The Hammock Papers: Christopher Alexander

07 December 2009

Christopher Alexander

Christopher Alexander on understanding ...
"I read a passage in an ancient Chinese painting manual—the Mustard Seed Garden manual of painting—which made the situation clear to me.

The writer of that manual describes how, in his search for a way of painting, he had discovered for himself the same central way that thousands of others like him had also discovered for themselves, throughout the course of history. He says that the more one understands of painting, the more one recognizes that the art of painting is essentially one way, which will always be discovered and rediscovered, over and over again, because it is connected with the very nature of painting, and must be discovered by anybody who takes painting seriously. The idea of style is meaningless: what we see as a style (of a person or of an age) is nothing but another individual effort to penetrate the central secret of painting, which is given by the Tao, but cannot itself be named.

The more I learn about towns and buildings, the more I feel the same thing to be true. It is true that many of the historic styles of building have some quality in common – they have it not because they are old, but because man has, over and over again, approached the secret which is at the heart of architecture. In fact, the principles which make a building good, are simple and direct – they follow directly from the nature of human beings, and the laws of nature – and any person who penetrates these laws will, as he does so, come closer and closer to this great tradition, in which man has sought for the same thing, over and over again, and come always to the same conclusions."

In one way or another, we all design ... how we live, what we wear, what we eat ... we control all of it. Essentially its creation and how we use design can be broken down into patterns. Alexander describes this in his work.

I really enjoy his thinking and the way he writes.

Winning the 2009 Scully Award recognizing exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design, here.

Alexander's site is here.

His books are here. Don't pass up A Timeless Way of Building.

Thanks Kelly!

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL