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The Nature Of OrderThe Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe is a four-volume work by Christopher Alexander published in 2003-2004. In his earlier work, Alexander attempted to formulate the principles that lead to a good built environment as patterns, or recurring design solutions. However, he has come to believe that patterns themselves are not enough, and that one needs a "morphogenetic" understanding of the formation of the built environment. Volume 1 attempts to define "life" in the built environment and determine why one built environment may have more life than another. Important to this idea is his notion of centers: Centers are those particular identified sets, or systems, which appear within the larger whole as distinct and noticeable parts. They appear because they have noticeable distinctness, which makes them separate out from their surroundings and makes them cohere, and it is from the arrangements of these coherent parts that other coherent parts appear. The life or intensity of one center is increased or decreased according to the position and intensity of other nearby centers. Above all, centers become most intense when the centers which they are made of help each other. The first volume contains an exposition of what Alexander calls the fundamental properties, which are those that are possessed by environments which have more life. He argues that processes that lead to a good built environment are those that tend to increase one or more of these properties. The properties are: 1. LEVELS OF SCALE is the way that a strong center is made stronger partly by smaller strong centers contained in it, and partly by its larger strong centers which contain it. The gaps between the sizes of centers should be small - 2:1 to 4:1 is best. 2. STRONG CENTERS defines the way that a strong center requires a spatial field-like effect, created by other centers, as the primary source of its strength. A strong center is one toward which other centers "point". 3. BOUNDARIES is the way in which the field-like effect of a center is strengthened by the creation of a ring-like center, made of smaller centers which surround and intensify the first. The boundary also unites the center with the centers beyond it, thus strengthening it further. 4. ALTERNATING REPETITION is the way in which centers are strengthened when they repeat, by the insertion of other centers between the repeating ones. 5. POSITIVE SPACE is the way that a given center must draw its strength, in part, from the strength of other centers immediately adjacent to it in space. An analogy is of ripening corn, each kernel swelling until it meets the others, each one having its own positive shape caused by its growth as a cell from the inside. In poor design, sometimes, in order to give an entity good shape, the background space where it lies has left-over shape, or no shape at all. It is merely left over. 6. GOOD SHAPE is the characteristic of a center that it is somehow beautiful by itself. It is the way that the strength of a given center depends on its actual shape, and the way this effect requires that even the shape, its boundary, and the space around it are made up of strong centers. 7. LOCAL SYMMETRIES is the way that the intensity of a given center is increased by the extent to which other smaller centers which it contains are themselves arranged in locally symmetrical groups. In general, a large symmetry of the simplified neoclassicist type rarely contributes to the life of a thing, because in any complex whole in the world, there are nearly always complex, asymmetrical forces at work - matters of location, and context, and function - which require that symmetry be broken. 8. DEEP INTERLOCK AND AMBIGUITY is the way in which the intensity of a given center can be increased when it is attached to nearby strong centers, through a third set of strong centers that ambiguously belong to both. 9. CONTRAST is the way that a center is strengthened by the sharpness of the distinction between its character and the character of surrounding centers. 10. ROUGHNESS is the way that the field effect of a given center draws its strength, necessarily, from irregularities in the sizes, shapes, and arrangements of other nearby centers. It allows the centers to be adapted to their local conditions, without being constrained by an overall regularity. It is not a residue of technically inferior culture, or the result of handcraft or inaccuracy. The seemingly rough solution which seems superficially inaccurate is in fact more precise, not less so, because it comes about as a result of paying attention to what matters most, and letting go of what matters less. Roughness can never be consciously or deliberately created -- then it is merely contrived. 11. GRADIENTS is the way a center is strengthened by a graded series of different-sized centers which then "point" to the new center and intensify its field effect. 12. ECHOES is the way that the strength of a given center depends on similarities of angle and orientation and systems of centers forming characteristic angles thus forming larger centers, among the centers it contains. 13. THE VOID is the way that the intensity of every center depends on the existence of a still place--an empty center--somewhere in its field, surrounded by and contrasted with the clutter of the stuff and fabric all around it. 14. SIMPLICITY AND INNER CALM is the way the strength of a center depends on its simplicity--on the process of reducing the number of different centers which exist in it, while increasing the strength of these centers to make them weigh more. All centers that are note actively supporting other centers are stripped out, cut out, excised. It is essential that the great beauty and intricacy of ornament go only just far enough to bring this calm into being, and not so far that it destroys it. 15. NON-SEPARATENESS is the way the life and strength of a center is merged smoothly-sometimes even indistinguishably--with the centers that form its surroundings. Without this fifteenth property, even the best center is still often somehow strangely separate, cut off from what lies around it, lonely, awkward in its loneliness, too brittle, too sharp, perhaps too well delineated - above all too egocentric, because it shouts "Look at me, look at me, look how beautiful I am." External resources *Overview of The Nature of Order at patternlanguage.com
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