design.
In the first part of the book, Christopher Alexander discusses the process by which a form is adapted to the context of human needs and demands that has called it into being. He shows that such an adaptive process will be successful only if it proceeds piecemeal instead of all at once. It is for this reason that forms from traditional un-self-conscious cultures, molded not by designers but by the slow pattern of changes within tradition, are so beautifully organized and adapted. When the designer, in our own self-conscious culture, is called on to create a form that is adapted to its context he is unsuccessful, because the preconceived categories out of which he builds his picture of the problem do not correspond to the inherent components of the problem, and therefore lead only to the arbitrariness, willfulness, and lack of understanding which plague the design of modern buildings and modern cities.
In the second part, Mr. Alexander presents a method by which the designer may bring his full creative imagination into play, and yet avoid the traps of irrelevant preconception. He shows that, whenever a problem is stated, it is possible to ignore existing concepts and to create new concepts, out of the structure of the problem itself, which do correspond correctly to what he calls the subsystems of the adaptive process. By treating each of these subsystems as a separate subproblem, the designer can translate the new concepts into form. The form, because of the process, will be well-adapted to its context, non-arbitrary, and correct.
The mathematics underlying this method, based mainly on set theory, is fully developed in a long appendix. Another appendix demonstrates the application of the method to the design of an Indian village.
In the first part of the book, Christopher Alexander discusses the process by which a form is adapted to the context of human needs and demands that has called it into being. He shows that such an adaptive process will be successful only if it proceeds piecemeal instead of all at once. It is for this reason that forms from traditional un-self-conscious cultures, molded not by designers but by the slow pattern of changes within tradition, are so beautifully organized and adapted. When the designer, in our own self-conscious culture, is called on to create a form that is adapted to its context he is unsuccessful, because the preconceived categories out of which he builds his picture of the problem do not correspond to the inherent components of the problem, and therefore lead only to the arbitrariness, willfulness, and lack of understanding which plague the design of modern buildings and modern cities.
In the second part, Mr. Alexander presents a method by which the designer may bring his full creative imagination into play, and yet avoid the traps of irrelevant preconception. He shows that, whenever a problem is stated, it is possible to ignore existing concepts and to create new concepts, out of the structure of the problem itself, which do correspond correctly to what he calls the subsystems of the adaptive process. By treating each of these subsystems as a separate subproblem, the designer can translate the new concepts into form. The form, because of the process, will be well-adapted to its context, non-arbitrary, and correct.
The mathematics underlying this method, based mainly on set theory, is fully developed in a long appendix. Another appendix demonstrates the application of the method to the design of an Indian village.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Christopher W. Alexander
26 books386 followersChristopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist. He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature of human-centered design have affected fields beyond architecture, including urban design, software, and sociology. Alexander designed and personally built over 100 buildings, both as an architect and a general contractor.
In software, Alexander is regarded as the father of the pattern language movement. The first wiki—the technology behind Wikipedia—led directly from Alexander's work, according to its creator, Ward Cunningham. Alexander's work has also influenced the development of agile software development.
In architecture, Alexander's work is used by a number of different contemporary architectural communities of practice, including the New Urbanist movement, to help people to reclaim control over their own built environment. However, Alexander was controversial among some mainstream architects and critics, in part because his work was often harshly critical of much of contemporary architectural theory and practice.
In software, Alexander is regarded as the father of the pattern language movement. The first wiki—the technology behind Wikipedia—led directly from Alexander's work, according to its creator, Ward Cunningham. Alexander's work has also influenced the development of agile software development.
In architecture, Alexander's work is used by a number of different contemporary architectural communities of practice, including the New Urbanist movement, to help people to reclaim control over their own built environment. However, Alexander was controversial among some mainstream architects and critics, in part because his work was often harshly critical of much of contemporary architectural theory and practice.
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October 8, 2007
'With the invention of a teachable discipline called architecture, the old process of making form was adulterated and its chances of success destroyed.'
Such a potent work. His boldest argument is that the transformation of craftsmen, impersonal agents of traditional form, into self-conscious artist-architects with pretensions to individuality and original form-making is a sure sign of cultural decadence. He says that a culture's exaltation of the artist as solitary genius is paradoxically the event which signals that the culture doesn't really feel an organic need for art anymore. I wholeheartedly agree, and see a parallel in poetry, music and painting: all the Promethean bullshit of Romanticism, that mythos of outsiderdom, is just a symptom of a larger rejection of art; a truly healthy culture organically integrates art into its common life--in a healthy culture the stock role of the artist isn't the Disaffected Outsider, he or she is a mage, minstrel, storyteller, builder or decorator, someone vitally important to the actions that structure life. The fact that we have a detachable category of recreation called "The Arts" means that those arts really aren't necessary to our lives.
Hulme's old point that the difference between "Classicism" and "Romanticism" is a belief in original sin remains pithy, salient. Our belief in the degree of human frailty determines our belief in the degree of creative capacity. Alexander starkly states that the average designer, on their own, is simply not up to the momentous project our culture, infected with a belief in the artist-as-solitary genius, demands: that of inventing new forms, of creating ex nihilo. Only the accumulated momentum of tradition can help creators in any field cope with the complex problem of creating form; we have to accept that "creation" usually means "inspired variation." I feel the same way about free verse in poetry: it is ironic that an absence of metrical rules makes people more confident that they too can write poetry, because it shouldn't. The requirement that the metrical structure of each poem be wholly new is a forbidding one. The pure ideal represented by free verse is perhaps beyond most of us; as one of Debussy's conservatory instructors told him: "You're breaking all the rules, so you'd better have enough genius to invent your own."
Such a potent work. His boldest argument is that the transformation of craftsmen, impersonal agents of traditional form, into self-conscious artist-architects with pretensions to individuality and original form-making is a sure sign of cultural decadence. He says that a culture's exaltation of the artist as solitary genius is paradoxically the event which signals that the culture doesn't really feel an organic need for art anymore. I wholeheartedly agree, and see a parallel in poetry, music and painting: all the Promethean bullshit of Romanticism, that mythos of outsiderdom, is just a symptom of a larger rejection of art; a truly healthy culture organically integrates art into its common life--in a healthy culture the stock role of the artist isn't the Disaffected Outsider, he or she is a mage, minstrel, storyteller, builder or decorator, someone vitally important to the actions that structure life. The fact that we have a detachable category of recreation called "The Arts" means that those arts really aren't necessary to our lives.
Hulme's old point that the difference between "Classicism" and "Romanticism" is a belief in original sin remains pithy, salient. Our belief in the degree of human frailty determines our belief in the degree of creative capacity. Alexander starkly states that the average designer, on their own, is simply not up to the momentous project our culture, infected with a belief in the artist-as-solitary genius, demands: that of inventing new forms, of creating ex nihilo. Only the accumulated momentum of tradition can help creators in any field cope with the complex problem of creating form; we have to accept that "creation" usually means "inspired variation." I feel the same way about free verse in poetry: it is ironic that an absence of metrical rules makes people more confident that they too can write poetry, because it shouldn't. The requirement that the metrical structure of each poem be wholly new is a forbidding one. The pure ideal represented by free verse is perhaps beyond most of us; as one of Debussy's conservatory instructors told him: "You're breaking all the rules, so you'd better have enough genius to invent your own."
November 5, 2009
In this book, Christopher Alexander examines the problem of design at an elemental level. The act of designing, in this study, is the same whether you are designing a teakettle or a house or a village. He breaks it down to first principles and presents basic definitions of terms like "form", "context", and "ensemble." It can seem a little abstract and academic, but he leavens the discussion with enough real world examples to keep your eyes from crossing.
He also presents an argument that design is not the creation of the ideal form, but rather the systematic eradication of "misfit;" that is, something about a form that does not fit its context. The handle on the tool is too small, or the entryway is too dark. He leaves misfit as a 'primitive undefined concept,' and observes there are precedents for this in law, medicine, psychiatry, and other disciplines. I've never seen good design defined in this way but it's an interesting way to think about it.
