The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher W. Alexander

And as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been.

The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume in the Center for Environmental Structure series, Christopher Alexander presents in it a new theory of architecture, building, and planning which has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being.Īlexander writes, There is one timeless way of building. Now, at last, there is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself. Yet the power of present-day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable, even afraid, to say openly that they dislike what is happening, because they are afraid to seem foolish, afraid perhaps that they will be laughed at. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. The great traditional buildings of the past, the. Indeed, some consider it not primarily an architectural work at all but 'a book on philosophy with architectural examples.The theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The style used in The Timeless Way of Building is also unusual for an architectural text, at times resembling prose poetry or religious scripture.

There are also numerous full-page photo illustrations throughout the book, some of which are referenced by the text and some of which are simply an additional visual argument to complement the words. It is written as a long series of italicized headlines followed by short sections providing more detail as Alexander suggests in the foreword, the 552-page book can be read in an hour by only reading the headlines, which frame the book's argument. Alexander attempts to define the idea by surrounding it with existing concepts that reflect a part of the quality with no name but are not sufficient to define it individually.

In the book, Alexander introduces the concept of the 'quality without a name', and argues that we should seek to include this nameless quality in our buildings.

It has had a huge influence on creative thinking, especially in the areas of architecture and software design. Although it came out later, it is essentially the introduction to A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment, providing the philosophical background to the Center for Environmental Structure series. The Timeless Way of Building is a 1979 book by Christopher Alexander that proposes a new theory of architecture (and design in general) that relies on the understanding and configuration of design patterns.

The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher W. Alexander