The Timeless Way of Building A Book by Christopher Alexander www.patternlanguage.com Mind of no mindThe quality without a nameAn objective matterBitternessThe most precious thing we ever have+27 More Some emptiness in usDeliberate actsNo kindpatternsof.designA Pattern LanguageNon-architectsThe Side View #17: Susan Ingham & Chris AndrewsThe usages of life architecturemakingbuildingurbanismbeautyconstructionzen
A Pattern Language A Book by Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa www.goodreads.com Its place in the web of nature9. Scattered Work21. Four-Story Limit51. Green Streets53. Main Gateways+27 More Deliberate actspatternsof.design125 Best Architecture BooksThe Timeless Way of BuildingThe design systems between usCollaborative Information Architecture at Scale architectureurbanismlifeconstruction
A City Is Not a Tree An Essay by Christopher Alexander www.patternlanguage.com Strands of lifeImpending destructionThe right overlapThe difficulty of designing complexityPolitical chains of influence+8 More Trees and graphsThe dishonest mask of pretended orderThe problem with treesBoth practical and aesthetic concerns citiesurbanismdesignarchitecturemath
Notes on the Synthesis of Form A Book by Christopher Alexander www.hup.harvard.edu I could do better than thatThis small internal quaverTheir wrongness is somehow more immediate mathdesignarchitectureformproblems
The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth A Book by Christopher Alexander www.goodreads.com Two generating systemsTwo types of building productionSystem ASystem BThis has harmed modern society greatly+24 More What the prototype tells youOn the "Building" of Software and WebsitesBack to the Drawing BoardReading the landscape architectureurbanismbeautyconstruction
The Nature of Order A Book by Christopher Alexander www.natureoforder.com Levels of ScaleStrong CentersBoundariesAlternating RepetitionPositive Space+10 More Strength from both mass and form architectureurbanismgoodnessbeauty
Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture A Dialogue by Christopher Alexander & Peter Eisenman www.katarxis3.com The realm of feelingPanicThe pitched roofThe trick of little machinesMerely a building+2 More
A Reflection of the Truth An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by Roger Kitching The need to recordMental infrastructureScientific writingA three-layered process of documentationIncidental details+1 More
The need to record With collecting comes the need to record. A specimen without a label is simply a (sometimes) pretty object. Without its associated data it is scientifically worthless. informationorganization
Mental infrastructure The diary provides the mental infrastructure that stimulates the mind to remember. To serve as a reminder memory
Scientific writing What Mick Southern taught me was both the imperative to and the means of writing scientific prose—“if it’s not published it’s not done,” as a later adviser put it. Mock showed me that the rather dry technical requirements of scientific writing did not necessarily mean that elegance, humor, and even wit need be excluded from the scientists’ products. Selling new ideasYou cannot consume what is not produced sciencewriting
A three-layered process of documentation A three-layered process of documentation: (1) First, there is the field notebook. This is where the actual numbers are recorded, together with passing observations relevant to the interpretation of these numbers. Paper is still proving more durable than electronic data. (2) The journal is a parallel record to that of the notebook—a daily account of events, thoughts, and observations. (3) Last of the three strata, then, are the publications. Traditionally, in science, these are articles in academic journals leavened with chapters in books. To be successful, a young scientist need aspire to no more than these two forms of output together with their oral versions at interminable conferences and meetings of learned societies. There came a time in my scientific development, however, when other forms of publication became important: magazines articles, and writing books. notetakingrecords
Incidental details In these journals lay the incidental details by which a book can be differentiated from a set of scientific articles. Such incidental details can become ends in themselves. details
Memory prompts Journals are memory prompts and perhaps capture exquisite (and not so exquisite) moments of experience. notetakingmemoryexperience