He also presents a way to systematize design work and to solve design problems mathematically, in a technique based on set theory. My eyes definitely started to cross here, but the basics of the technique are sound. You list all of a design problem's requirements, group the related requirements, design subsystems around the related requirements, and then bring all the subsystems together. I'll have to read more closely to get the gist of the math, but since his example is the design of a village in India, I should be able to apply the same system to my little websites.
He also presents an argument that design is not the creation of the ideal form, but rather the systematic eradication of "misfit;" that is, something about a form that does not fit its context. The handle on the tool is too small, or the entryway is too dark. He leaves misfit as a 'primitive undefined concept,' and observes there are precedents for this in law, medicine, psychiatry, and other disciplines. I've never seen good design defined in this way but it's an interesting way to think about it.
He also presents a way to systematize design work and to solve design problems mathematically, in a technique based on set theory. My eyes definitely started to cross here, but the basics of the technique are sound. You list all of a design problem's requirements, group the related requirements, design subsystems around the related requirements, and then bring all the subsystems together. I'll have to read more closely to get the gist of the math, but since his example is the design of a village in India, I should be able to apply the same system to my little websites.
January 3, 2017
this is a gem - a formal approach to design that i would venture is best read in a mathematical context - e.g. where he introduces set theory and glosses over concepts, its enriching to unpack what goes unsaid. sigma algebras! graphical models!
apparently this was required reading for CS programs in the 70s and I can see why, because of its descriptions of modularity and encapsulation. anyway its pretty wonderful!
apparently this was required reading for CS programs in the 70s and I can see why, because of its descriptions of modularity and encapsulation. anyway its pretty wonderful!
January 28, 2024
This book shaped my understanding of the problem of design at a fundamental level.
February 20, 2018
The perennial taunt for those of us with our heads in the clouds is to stick our feet on the icky muddy gritty slimy dirty ground and walk, so that we might actually get somewhere, but whenever exposed to the actual process of walking, we recoil and retreat. Thus I must commend Christopher Alexander, who at time of writing was only a couple years older than yours truly is now, for supplying a worked example at the end of this book. As expected, it was as torturous as the underlying theory was brilliant.
The second step, per example, is to enumerate all potential inter-component interactions:
Alexander himself seems to have recognized as much. In the preface to my edition (published ten years after the first), he writes:
Favorite quotes
“[N]o one shape can any more be a consequence of the use of logic than any other, and it is nonsense to blame rigid physical form on the rigidity of logic.” [p.7]
“Wherever an instance of misfit occurs in an ensemble, we are able to point specifically at what fails and to describe it. It seems as though in practice the concept of good fit, describing only the absence of such failures and hence leaving us nothing concrete to refer to in explanation, can only be explained indirectly; it is, in practice, as it were, the disjunction of all possible misfits.” [p.23-24]
“Think, for instance, of trying to specify all the properties a button had to have in order to match another. Apart from the kinds of thing we have already mentioned, size, color, number of holes, and so on, we should also have to specify its specific gravity, its electrostatic charge, its viscosity, its rigidity, the fact that it should be round, that it should not be made of paper, etc., etc.” [p.25]
“A typical sequence of diagrams which precede an architectural problem will include a circulation diagram, a diagram of acoustics, a diagram of the load-bearing structure, a diagram of sun and wind perhaps, a diagram of the social neighborhoods. I maintain that these diagrams are used only because the principles which define them—acoustics, circulation, weather, neighborhood—happen to be part of current architectural usage, not because they bear a well-understood fundamental relation to any particular problem being investigated.” [p.68-69]
“In this fashion the selfconscious individual’s grasp of problems is constantly misled. His concepts and categories, besides being arbitrary and unsuitable, are self-perpetuating. Under the influence of concepts, he not only does things from a biased point of view, but sees them biasedly as well. The concepts control his perception of fit and misfit—until in the end he sees nothing but deviations from his conceptual dogmas, and loses not only the urge but even the mental opportunity to frame his problems more appropriately.” [p.70]
“The data of scientific method never go further than to display regularities. We put structure into them only by inference and interpretation.” [p.109]
“The use of verbal concepts is an efficient artificial way of finding sets which have something in common.” [p.120]
“Every object is a hierarchy of components, the large ones specifying the pattern of distribution of the smaller ones, the small ones themselves, though at first sight more clearly piecelike, in fact again patterns specifying the arrangement and distribution of still smaller components.” [p.130-131]
“It is the culmination of the designer’s task to make every diagram both a pattern and a unit. As a unit it will fit into the hierarchy of larger components that fall above it; as a pattern it will specify the hierarchy of smaller components which it itself is made of.” [p.131]
“For even if we can give reasons for choosing one logical scheme rather than another, these reasons only imply that there is another decision scheme behind the first (very likely not explicit). Perhaps there is still another behind the second one. But somewhere there are decisions made that are not rational in any sense, that are subject to nothing more than the personal bias of the decision maker. Logical methods, at best, rearrange the way in which personal bias is to be introduced into a problem. Of course, this ‘at best’ is rather important.” [p.194]
“In interesting cases the solution of the problem cannot be tested against an image, because the search for the image or criterion for success is actually going on at the same time as the search for a solution.” [p.197]
“As Ashby has pointed out, in a connected system with deterministic linkages, even when every variable is not immediately linked to every other, the system behaves as if it were, so that no one part is less connected to the rest than any other, and it means nothing to compare degrees of independence.” [p.214]
An agricultural village of six hundred people is to be reorganized to make it fit present and future conditions developing in rural India. [p.136]This is the problem, and Alexander’s solution methodology involves, firstly, listing out each individual component—social, economic, religious, political, agricultural—involved in the gestalt of village life, at a sufficient level of granularity. A sampling:
1. Harijans regarded as ritually impure, untouchable, etc.This continues all the way up to 141, “Prevent migration of young people and harijans to cities.” Now don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly reasonable to get a grip on the most salient factors involved in forming habitable environments if you want to design one that’s… reasonably habitable. Do anthropological fieldwork: observe the flow of life in the village, chat with people living there, spend some time living there yourself, read up on the government; there’s nothing so brazenly arrogant as believing you can improve complex systems without studying their complexity. Otherwise, you’ll (almost inevitably) erase the vital nuances which made the system what it originally was, the effect being not “improved system” but “new system,” read: machine sans ghost, hamstringed monstrosity.
2. Proper disposal of dead.
…
35. Protection of crops from insects, weeds, disease.
37. Provision of storage for distributing and marketing crops.
…
78. Shade for sitting and walking.
84. Accommodation for panchayat records, meetings, etc.
…
[p.137-142]
The second step, per example, is to enumerate all potential inter-component interactions:
1 interacts with 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 21, 28, 29, 48, 61, 67, 68, 70, 77, 86, 101, 106, 113, 124, 140, 141.If you didn’t catch it, that’s 9 whole pages of numerical combinations, and because each variable is ultimately qualitative, hashing out these interactions is a manual process of cognition—basically the intellectual equivalent of running an ultramarathon. I don’t know about you, but I balk at the sheer volume of masochism required to even consider participating in such tasks. But yes, design is not and should not be thought of as a race; one variable more necessary for good design is quality feedback, which seems totally infeasible under Alexander’s methodology. Even assuming (quite charitably) one really has captured the most important problem components, the additional question of whether one has accurately represented the essential interactions among them is one in which concurrence is virtually impossible to achieve with any party besides oneself, as the inherent nebulosity of language guarantees misinterpretation, exponentially exacerbated here when what constitutes an “interaction” is left unspoken. Thus I conclude that, because it is so feedback-resistant, this methodology entails a certain monomania.
2 interacts with 3, 4, 6, 26, 29, 32, 52, 71, 98, 102, 105, 123, 133.
…
141 interacts with 1, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 24, 48, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 86, 89, 93, 95, 97, 100, 112, 115, 130, 138, 140.
