Life In Design: Christopher Alexander and the Nature Of Order

How we build reflects how we understand the world around us. The architectural style of a period thus corresponds to the cosmological and epistemological beliefs then dominant, and objections to one are likely to line up with objections to the other. Christopher Alexander provides a strong example of that tendency. His opposition to architectural modernism and postmodernism reflects opposition to tendencies within modernity that present themselves as rational and liberating but are in his view very different in character, and his project involves restoring balance to modern understandings in a way that makes room for what he calls “the phenomenon of life.” He thus reaches results similar in basic ways to those reached in traditional and vernacular architecture but in a very different manner. It is not clear however that his approach can be generally followed.

Keywords: Christopher Alexander; modernity; science; traditionalism.