The Nature of Order, Book Three: a Vision of a Living World (Hardcover)

Christopher Alexander

ISBN 10: 0972652930 / ISBN 13: 9780972652933

Verlag: Center for Environmental Structure, California, 2005

Beschreibung

Hardcover. In Book Three of this four-volume work, Alexander presents hundreds of his own buildings and those of his contemporaries who have used methods consistent with the theory of living process. Containing nearly seven hundred pages of projects which have been built and planned in a number of countries over a thirty-year period, this book amply illustrates the impact of living process on the world. The book provides the reader with an intuitive feel for the kind of world which is needed to generate living structure in the world and its communities; its style and geometry and its ecological and natural character. The projects include public buildings, neighbourhoods, housing built by people for themselves, public urban space, rooms, gardens, ornament, colours, details of construction and construction innovation. These buildings, and the methods needed to design and build them, define living structure in a practical way that can be re-applied across a range of other projects. In the 4 interconnected but independent vols of The Nature of Order, Alexander has tried to grasp the fundamental truths of traditional ways of building. In Book 3, A Vision of a Living World, he presents hundreds of his own buildings, and those of contemporaries who have used his theory. Complete set of 4 vols available: ISBN 0972652906. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 9780972652933

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: The Nature of Order, Book Three: a Vision of a Living World (Hardcover)
• Verlag: Center for Environmental Structure, California
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 0972652930
• ISBN-13: 9780972652933
• Einband: Hardcover
• Auflage: 1. Auflage
• Zustand: new

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

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.

From a practical point of view, A Vision of a Living World is the most compelling of the four books. Hundreds of photographs and plans of new buildings that have living structure, and the processes which gave them life, demonstrate, for the first time, what the concept of living structure can mean in buildings of our time and of the future.

The really good building. The really good space. Places that reach an archetypal level of human experience, reaching across centuries, across continents, across cultures, across technology, across building materials and climates. They connect us to ourselves. They connect us to our feelings. What is more, as we study them, we realize that they all share a similar geometry. How are they made? The practical task of making beauty is the principal subject of this volume.

Hundreds of examples of buildings and places are shown. New forms for large buildings, public spaces, communities, neighborhoods, lead to discussions about equally important small scale of detail and ornament and colour. Many of the examples are built by Alexander and his colleagues; other buildings explored take us around the world and through time.

With these examples, lay people, architects, builders, artists, and students are able to make this new framework real for themselves, understand how it works, and understand its significance. The book is a feast for the eyes, and mind, and heart. Places created by living process (Book 2) have living structure (Book 1), and they connect us to our essence as people (Book 4). The seven hundred pictures of Alexander's buildings and works of art shown in this book demonstrate in detail what he means.

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.

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Christopher Alexander is a builder, craftsman, general contractor, architect, painter, and teacher. He taught from 1963 to 2002 as Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now Professor Emeritus. He has spent his life running construction projects, experimenting with new building methods and materials, and crafting carefully articulated buildings- all to advance the idea that people can build environments in which they will thrive. Acting on his deeply held conviction that, as a society, we must recover the means by which we can build and maintain healthy living environments, he has lived and worked in many cultures, and built buildings all over the world. Making neighborhoods, building-complexes, buildings, balustrades, columns, ceilings, windows, tiles, ornaments, models and mockups, paintings, furniture, castings and carvings- all this has been his passion, and is the cornerstone from which his paradigm- changing principles have been derived. Professor Alexander is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his doctorate in Architecture from Harvard University after completing degrees at Cambridge University in mathematics and architecture. He is the winner of the first medal for research awarded by the American Institute of Architects, a member of the Swedish Royal Academy, recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award from the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and the recipient of the Vincent Scully Prize awarded by the National Building Museum in the US, among many other prestigious awards throughout his career. Christopher Alexander writes ""I believe we are on the threshold of a new era when the proper understanding of the deep questions of space, as they are embodied in architecture will play a revolutionary role in the way we see the world and will do for the world view of the 21st and 22nd centuries, what physics did for the 19th and 20th.

Christopher Alexander is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, architecture, 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 and the University of California, Berkeley.