[p.142-150]
Alexander himself seems to have recognized as much. In the preface to my edition (published ten years after the first), he writes:
At the time I wrote this book, I was very much concerned with the formal definition of “independence,” and the idea of using a mathematical method to discover systems of forces and diagrams which are independent. But once the book was written, I discovered that it is quite unnecessary to use such a complicated and formal way of getting at the independent diagrams. [p.136]That being said, he nevertheless demonstrates a profound understanding of design theory and Notes on the Synthesis of Form is worth reading just for that. If you don’t think this is for you, consider how the contemporary popularity of “design thinking” lies in the recognition that all problems can be conceived as design problems; one must “design” a solution (or solutions) that fits the context of the problem. Ergo, studying philosophy of design opens up space for innovation (at least this is what I tell myself), and if you want specific examples, I found Alexander’s concepts of “misfit,” “the unselfconscious process,” and “the selfconscious process” particularly well-observed. This is a review, so no explanations; my praise is as short as it needs to be.
Favorite quotes
“[N]o one shape can any more be a consequence of the use of logic than any other, and it is nonsense to blame rigid physical form on the rigidity of logic.” [p.7]
“Wherever an instance of misfit occurs in an ensemble, we are able to point specifically at what fails and to describe it. It seems as though in practice the concept of good fit, describing only the absence of such failures and hence leaving us nothing concrete to refer to in explanation, can only be explained indirectly; it is, in practice, as it were, the disjunction of all possible misfits.” [p.23-24]
“Think, for instance, of trying to specify all the properties a button had to have in order to match another. Apart from the kinds of thing we have already mentioned, size, color, number of holes, and so on, we should also have to specify its specific gravity, its electrostatic charge, its viscosity, its rigidity, the fact that it should be round, that it should not be made of paper, etc., etc.” [p.25]
“A typical sequence of diagrams which precede an architectural problem will include a circulation diagram, a diagram of acoustics, a diagram of the load-bearing structure, a diagram of sun and wind perhaps, a diagram of the social neighborhoods. I maintain that these diagrams are used only because the principles which define them—acoustics, circulation, weather, neighborhood—happen to be part of current architectural usage, not because they bear a well-understood fundamental relation to any particular problem being investigated.” [p.68-69]
“In this fashion the selfconscious individual’s grasp of problems is constantly misled. His concepts and categories, besides being arbitrary and unsuitable, are self-perpetuating. Under the influence of concepts, he not only does things from a biased point of view, but sees them biasedly as well. The concepts control his perception of fit and misfit—until in the end he sees nothing but deviations from his conceptual dogmas, and loses not only the urge but even the mental opportunity to frame his problems more appropriately.” [p.70]
“The data of scientific method never go further than to display regularities. We put structure into them only by inference and interpretation.” [p.109]
“The use of verbal concepts is an efficient artificial way of finding sets which have something in common.” [p.120]
“Every object is a hierarchy of components, the large ones specifying the pattern of distribution of the smaller ones, the small ones themselves, though at first sight more clearly piecelike, in fact again patterns specifying the arrangement and distribution of still smaller components.” [p.130-131]
“It is the culmination of the designer’s task to make every diagram both a pattern and a unit. As a unit it will fit into the hierarchy of larger components that fall above it; as a pattern it will specify the hierarchy of smaller components which it itself is made of.” [p.131]
“For even if we can give reasons for choosing one logical scheme rather than another, these reasons only imply that there is another decision scheme behind the first (very likely not explicit). Perhaps there is still another behind the second one. But somewhere there are decisions made that are not rational in any sense, that are subject to nothing more than the personal bias of the decision maker. Logical methods, at best, rearrange the way in which personal bias is to be introduced into a problem. Of course, this ‘at best’ is rather important.” [p.194]
“In interesting cases the solution of the problem cannot be tested against an image, because the search for the image or criterion for success is actually going on at the same time as the search for a solution.” [p.197]
“As Ashby has pointed out, in a connected system with deterministic linkages, even when every variable is not immediately linked to every other, the system behaves as if it were, so that no one part is less connected to the rest than any other, and it means nothing to compare degrees of independence.” [p.214]
February 3, 2013
Книга описывает (очень абстрактно) метод дизайна сложных систем с большим количеством требований через упрощение задачи дизайнера за счет разбиения на слабо связанные подсистемы/группы требований, формально-математически описанные.
Автор начинает книг�� описанием проблемы роста сложности задач стоящих перед дизайнерами. Автор сводит задачу дизайна к задаче выявления формы и ее контекста так чтобы они соответствовали друг другу наилучшим образом, что может быть определено как отсутствие "несоответствий" формы и констекста. Процесс выявления формы таким образом может быть сведен к постепенному избавлению от таких несоответствий.
Далее идет описание двух типов процессов выявления формы:
Unselfconscious Process - постепенная эволюция без сколько-нибудь активного вмешательства человека (человек только реагирует на какое-то очередное изменение контекста)
и
Selfconscious Process.- инициатором изменений выступает человек дизайнер, изменения могут быть весьма радикальными.
Первый процесс поддерживает форму и контекст в равновесии, при любом небольшом отклонении система стремится перейти в новое положение равновесия. Во втором же изменения далеко не всегда приводят к равновесию.
Далее автор описывает три модели дизайна
без участия дизайнера:
• прямой (Unselfconscious) - контекст непосредственно влияет на форму
при участии дизайнера
• формирование картины контекста, разработка картины формы, реализация формы в реальном мире
• формирование (дополнительно) формальной модели контекста отражающей только абстрактные структурные свойства, разработка диаграмм (математическое описание формы) из которых затем получается картина формы, которая затем транслируется в реальный мир
Автор подчеркивает важность диграмм в процессе формирования математического ��писания формы, понимания скрытой структуры проблемы.
Процесс предлагаемый автором в книге это фактически гибрид Selfconscious Process и Unselfconscious Process, где в первый автор постарался внести преимущества второго.
Автор начинает книг�� описанием проблемы роста сложности задач стоящих перед дизайнерами. Автор сводит задачу дизайна к задаче выявления формы и ее контекста так чтобы они соответствовали друг другу наилучшим образом, что может быть определено как отсутствие "несоответствий" формы и констекста. Процесс выявления формы таким образом может быть сведен к постепенному избавлению от таких несоответствий.
Далее идет описание двух типов процессов выявления формы:
Unselfconscious Process - постепенная эволюция без сколько-нибудь активного вмешательства человека (человек только реагирует на какое-то очередное изменение контекста)
и
Selfconscious Process.- инициатором изменений выступает человек дизайнер, изменения могут быть весьма радикальными.
Первый процесс поддерживает форму и контекст в равновесии, при любом небольшом отклонении система стремится перейти в новое положение равновесия. Во втором же изменения далеко не всегда приводят к равновесию.
Далее автор описывает три модели дизайна
без участия дизайнера:
• прямой (Unselfconscious) - контекст непосредственно влияет на форму
при участии дизайнера
• формирование картины контекста, разработка картины формы, реализация формы в реальном мире
• формирование (дополнительно) формальной модели контекста отражающей только абстрактные структурные свойства, разработка диаграмм (математическое описание формы) из которых затем получается картина формы, которая затем транслируется в реальный мир
Автор подчеркивает важность диграмм в процессе формирования математического ��писания формы, понимания скрытой структуры проблемы.
Процесс предлагаемый автором в книге это фактически гибрид Selfconscious Process и Unselfconscious Process, где в первый автор постарался внести преимущества второго.
February 26, 2019
I had complicated feelings on this one. On the one hand, C.A. does propose a good methodology for how to decompose extremely large design problems. On the other, he doesn’t often make it clear that his approach is only really useful with problems that must be broken down. Further, he has an exceptional number of digressions into ridiculous overformalizations of his methods using set and graph theory (which, though appropriate and powerful, he doesn’t really engage with much— heuristic search algorithms and CSPs can indeed be design tools) and worst of all, makes some particular normative claims about design. In particular, he claims that design ‘is not an optimization problem.’ In the world of C.A., there are only things that are good enough ('it fits all the requirements’) and that are not. I find this a pretty depressing view of the role of the designer— in my experience, there is no human experience so good that someone goes ‘man, I wouldn’t want this to be any nicer.’ All else equal, a better experience will always be preferable, and there is no fundamental limit to how nice an experience can be. Further, it was disappointing to see C.A. not talk about the other ways in which to deal with graphs of interrelated issues, and to see him consistently oversimplify the ways in which it can be dealt with and the dynamic/dialectical nature of a good design process. On the whole, this book contained a few insights, but has so much wrongheaded about it that I can’t in good conscience recommend it to most.
update 2019: this book has gradually proven its central claims to be correct, and I’ve shifted my opinion of it accordingly. retroactively lifting it from three to five stars.
update 2019: this book has gradually proven its central claims to be correct, and I’ve shifted my opinion of it accordingly. retroactively lifting it from three to five stars.
