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Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order, by Nikos A. Salingaros

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ONE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'S MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS

Ever since I posted Some Notes on Christopher Alexander, I have been deluged by questions about the Nature of Order. This book is due to be published by Oxford University Press. During its course of writing, the Nature of Order has expanded into its present format of four large volumes. The first two are essentially ready for publication, while the last two are complete, and need only revisions. The decision is still pending on whether to publish volumes as they are ready, or to wait and publish all four volumes together. In any case, we are optimistic that all four volumes will be out by the end of this year (1997). I will announce its publication as soon as I know for sure.

The Nature of Order has been in preparation for over thirty years, and encapsulates all of Christopher Alexander's theories. My own modest contribution has been to help Professor Alexander edit the manuscript during the past ten years. In this monumental book, Alexander develops a comprehensive theory of how matter comes together to form coherent structures. Parallelling, but not copying, recent results from complexity theory, he argues that the same laws apply to all structures in the universe; from atoms, to crystals, to living forms, to galaxies. Human beings apparently have a built-in (though subconscious) understanding of these laws. Man's creations have the option of following the same laws, or violating them. Those that follow them result in our greatest achievements, either as artifacts, as buildings, or as cities.

This book promises to be of fundamental importance to computer programmers, defining in the words of some experts, "a new paradigm for programming". This is remarkable, since the book is written primarily in the interest of architects (of buildings, not software). It turns out that the same organizing principles apply to computer programs as to buildings. This connection was made recently by several visionary programmers, and has already generated remarkable insights and results. A good overview is the book by Richard Gabriel, Patterns of Software (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966; with a foreword by Christopher Alexander).

Far-reaching results on urban planning were given some years ago in Alexander's famous article "A City is Not a Tree" (see the article by Roger Evans in the Urban Design Quarterly) , and in the Pattern Language and A New Theory of Urban Design. His solutions were abstracted from and checked against urban sites that work, which is sufficient reason to apply them to urban sites that don't. He goes much further in The Nature of Order, showing that the rules governing the growth of neighborhoods and cities arise from a fundamental law of nature. Alexander has discovered the process that governs the growth of a successful city - which is the same process by which organic and inorganic forms evolve. Surprisingly, the law concerns the process; not the form or plan. This whole approach might seem unfamiliar to urban planners who think in terms of static images, though biologists will immediately recognize it as correct. These universal laws apply not only to "traditional" cities - they apply to all cities, in every age and in every culture, that enhance human activity.

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REVIEWS

My personal opinion is that this book will be recognized as one of the twentieth century's most important documents. Although I am admittedly biased, the same opinion is expressed by those who have had a chance to read copies of earlier drafts.
Nikos Salingaros, professor of mathematics, San Antonio Texas.

A couple of years ago I read the unpublished manuscript of the Nature of Order and found it to be remarkable - one of the most impartant books I've read.
Ken Foster, architect, Austin Texas.

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THE NATURE OF ORDER
by Christopher Alexander

Table of Contents (tentative)

Prologue: The Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe

Book One: The Phenomenon of Life

• Degrees of life
• How life comes from wholeness
• Fifteen fundamental properties
• The awakening of space
• The mirror of the self
• The personal nature of order

Book Two: The Process of Creating Life

• The principle of unfolding wholeness
• Structure-preserving transformations
• Examples in traditional towns and buildings
• Perversity and arbitrariness of early modern design
• Is a hyper-modern process of unfolding possible?
• The fundamental process
• Deep feeling
• A new architecture

Book Three: A Vision of a Modern City

• The fundamental process repeated ten million times
• A vision of a modern city
• Pure process: the achievement of living space
• Defining the essential centers
• Volume and site design
• Working out the structure
• Building details
• Necessary changes in society
• Simplicity

Book Four: The Luminous Ground

• Existence of the "I"
• Ten thousand mirrors of the self
• Color and inner light
• Emergence of a being
• The face of God

Epilogue: The Art of Building