Christopher
Alexander
1936-2022
Photo: Sophie Elizabeth Alexander
"Christopher Alexander and his work have been a source of hope for many architects and designers like me who have been searching for a meaningful and wholesome way of practice. Apart from all that people already know about him, I think it is the HOPE he has invoked in so many generations that is his greatest contribution, which is the greatest contribution one can make to a life…Though I never met him personally, while reading his texts it seems that he talks to us in first person, as if he is really here, holding our hands, taking us deep into his theory…We shall always try to make the world a bit more beautiful through our works as envisioned by him." Building Beauty student Mayank Pandey
In Memoriam
The architect Christopher Alexander, who has died aged 85, saw buildings and cities as living frameworks for human beings. Through designing, building, teaching and writing, he sought “to provide a complete working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building and planning.”
∘◦ ❉ ◦∘
By the time I got to know him he was just going out into the world and experiencing. Experiencing! There was no room for experience in the modern movement. He said let’s go out and see what works.
∘◦ ❉ ◦∘
Christopher Alexander, the Viennese-born professor, architect and theorist believed that ordinary people, not just trained architects, should have a hand in designing their houses, neighborhoods and cities, and proposed a method for doing so.
∘◦ ❉ ◦∘
And I think Christopher Alexander is one of the key thinkers we need in order to get to that new kind of world—a world we can imagine even in this modern era of total fragmentation.
∘◦ ❉ ◦∘
Architect, writer, teacher and theorist who believed above all in making places that enable people to be happy, creative and connected.
∘◦ ❉ ◦∘
Architect Christopher Alexander mined mathematics to find patterns for good living.
∘◦ ❉ ◦∘
…it turned out Alexander had questions for me; he had begun planning the development of Harbor Peak, a large plot of land in the hills above Brookings, Oregon, and had come to realize that the initial topographic surveying of the land was not only of vital importance to planning and mapping, but was possibly the first important step of the process for planning and development…
∘◦ ❉ ◦∘
Il Covile №637 June 2022 presented various excerpts from essays and interviews of Nikos Salingaros translated into Italian, including an interview of Alexander himself conducted by Salingaros. That special number attempted to fill in the gap of Alexander’s work for an Italian audience. The worldwide popularity of this issue brought requests for the original essays in English, which are scattered among various publications. And so now Il Covile is performing this public service by offering those collected essays here.
“I am trying to make a building which is like a smile on a person’s face”
“At Building Beauty we strive to continue and expand Chris’ vision and teaching throughout the world.”
Appreciations & Celebrations
The Prince of Wales at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London in 2009: “After all, nature, traditionally understood, is far, far more than a simple source-book of forms. One of the most important series of books of recent times, in my view – Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order – is both a compendium of living patterns seen in nature, absorbed over millennia into human traditions of building, and a brave search for the underlying principles that give rise to these patterns everywhere we look. It reveals, as well as anything can, why we can often recognize nature, and our own reflection more readily in a classical column, or in a humble farm building well-constructed, than in some glitzy new waveform warehouse. There have been architectural form languages and pattern languages practised over millennia that nourished humanity, and sustained human society, just as much as did our spoken languages.” On his ascendancy to the throne, The Architects’ Journal has published Prince Charles’ speech in full.
Yodan Rofè, Course Director for Building Beauty, relates his learning with Chris Alexander to Building Beauty’s learning process in the Venetian Letter. The architect is just a vehicle. The wholeness generates the design.
New York Review of Architecture’s Misha Semenov’ review’s Alexanders Legacy in “Pattern Makers”
Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson and Daniel Ohrenstein, an Alexander-inspired city engineer in Sarasota, Florida discuss the importance of Alexander’s work as offering “a vision of a livable future.”
Building Beauty student Aarti Dhingra’s tribute to Christopher Alexander on the ArchitectureLive! website.
Building Beauty faculty member Narendra Dengle’s “What makes Christopher Alexander’s vision of architecture timeless?” in Indian Express.
Building Beauty faculty member Duo Dickinson FAIA on Alexander as “perhaps the single most effective polymath architect of his generation” for Common Edge.
Building Beauty faculty member Nikos Salingaros’ appreciation of Alexander as “antidote to our civilization’s eager pursuit of self-annihilation” in the journal First Things.
Dil Green recollects working and studying with Christopher Alexander on YouTube.
Dorian Taylor talks about Christopher Alexander and the field of computing on The Informed Life podcast and in an extensive write-up on Substack.
Michael Mehaffy writes about Alexander’s “outsize influence, far beyond architecture” on the Planetizen website.
Building Beauty Memorial Video
Christopher Alexander - Life in Buildings
About Building Beauty
Information about the Building Beauty 2023-24 online/in person program in architecture is here.