May 22, 2020
Christopher Alexander is not only profitable to read if your interest is architecture. He is a problem solver. This book is a thesis for a process of problem-solving that can be applied in other domains. His process helps you challenge your pre-c0nceptions, be sensitive to the individual elements that comprise the larger problem, order the component elements into sets and subsets, and then do some math. The body of the text is slightly over one hundred pages and then the two appendices demonstrate a worked example. I'll admit, I understand the math only theoretically. Once I reached the second appendix, it was difficult for me to follow along. But I will work on it.
I recommend this book because it is edifying beyond his usual audience in the field of architecture. I have heard that computer programmers like to read this book. To test this, I flashed it at a computer programmer at lunch the other day and he asked if he could borrow it. No kidding.
I recommend this book because it is edifying beyond his usual audience in the field of architecture. I have heard that computer programmers like to read this book. To test this, I flashed it at a computer programmer at lunch the other day and he asked if he could borrow it. No kidding.
November 23, 2020
It's my first read of Christopher Alexander, but I am grateful I had the chance to discover his perspective on "unselfconscious and self-conscious cultures" and what makes them unique. We jumped from an era where we used to iterate and find concrete ways to improve something to a land where we give our best to invest in stuff that's far more complex and layered. In between, the emergence of all kinds of facilities (such as air conditioner, lamps, or the kettle) it somehow lowered the responsibility, since they fix a lot of the shortcomings, but made everything far more sophisticated.
Read
October 18, 2022His articulation about unselfconscious societies and self-conscious societies was fascinating, and a useful take away to the study of vernacular architecture. While I found it useful to distinguish between modifications made to traditional models, and in seeking clarity in structure by anticipating design variables, I'm not sure his articulation of the formulations of design processes reach past abstraction to application.
Read
June 22, 2014Incredibly original idea whose time has come. Alexander has to be counted as one of the most innovative minds of the 20th Century.
November 22, 2020
This book is amazing. Christopher gives so much detail in how to approach a problem and understand it, its constraints, its interconnections, etc without entering in the details of the solution. Allowing us to spend as much time as possible on the problem, before making assumptions and exploring the solutions, which is fundamental for really solving the problem.
This book is a must-read for anyone that works with design and problem-solving.
This book is a must-read for anyone that works with design and problem-solving.
April 20, 2024
beautiful diagrams, perfect introduction to Alexander's ideas. Concept of all diagrams representing the forces/misfit variables acting on an object incredibly useful.
April 15, 2017
A nice quick read with a much necessary analytical approach to design. It starts off debunking a bunch of myths about what design is before delving into the matter.
April 7, 2023
Cool men måste nog återkomma när jag förstår matten som den beskriver bättre. Teoretiskt sätt inte svårt men hade typ behövt gå en kort kurs om sättet de applicerades här.
Gillar när man motiverar design med matte och gillade verkligen konceptet med design- omedvetna vs medvetna kulturer.
Gillar när man motiverar design med matte och gillade verkligen konceptet med design- omedvetna vs medvetna kulturer.
July 25, 2010
There are some really interesting concepts in the book and his theory about form/context/misfit is really interesting. But even as he admits its most likely better to pass on the second half of the book (where he tries to create a unified equation for it all). I will definitely reread the first half part before returning it to the library.
May 23, 2013
One of the rarest of books. Alexander's ideas transcend architecture and are applicable to almost any human endeavor - his concept of 'fit' and the mathematics behind it should be introduced during primary school and form an integral part of all curricula all the way up to the PhD level.
March 19, 2022
For "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" (NoSoF), the retrospective introduction makes all the difference.
Surely so many of us had the youthful supposition that mathematical formalism, and its corresponding artificial clarity, was somehow essential in arbitrating all human affairs. This is a great weight holding the book down: not only the artifices of formality, but an unchecked arrogance in its authority. Fortunately, with the apology of the retrospective introduction for this mistake accepted, this is a book containing many useful ideas.
What this book proposes is that the quality of a design is largely not inherent in the design itself, but in the fit between the design and the context in which it operates and the experiences it allows. This fit is generally not observed positively in smooth correct operation, but in various ills and breakdowns caused by discrepancies between the design and its context.
Weirdly and perhaps tinged with problematic other-ing, the book denotes a kind of successful unreflectivity of traditional designs in a traditional context where there is no distinction between the design community and user community: these ills that can be addressed by such means are handled more or less immediately as a part of routine practice as part of daily life. It contrasts that with times in which specialization and efficiencies of scale lead to an alienation between design and use, and a subsequent need for design technique to effectively reason about this use.
NoSoF then suggests that the categories and concepts used in such reasoning have emerged as a matter of triage to the incredible relative novelty of this arrangement, and are not guaranteed to correspond in any particular way to the structure of the interactions between designs and their environs, and resolving the discords between them. As a result, this work contains a fair amount of skepticism of using conceptual factors such as "cost", "safety", "social factors", "environmental considerations" etc. in design. Indeed, it seems to me that these categories have an entirely different purpose, which is that instead of being related to any particular structural, relational, environmental, or interactive factor, these are cross-cutting considerations that are potentially relevant to each element and relationship and draw out further potential forms of misfit across a variety of scales when used to consider each element, rather than to organize the structure of the interactions within the design. They're for very nearly opposite purposes, really, being useful in their orthogonality with the interactive structures of the design problem.
This book then proposes organizing the considerations into a graph, where interacting considerations are to be considered together. From here, it is proposed that the graph be decoupled hierarchically along lines of significant versus insignificant coupling between considerations, and provides a formalism for doing so.
There are also weird formalisms about conceiving issues of poor fit as connected series of lightbulbs with certain statistical properties. Even with ignoring these there's so much here, and some folks might find some insight there too.
The later work on patterns in the "Timeless Way of Building" series TWoB supposes that certain hierarchical couplings commonly emerge at a more abstract and relational level and once identified can be used to decouple and resolve the forces between the design and the environment. This book is great context for that, but also has a lot of good ideas in its own regard. It's hard to say which to read first; it's certainly worthwhile to read this one but it would be a pity to stop here.
Surely so many of us had the youthful supposition that mathematical formalism, and its corresponding artificial clarity, was somehow essential in arbitrating all human affairs. This is a great weight holding the book down: not only the artifices of formality, but an unchecked arrogance in its authority. Fortunately, with the apology of the retrospective introduction for this mistake accepted, this is a book containing many useful ideas.
What this book proposes is that the quality of a design is largely not inherent in the design itself, but in the fit between the design and the context in which it operates and the experiences it allows. This fit is generally not observed positively in smooth correct operation, but in various ills and breakdowns caused by discrepancies between the design and its context.
Weirdly and perhaps tinged with problematic other-ing, the book denotes a kind of successful unreflectivity of traditional designs in a traditional context where there is no distinction between the design community and user community: these ills that can be addressed by such means are handled more or less immediately as a part of routine practice as part of daily life. It contrasts that with times in which specialization and efficiencies of scale lead to an alienation between design and use, and a subsequent need for design technique to effectively reason about this use.
