Oxford University Press
The Timeless Way of Building
The Timeless Way of Building
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The theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. 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.
Now, at last, there is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself.
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.
Alexander writes, "There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. 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. 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."
Review
About the author
For nearly 50+ years Christopher Alexander has challenged the architectural establishment, sometimes uncomfortably, to pay more attention to the human beings at the center of design. To do so he has combined top-flight scientific training, award-winning architectural research, patient observation and testing throughout his building projects, and a radical but profoundly influential set of ideas that have extended far beyond the realm of architecture.
In the process Alexander has authored a series of groundbreaking works, including A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction and The Timeless Way of Building. His most recent publication continues that ground-breaking work, the four-volume book set, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, incorporates more than 30 years of research, study, teaching and building. It was described by Laura Miller of the New York Times “the kind of book every serious reader should wrestle with once in a while: [a] fat, challenging, grandiose tract that encourages you to take apart the way you think and put it back together again.”
Alexander was born in Vienna, Austria and raised in Oxford and Chichester, England. He was awarded the top open scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1954, in chemistry and physics, and went on to read mathematics at Cambridge. He took his doctorate in architecture at Harvard (the first Ph.D. in architecture ever awarded at Harvard), and was elected to the society of Fellows at Harvard University in 1961. During the same period he worked at MIT in transportation theory and in computer science, and at Harvard in cognitive science. His pioneering ideas from that time were known to be highly influential in those fields.
Alexander became Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley in 1963, and taught there continuously for 38 years, becoming Professor Emeritus in 2001. He founded the Center for Environmental Structure in 1967, published hundreds of papers and several dozen books, and built more than 200 buildings around the world.
Book Details
- ISBN
- 9780195024029
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Authors
- Christopher Alexander
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Published Date
- August 23, 1979
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 576
- Physical Info
- 2 in H x 7.4 in L x 5.5 in W (1.5 lb)
