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
The arbitrariness of the sign A key difference between verbal language and the modernist ideal of a visual “language” is the arbitrariness of a verbal sign, which has no natural, inherent relationship to the concept it represents. The sound of the word “horse”, for example, does not innately resemble the concept of a horse. Ferdinand de Saussure called this arbitrariness the fundamental feature of the verbal sign. The meaning of a sign is generated by its relationship to other signs in the language: the sign’s legibility lies in its difference from other signs. Ellen Lupton & J. Abbott Miller, The ABC's of ▲■●: The Bauhaus and Design Theory Gods of the Word soundmeaninglanguage