NoSoF then suggests that the categories and concepts used in such reasoning have emerged as a matter of triage to the incredible relative novelty of this arrangement, and are not guaranteed to correspond in any particular way to the structure of the interactions between designs and their environs, and resolving the discords between them. As a result, this work contains a fair amount of skepticism of using conceptual factors such as "cost", "safety", "social factors", "environmental considerations" etc. in design. Indeed, it seems to me that these categories have an entirely different purpose, which is that instead of being related to any particular structural, relational, environmental, or interactive factor, these are cross-cutting considerations that are potentially relevant to each element and relationship and draw out further potential forms of misfit across a variety of scales when used to consider each element, rather than to organize the structure of the interactions within the design. They're for very nearly opposite purposes, really, being useful in their orthogonality with the interactive structures of the design problem.
This book then proposes organizing the considerations into a graph, where interacting considerations are to be considered together. From here, it is proposed that the graph be decoupled hierarchically along lines of significant versus insignificant coupling between considerations, and provides a formalism for doing so.
There are also weird formalisms about conceiving issues of poor fit as connected series of lightbulbs with certain statistical properties. Even with ignoring these there's so much here, and some folks might find some insight there too.
The later work on patterns in the "Timeless Way of Building" series TWoB supposes that certain hierarchical couplings commonly emerge at a more abstract and relational level and once identified can be used to decouple and resolve the forces between the design and the environment. This book is great context for that, but also has a lot of good ideas in its own regard. It's hard to say which to read first; it's certainly worthwhile to read this one but it would be a pity to stop here.
November 26, 2016
I had always been intrigued by this book. Whether though sloth or changing architectural fashions I had never got around to it. Alexander is an architect, and from what I can gather, somewhat of an enfante terrible in his day*. He is known in architecture circles through his books, particularly ‘A Timeless Way of Building’ and ‘A Pattern Language’.
This book, however, his first, written in 1964, is quite different. While written by an architect to help clarify the design process, it is seldom read by architects. Instead it became a very important and influential work for software programming. From Wikipedia:
Alexander's Notes on the Synthesis of Form was said to be required reading for researchers in computer science throughout the 1960s. It had an influence in the 1960s and 1970s on programming language design, modular programming, object-oriented programming, software engineering and other design methodologies. Alexander's mathematical concepts and orientation were similar to Edsger Dijkstra's influential A Discipline of Programming.
Intrigued at the premise and history of the book (and no doubt egged on by slimness of the volume) I thought I would take it on.
An interesting tome. Alexander, inspired no doubt by the exciting developments of computer processing power, attempts to apply this thinking to design. Delving deeply into what I imagine is set theory, he tries to describe the design process in a way that can then be calculated by algorithms that presumably could be processed on a computer. (To be honest, he doesn’t go quite that far, as can be seen by his later books, that treat design as a human activity, although his ‘pattern language’ seems to try to condense the lessons of this book).
Alexander sets out the process of design as a rational process that is controlled by ‘goodness of fit’ a term that he defines negatively – the fits are difficult to see but the ‘misfits’ as he calls them, are quite easy to see:
'Yet it is such departures from the norm which stand out in our minds, rather than the norm itself. Their wrongness is somehow more immediate than the rightness of less peculiar behavior, and therefore more compelling.'
The math gets involved when he attempts to create, what looks to me, a programing solution to the problem:
‘We may summarize the state of each misfit by means of a binary variable. If the misfit occurs, we say the variable takes the value 1. If the misfit does not occur, we say the variable takes the value of 0.'
At this point, Alexander takes a digression into what he describes as ‘un-self conscious’ and ‘self conscious’ design. Un-self conscious design is represented by the great wealth of ‘vernacular’ building traditions in the world. It is taught or passed from one generation to another through a process similar to riding a bicycle, by repetition followed by minor correction of minute mistakes (or ‘misfits’). Self conscious design on the other hand is taught taught academically, according to explicit rules. As was popular in some architecture circles at this time, CA glorifies the vernacular.
‘the vital point that underlies the following discussion is that the form-builder in unselfconscious cultures respond to small changes in a way that allows the subsystems of the misfit system to work independently - but that because the self obvious response to change cannot take place subsystem by subsystem, it's forms are arbitrary.’
Although he may be loathe to admit it, there lies in CA’s description a kind of nostalgia:
The sensitivity of feedback is not in itself enough to lead to equilibrium. The feedback must be controlled, or dampened, somehow. Such control is provided by the resistance to change the unselfconscious culture has built into its traditions. We might say of those traditions, possibly, that they make the system viscous. ...
On the one hand the directness of the response to misfit ensures that each failure is corrected as soon as it occurs, and thereby restricts the change to one subsystem as a time. And on the over hand the force of tradition, by resisting needless change, holds steady all the variables not in the relevant subsystem, and prevents those minor disturbances outside the subsystem from taking hold.’
His criticism of self conscious design starts to sound post modern in that he sees a major problem with it’s reliance on language:
… although every problem has its own structure, and there are many different problems, the words we have available to describe the components of these problems are generated by forces in the language, not by the problems, and are therefore rather limited in number and cannot describe more than a few cases correctly.
… The arbitrariness of the existing verbal concepts is not their only disadvantage, for once they are invented, verbal concepts have a further ill-effect on us. We lose the ability to modify them. In the unselfconscious situation the action of culture on form is a very subtle business, made up of many minute concrete influences. But once these concrete influences are represented symbolically in verbal terms, and these symbolic representations or names subsumed under larger and still more abstract categories to make them amenable to thought, they begin seriously to impair our ability to see beyond them.
CA’s approach starts to come clear here. CA sees identifying and correcting ‘misfits’ as the way to approach and resolve design problems. The un-self conscious process makes only small changes in the tradition bound design forms that are part of it’s heritage. Alexander sees in the small scale of these changes a way to rationalize the design process along a path both more mathematical and presumably, also more un-self conscious.
The difficulty of assigning a ‘rational’ mathematical process to a design problem is that the different kinds of misfits all have different values, some are more important or need to take precedent over others. So Alexander believes the way to address this is to take every misfit and break it down into smaller and smaller parts until they all have essentially the same value. From here you can then put together a process to address all the components of the problem.
What follows is a description of a design process based on what I imagine is set theory. It is not all clear to me that this can work, although I can imagine that it wold be a useful way to approach computer programming issues.
It seems to me that CA’s main interest is in being able to clearly articulate the design problem, that a design can be documented - or that it can be theoretically documented and can therefore be ‘proven’ true. He is interested in creating a process that will lead to answers beyond the designers intuition, which he believes is inadequate to the complexity of modern design problems. I am not sure he achieves this - his later work is not so dependent on the math he lays out in the book and he never proposed a computer program to design houses. His inclusion of logic and set theory to this process is based on his suspicion of language and admiration of the ‘vernacular’, but also seems to be very self conscious.
*I remember a memorable comment by Colin St John-Wilson, the head of the architecture department at Cambridge University (and the architect for the new British Library). Having heard Alexander’s name, he gave a bit of a shudder. Indicating that he knew him (I believe, studied with Alexander), he quickly sketched Alexander’s personality as cantankerous and outspoken, and a zealous promoter of his own opinions (to which Wilson seemed to have responded with bafflement).
This book, however, his first, written in 1964, is quite different. While written by an architect to help clarify the design process, it is seldom read by architects. Instead it became a very important and influential work for software programming. From Wikipedia:
Alexander's Notes on the Synthesis of Form was said to be required reading for researchers in computer science throughout the 1960s. It had an influence in the 1960s and 1970s on programming language design, modular programming, object-oriented programming, software engineering and other design methodologies. Alexander's mathematical concepts and orientation were similar to Edsger Dijkstra's influential A Discipline of Programming.
Intrigued at the premise and history of the book (and no doubt egged on by slimness of the volume) I thought I would take it on.
An interesting tome. Alexander, inspired no doubt by the exciting developments of computer processing power, attempts to apply this thinking to design. Delving deeply into what I imagine is set theory, he tries to describe the design process in a way that can then be calculated by algorithms that presumably could be processed on a computer. (To be honest, he doesn’t go quite that far, as can be seen by his later books, that treat design as a human activity, although his ‘pattern language’ seems to try to condense the lessons of this book).
Alexander sets out the process of design as a rational process that is controlled by ‘goodness of fit’ a term that he defines negatively – the fits are difficult to see but the ‘misfits’ as he calls them, are quite easy to see:
'Yet it is such departures from the norm which stand out in our minds, rather than the norm itself. Their wrongness is somehow more immediate than the rightness of less peculiar behavior, and therefore more compelling.'
