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 Age of the Essay An Essay by Paul Graham www.paulgraham.com EssayerExpressing ideas helps to form themFlow interesting (The Meander) Follow the brushThe Anxiety of Sequence writing
Essayer To understand what a real essay is, we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far. To Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 published a book of what he called "essais." He was doing something quite different from what lawyers do, and the difference is embodied in the name. Essayer is the French verb meaning "to try" and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out. What this site is
Expressing ideas helps to form them If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That's why I write them. The situation talks backWriting is one way to go about thinkingThe discoveries you make in the making making
Flow interesting (The Meander) The Meander (aka Menderes) is a river in Turkey. As you might expect, it winds all over the place. But it doesn't do this out of frivolity. The path it has discovered is the most economical route to the sea. The river's algorithm is simple. At each step, flow down. For the essayist this translates to: flow interesting. Of all the places to go next, choose the most interesting. One can't have quite as little foresight as a river. I always know generally what I want to write about. But not the specific conclusions I want to reach; from paragraph to paragraph I let the ideas take their course. Always produce interest