The math gets involved when he attempts to create, what looks to me, a programing solution to the problem:
‘We may summarize the state of each misfit by means of a binary variable. If the misfit occurs, we say the variable takes the value 1. If the misfit does not occur, we say the variable takes the value of 0.'
At this point, Alexander takes a digression into what he describes as ‘un-self conscious’ and ‘self conscious’ design. Un-self conscious design is represented by the great wealth of ‘vernacular’ building traditions in the world. It is taught or passed from one generation to another through a process similar to riding a bicycle, by repetition followed by minor correction of minute mistakes (or ‘misfits’). Self conscious design on the other hand is taught taught academically, according to explicit rules. As was popular in some architecture circles at this time, CA glorifies the vernacular.
‘the vital point that underlies the following discussion is that the form-builder in unselfconscious cultures respond to small changes in a way that allows the subsystems of the misfit system to work independently - but that because the self obvious response to change cannot take place subsystem by subsystem, it's forms are arbitrary.’
Although he may be loathe to admit it, there lies in CA’s description a kind of nostalgia:
The sensitivity of feedback is not in itself enough to lead to equilibrium. The feedback must be controlled, or dampened, somehow. Such control is provided by the resistance to change the unselfconscious culture has built into its traditions. We might say of those traditions, possibly, that they make the system viscous. ...
On the one hand the directness of the response to misfit ensures that each failure is corrected as soon as it occurs, and thereby restricts the change to one subsystem as a time. And on the over hand the force of tradition, by resisting needless change, holds steady all the variables not in the relevant subsystem, and prevents those minor disturbances outside the subsystem from taking hold.’
His criticism of self conscious design starts to sound post modern in that he sees a major problem with it’s reliance on language:
… although every problem has its own structure, and there are many different problems, the words we have available to describe the components of these problems are generated by forces in the language, not by the problems, and are therefore rather limited in number and cannot describe more than a few cases correctly.
… The arbitrariness of the existing verbal concepts is not their only disadvantage, for once they are invented, verbal concepts have a further ill-effect on us. We lose the ability to modify them. In the unselfconscious situation the action of culture on form is a very subtle business, made up of many minute concrete influences. But once these concrete influences are represented symbolically in verbal terms, and these symbolic representations or names subsumed under larger and still more abstract categories to make them amenable to thought, they begin seriously to impair our ability to see beyond them.
CA’s approach starts to come clear here. CA sees identifying and correcting ‘misfits’ as the way to approach and resolve design problems. The un-self conscious process makes only small changes in the tradition bound design forms that are part of it’s heritage. Alexander sees in the small scale of these changes a way to rationalize the design process along a path both more mathematical and presumably, also more un-self conscious.
The difficulty of assigning a ‘rational’ mathematical process to a design problem is that the different kinds of misfits all have different values, some are more important or need to take precedent over others. So Alexander believes the way to address this is to take every misfit and break it down into smaller and smaller parts until they all have essentially the same value. From here you can then put together a process to address all the components of the problem.
What follows is a description of a design process based on what I imagine is set theory. It is not all clear to me that this can work, although I can imagine that it wold be a useful way to approach computer programming issues.
It seems to me that CA’s main interest is in being able to clearly articulate the design problem, that a design can be documented - or that it can be theoretically documented and can therefore be ‘proven’ true. He is interested in creating a process that will lead to answers beyond the designers intuition, which he believes is inadequate to the complexity of modern design problems. I am not sure he achieves this - his later work is not so dependent on the math he lays out in the book and he never proposed a computer program to design houses. His inclusion of logic and set theory to this process is based on his suspicion of language and admiration of the ‘vernacular’, but also seems to be very self conscious.
*I remember a memorable comment by Colin St John-Wilson, the head of the architecture department at Cambridge University (and the architect for the new British Library). Having heard Alexander’s name, he gave a bit of a shudder. Indicating that he knew him (I believe, studied with Alexander), he quickly sketched Alexander’s personality as cantankerous and outspoken, and a zealous promoter of his own opinions (to which Wilson seemed to have responded with bafflement).
May 3, 2024
This book presents, even 60+ years on, a highly original undertaking. Alexander set out to create a formal, comprehensive, and universal system for addressing design problems of any type--whether the design of a village, a tea kettle, or a building. Its originality matches its ambition, and my impression of his later work seems to suggest that he stepped away from some of the more extreme elements of this method by turning to design patterns instead of this, which is a total method that can (and too often is) so formal that it can be expressed in terms of set and graph theory. In this way, Notes on the Synthesis of Form is something like Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a work of incredible ambition that ultimately failed to stifle intellectual concerns that consumed the author's work for the rest of his life.
One of those major concerns for Alexander is the atomic nature of misfit variables, what he calls the most elementary unit we can use to represent the relationship between form and context. Thinking about form in this way leads to some funny conclusions. As another reviewer pointed out, there is nearly never an object about which anyone says "There is no way this could be improved." For Alexander, this would just mean that the total of all misfit variables has not been adequately grasped, and even if we consider it impossible to conceive of them all, they are certainly finite in number and therefore it might be possible to devise a method to address every single one, resulting in a "perfect" fit between form and context. Intuitively we can see how the truth of his method could never be borne in reality. He seems aware of this challenge but is having way too much fun using set theory notation and drawing funny diagrams to worry about it.
The book is at its best when it isn't getting bogged down in a compulsion towards excessive formalization. The first few sections about the source of fit and misfit, and the distinctions between selfconsious and unselfconscious design are stunning. His discussion of the principles of decomposition is a must-read for anyone who ever wants to create anything. I can see why it was so influential for computer scientists in the 70s. I do a bit of programming here and there and I will return to these passages.
Overall, it's a profound book and worth the read for any designer, programmer, anthropologist, city planner, etc.
It is worth criticizing especially because it's so good.
One of those major concerns for Alexander is the atomic nature of misfit variables, what he calls the most elementary unit we can use to represent the relationship between form and context. Thinking about form in this way leads to some funny conclusions. As another reviewer pointed out, there is nearly never an object about which anyone says "There is no way this could be improved." For Alexander, this would just mean that the total of all misfit variables has not been adequately grasped, and even if we consider it impossible to conceive of them all, they are certainly finite in number and therefore it might be possible to devise a method to address every single one, resulting in a "perfect" fit between form and context. Intuitively we can see how the truth of his method could never be borne in reality. He seems aware of this challenge but is having way too much fun using set theory notation and drawing funny diagrams to worry about it.
The book is at its best when it isn't getting bogged down in a compulsion towards excessive formalization. The first few sections about the source of fit and misfit, and the distinctions between selfconsious and unselfconscious design are stunning. His discussion of the principles of decomposition is a must-read for anyone who ever wants to create anything. I can see why it was so influential for computer scientists in the 70s. I do a bit of programming here and there and I will return to these passages.
Overall, it's a profound book and worth the read for any designer, programmer, anthropologist, city planner, etc.
It is worth criticizing especially because it's so good.
June 6, 2019
Note: skipped Appendix 2.
On the digression into selfconscious and unselfconscious processes: Alexander says there's something about the design process that makes the former less adept at architecture than the latter. I agree with him on the particulars - architects are now further removed from their dwellings, and receive less feedback (and innovate for the sake of it), so their forms aren't well-fitted to the context. But to borrow his terminology, the unselfconscious form isn't well-fitted to the modern context. Buildings are much more complicated and longer-lasting, materials much more diverse, cultural change faster, etc. In these conditions, the selfconscious design process can be regarded as an innovation, if an imperfect one. It's conceivable that, if cultural and technological change ceased, architects would eventually settle on a few well-fitted forms, and the selfconscious process would turn mostly unselfconscious. Also - and this may have been different in Alexander's time - when designers are faced with their own unsuitedness to a challenge, they don't always turn to misleading concepts and principles. They turn to styles and forms, which may not be perfectly suited to the context, but which offload a lot of the design process onto something that isn't quite tradition, but is comparable.
On Alexander's program: I may never use this approach as exhaustively as he advocates, but it's conceptually very intriguing, and clarifies the real possibility of an analytical (non-mysterious) design process. I'll have to remember to test it out the next time I design something.
On the digression into selfconscious and unselfconscious processes: Alexander says there's something about the design process that makes the former less adept at architecture than the latter. I agree with him on the particulars - architects are now further removed from their dwellings, and receive less feedback (and innovate for the sake of it), so their forms aren't well-fitted to the context. But to borrow his terminology, the unselfconscious form isn't well-fitted to the modern context. Buildings are much more complicated and longer-lasting, materials much more diverse, cultural change faster, etc. In these conditions, the selfconscious design process can be regarded as an innovation, if an imperfect one. It's conceivable that, if cultural and technological change ceased, architects would eventually settle on a few well-fitted forms, and the selfconscious process would turn mostly unselfconscious. Also - and this may have been different in Alexander's time - when designers are faced with their own unsuitedness to a challenge, they don't always turn to misleading concepts and principles. They turn to styles and forms, which may not be perfectly suited to the context, but which offload a lot of the design process onto something that isn't quite tradition, but is comparable.
On Alexander's program: I may never use this approach as exhaustively as he advocates, but it's conceptually very intriguing, and clarifies the real possibility of an analytical (non-mysterious) design process. I'll have to remember to test it out the next time I design something.
May 14, 2015
Full review on my blog.
Notes starts off strong, with a chapter titled “The Need for Rationality,” which will appeal to certain types, myself included. An excerpt:
This is solid epistemology, the map / territory distinction, an idea at least as old as the 1930’s, though probably much older. Here, logic consists of operations on the map (or perhaps the map includes both an object and a logic that can manipulate the object). The utility of logic then rests on the correspondence between map and territory.
For a 51-year-old book about efficient search through arbitrary design space it’s held up surprisingly well, despite some idiosyncrasies. Alexander was clearly well-versed in the computational theory of the day, and if he makes some naive assertions regarding the tractability of what he terms “selection problems” he can be forgiven: Hartmanis and Stearns (1965), the foundational paper on computational complexity, had yet to be published.
The Processes
Alexander describes two approaches to design, the unselfconscious process practiced in traditional or “primitive” cultures and the selfconscious process of modern design. The difficulty of solving modern design problems arises from having to simultaneously satisfy dozens of potentially conflicting requirements. Furthermore this solution must be assembled from whole cloth. In contrast, the unselfconscious process deals with simpler contexts and proceeds gradually in the form of minor adjustments within the bounds of strong tradition.
Unselfconscious cultures are not automatically good at producing solutions. Indeed, they are fragile and can be disrupted by contact with selfconscious cultures:
The quality of Alexander’s anthropology might be questioned, and a modern author would undoubtedly put things a little differently. On the other hand there are some real gems here, particularly on the subject of learning.
Misfits
How do we know when we’ve solved a design problem? While it’s common to talk about satisfying a set of requirements, Alexander emphatically puts this in terms of misfits: does the design fit into its context (and indeed where do you draw the boundary between form and context)? A problem is solved when all misfits are eliminated:
In any reasonably complex problem these misfits are interrelated—mediated by common considerations—and a design must make appropriate tradeoffs when misfits conflict. For example, a kettle needs to heat up quickly yet keep its water hot for a sufficient period of time, and these requirements (i.e. potential misfits) depend on the properties of the material used in construction. Perhaps the most common design tradeoff is that of expense: the lower bound on quality of materials conflicts with the upper bound on price of the resultant product.
The unselfconscious process produces good fit slowly through selective pressures, yet we don’t have the luxury of waiting generations to solve modern problems, and many problems are simply too complex to be solved by blind search.
Sets of interdependent misfits can be thought of as a graph, a now-common data structure. Alexander observes that when the graph consists of loosely interconnected clusters of strongly interconnected misfits we have some chance of finding a solution. When the graph is fully connected—every misfit affects every other misfit—solutions are nearly unobtainable.
Notes starts off strong, with a chapter titled “The Need for Rationality,” which will appeal to certain types, myself included. An excerpt:
“While ... a great deal of what is generally understood to be logic is concerned with deduction, logic... refers to something far more general. It is concerned with the form of abstract structures, and is involved the moment we make pictures of reality and then seek to manipulate these pictures so that we may look further into the reality itself.” (Notes p. 8)
This is solid epistemology, the map / territory distinction, an idea at least as old as the 1930’s, though probably much older. Here, logic consists of operations on the map (or perhaps the map includes both an object and a logic that can manipulate the object). The utility of logic then rests on the correspondence between map and territory.
For a 51-year-old book about efficient search through arbitrary design space it’s held up surprisingly well, despite some idiosyncrasies. Alexander was clearly well-versed in the computational theory of the day, and if he makes some naive assertions regarding the tractability of what he terms “selection problems” he can be forgiven: Hartmanis and Stearns (1965), the foundational paper on computational complexity, had yet to be published.
The Processes
Alexander describes two approaches to design, the unselfconscious process practiced in traditional or “primitive” cultures and the selfconscious process of modern design. The difficulty of solving modern design problems arises from having to simultaneously satisfy dozens of potentially conflicting requirements. Furthermore this solution must be assembled from whole cloth. In contrast, the unselfconscious process deals with simpler contexts and proceeds gradually in the form of minor adjustments within the bounds of strong tradition.
Unselfconscious cultures are not automatically good at producing solutions. Indeed, they are fragile and can be disrupted by contact with selfconscious cultures:
“The Slovakian peasants used to be famous for the shawls they made. These shawls were wonderfully colored and patterned, woven of yarns which had been dipped in homemade dyes. Early in the twentieth century aniline dyes were made available to them. And at once the glory of the shawls was spoiled; they were now no longer delicate and subtle, but crude. This change cannot have come about because the new dyes were somehow inferior. They were as brilliant, and the variety of colors was much greater than before. Yet somehow the new shawls turned out vulgar and uninteresting.
Now if, as it is so pleasant to suppose, the shawlmakers had had some innate artistry, had been so gifted that they were simply “able” to make beautiful shawls, it would be almost impossible to explain their later clumsiness. But if we look at the situation differently, it is very easy to explain. The shawlmakers were simply able, as many of us are, to recognize bad shawls, and their own mistakes.
Over the generations the shawls had doubtless often been made extremely badly. But whenever a bad one was made, it was recognized as such, and therefore not repeated. And though nothing is to say that the change made would be for the better, it would still be a change. When the results of such changes were still bad, further changes would be made. The changes would go on until the shawls were good. And only at this point would the incentive to go on changing the patterns disappear.
So we do not need to pretend that these craftsmen had special ability. They made beautiful shawls by standing in a long tradition, and by making minor changes whenever something seemed to need improvement. But once presented with more complicated choices, their apparent mastery and judgment disappeared.”
(Notes pp. 53-4)
The quality of Alexander’s anthropology might be questioned, and a modern author would undoubtedly put things a little differently. On the other hand there are some real gems here, particularly on the subject of learning.
Misfits
How do we know when we’ve solved a design problem? While it’s common to talk about satisfying a set of requirements, Alexander emphatically puts this in terms of misfits: does the design fit into its context (and indeed where do you draw the boundary between form and context)? A problem is solved when all misfits are eliminated:
“It is common practice in engineering, if we wish to make a metal face perfectly smooth and level, to fit it against the surface of a standard steel block... by inking the surface of this standard block and rubbing our metal face against the inked surface. If our metal face is not quite level, ink marks appear on it at those points which are higher than the rest. We grind away these high spots.... The face is level when it fits the block perfectly, so that there are no high spots which stand out any more.” (Notes p. 19)
In any reasonably complex problem these misfits are interrelated—mediated by common considerations—and a design must make appropriate tradeoffs when misfits conflict. For example, a kettle needs to heat up quickly yet keep its water hot for a sufficient period of time, and these requirements (i.e. potential misfits) depend on the properties of the material used in construction. Perhaps the most common design tradeoff is that of expense: the lower bound on quality of materials conflicts with the upper bound on price of the resultant product.
The unselfconscious process produces good fit slowly through selective pressures, yet we don’t have the luxury of waiting generations to solve modern problems, and many problems are simply too complex to be solved by blind search.
Sets of interdependent misfits can be thought of as a graph, a now-common data structure. Alexander observes that when the graph consists of loosely interconnected clusters of strongly interconnected misfits we have some chance of finding a solution. When the graph is fully connected—every misfit affects every other misfit—solutions are nearly unobtainable.
April 24, 2019
This book was a slog for me. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable… but I never felt the desire to pick it up.
On the whole, I enjoyed it, but I don’ know that I’d recommend it. Alexander’s thesis is that design can be modeled by taking into account all the variables, and creating diagrams that communicate the relationships in between them. Identifying which variables are congruent, which are in conflict, we can distill a mathematical formula that will lead us towards a functional design.
While I love the emphasis on legibility and predictability, I found the formulas lacking in applicability and explanation. Maybe I missed the point.
The greatest takeaway from this read, was the concept of “misfits”. Alexander’s argument is that when we set out the requirements of a design, we cannot so much articulate what a thing should be, but are more capable of suggesting what experiences break the requirements. These misfits are quantified by feelings. If a tea kettle feels unbalance when you pick it up, that is a misfit experience… but from the outset, you can’t define what it means for a tea kettle to feel balanced in your hands.
Lots of great out of context pull-quotes if you want to mine them. I didn’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On the whole, I enjoyed it, but I don’ know that I’d recommend it. Alexander’s thesis is that design can be modeled by taking into account all the variables, and creating diagrams that communicate the relationships in between them. Identifying which variables are congruent, which are in conflict, we can distill a mathematical formula that will lead us towards a functional design.
While I love the emphasis on legibility and predictability, I found the formulas lacking in applicability and explanation. Maybe I missed the point.
The greatest takeaway from this read, was the concept of “misfits”. Alexander’s argument is that when we set out the requirements of a design, we cannot so much articulate what a thing should be, but are more capable of suggesting what experiences break the requirements. These misfits are quantified by feelings. If a tea kettle feels unbalance when you pick it up, that is a misfit experience… but from the outset, you can’t define what it means for a tea kettle to feel balanced in your hands.
Lots of great out of context pull-quotes if you want to mine them. I didn’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
May 11, 2021
This is undoubtedly a good thought provoking book. There is praise worthy rigor with which the author has constructed all his statements - footnotes galore. This is what you get when somebody applies mathematical rigor at a problem which is highly unstructured and vastly open in approaches and interpretations. And such rigor is possible only with brutal honesty, clearly evident in the preface by the author where he chides people who are converting this book to a course in itself.
If you are interested in design, or the act of creation, this book is for you. It delves into the structure of a problem of unstructured or complex design challenge (or creation) and provides rich insights. In the broadest sense everyone is a designer of their own life, a design challenge of high flux and complexity. And this book sets you free from that ego by teaching you the emergence of form as an impersonal activity. The solution/form emerges out of careful analysis of the problem.
The concept of unselfconscious vs self-conscious design as the primary difference between primitive & modern design/construction process is interesting, apt and rigorously presented.
The description of a 'diagram' provided in here is another gem. Though not stated explicitly, draws a parallel to gestalt principles. The diagram emerges as a solution - apt and answering the requirements charted out.
If you are interested in design, or the act of creation, this book is for you. It delves into the structure of a problem of unstructured or complex design challenge (or creation) and provides rich insights. In the broadest sense everyone is a designer of their own life, a design challenge of high flux and complexity. And this book sets you free from that ego by teaching you the emergence of form as an impersonal activity. The solution/form emerges out of careful analysis of the problem.
The concept of unselfconscious vs self-conscious design as the primary difference between primitive & modern design/construction process is interesting, apt and rigorously presented.
The description of a 'diagram' provided in here is another gem. Though not stated explicitly, draws a parallel to gestalt principles. The diagram emerges as a solution - apt and answering the requirements charted out.
April 11, 2020
...every design problem begins with an effort to achieve fitness between two entities: the form in question and its context. The form is the solution to the problem; the context defines the problem. In other words, when we speak of design, the real object of discussion is not the form alone, but the ensemble comprising the form and its context.
No matter if you are designing houses, software or something else, this is a must-read.
Christopher Alexander, the author of this work, outlines a formalized approach for finding solutions to design problems, thus transcending beyond the common opinion that this is strictly a creative process. Although the writing style is academic and the book might feel tedious at times, there are numerous takeaway ideas, so the text is well-worth the time.
May 11, 2020
I can see how the thinking from this book and its successor Pattern Language was so influential in the development of software languages, even though the books are more about the architecture of homes and cities.
I got good value from the definitions of form, fit, and the process of design.
I also got good value from the notion that, in the context of an overall design, a form and its fitness are part of a network of binary relationships. That in this network, a change in the fitness of one form may affect the fitness of several others. (vis., the network of lights analogy.) The implications of this conceptualization of design are interesting to think about, especially where the purpose of encapsulation is concerned.
I gave the book four stars because the first half was fantastic, but the math in the second half doesn't seem useful.
I got good value from the definitions of form, fit, and the process of design.
I also got good value from the notion that, in the context of an overall design, a form and its fitness are part of a network of binary relationships. That in this network, a change in the fitness of one form may affect the fitness of several others. (vis., the network of lights analogy.) The implications of this conceptualization of design are interesting to think about, especially where the purpose of encapsulation is concerned.
I gave the book four stars because the first half was fantastic, but the math in the second half doesn't seem useful.
December 29, 2022
This is a short but dense book that stays true to its name. There isn't a grand narrative and Alexander does not waste your time by interleaving his notes with extended examples. Instead, you get incredibly terse nuggets of wisdom about the nature of human creativity and a whole vocabulary to talk about the process of design. As a software engineer, I found this incredibly valuable. To say that this work from this 60s was ahead of its time is an understatement.
The book has two parts and an extensive appendix that consumes half of the page count. Appendix 1 has a fully worked out example of the application of the ideas from this book. I wish more books would do this so that the dense part could be read by itself.
The book has two parts and an extensive appendix that consumes half of the page count. Appendix 1 has a fully worked out example of the application of the ideas from this book. I wish more books would do this so that the dense part could be read by itself.
March 11, 2024
Right out of the gate, Alexander dunks on Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Buckminster Fuller,
and then spends the rest of the book outlining a method of designing forms that meet the needs of their context instead of designing forms that look cool while meeting some needs at the cost of others.
I'm using Alexander's method to redesign my art studio.
Next, I'm using it to redesign my diet according to my individual needs.
After that, I'm going to turn the method loose on my city while I read more of Alexander's books.
Don't let the logical mathematical arguments scare you away from this essential design text.
Alexander makes them manageable by giving practical examples.
Highly recommend this book, looking forward to reading more from this author.
and then spends the rest of the book outlining a method of designing forms that meet the needs of their context instead of designing forms that look cool while meeting some needs at the cost of others.
I'm using Alexander's method to redesign my art studio.
Next, I'm using it to redesign my diet according to my individual needs.
After that, I'm going to turn the method loose on my city while I read more of Alexander's books.
Don't let the logical mathematical arguments scare you away from this essential design text.
Alexander makes them manageable by giving practical examples.
Highly recommend this book, looking forward to reading more from this author.
August 1, 2022
An attempt to axiomatise the design process, as is already done in mathematics and, to some extent, in the engineering disciplines. This is based on the observation that design success resolves around the "misfit" and coupling of requirements and how we might simplify that problem. The idea is neat (although a tad impractical) and the embryo of his pattern language approach is evident. Glad I read it.
July 8, 2017
Really interesting framework for thinking about complex problems and solutions. I'm skeptical about application of the actual method. Exhaustively defining similarly-scoped misfits with simple relationships to all others seems difficult, and subject to the linguistic ambiguity he's trying to avoid. It could be cool to try out using modern graph visualization tools.
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