Tag Archives: Christopher Alexander

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The Decadence of Decay Gives Way

As we turn to Spring, in the northern hemisphere, the decadence of decay gives way to the glories of Spring.  Already the yellows of Forsythia and the pinks of the cherry blossoms line the roadsides in the city.

I can see, now, that this project did not fit well with the book Luminous Ground.  At least not in some ways since the book arises from and is grounded in architecture and not nature, the sphere in which I choose to work.  While decay in architectural structures most often arises from neglect, decay in nature is part of the process of one life giving way, dissolving into the whole, and making room for new life to arise.

I appreciate Alexander’s journey from the patterns of pleasing in architecture to the concluding chapters of the Luminous Ground.  It is affirming to see his conclusions echo my observations and the teachings I have received from nature and a few people in my lifetime.

The Beauty that was:

Clinging On

Clinging On

Gives way to the Beauty arising:

Hosta's joy pierces Magnolia's grieving

Hosta’s joy pierces Magnolia’s grieving

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Cristopher Alexander -day 2 p40-60 – rachel

” i want it to be possible for us all to make buildings, benches, windows, which have that simple comfort in them”

“life is a quality of space itself”

“Life itself is damaged, and nothing which is perfect can be truly alive”

“the processes needed to create life were damaged in the 20th century”

“it is our main intention to make things which feel alive in our own time”

“this quality of life is a pervasive one. It includes the ordinary biological life, which we usually forget when we are trying to judge buildings, but it also includes a kind of life which happens, to a greater or lesser degree, in the very stones, concrete and wood posts of which the building is made. Thus, it is a kind of life which is profound in a painting of apple blossom by Van Gogh, less profound in an advertising poster. It is a quality that exists in space, in every stone, in every brush stroke, just as much as it occurs in every plant and every insect, and in the ducks,which walk about in my garden.
Thus, it is a conception of life and architechture in which the house i live in becomes a greater thing because of the ducks in the garden – and it is a conception in which the beautiful shape of a window not only gives more life to the window,, but also enlarges the window and the house.
It is also, a conception in which my own spirit, and the spirit in each of us, is enlarged to the extent that the spirit itself has greater life in it”

“many animistic religions too, for example, those of African tribes, or of the Australian aborigines treat each part of the world as having its own life and spirit”

The reason i am picking these sections out is simply that i want to really see how to build a better,more harmonious world, and these seem to highlight the issues neatly

for example,day 1 -we dont really understand order, this needs more investigation

the exploration of the qualities of life,and how these -can be more or less expressed is really fascinating

and,the extention of the definition of life is important

i have thought that the modern world view, and belief that animistic spirit based world views were immature was sort of wrong,,,, certainly that belief system was chucked out, not integrated and sythesised well. This seems to be moving in a different direction, and one i can relate to, and integrate

Also as a yoga teacher the practise of embodying spirit or revealing spirit in the body has been primary, i love to see this extended into buidlings and life generally, just reading this increases my well-being

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Christopher Alexander. Day 1 Rachel

Prologue – page 1

” the activity we call building creates the physical order of the world”

“but, although we are responsible for the creation of order on this enormous scale, we rarely even know what the word ‘order’ means”

“Thus we go, willy, nilly, creating order in the world, without knowing what it is, why we are doing it, what significance it may have”

“the claim that all space and matter, organic or inorganic, has some degree of life in it, and that matter/space is more alive or less alive according to its structure and arrangement”

“the other is the claim that all matter/space has some degree of ‘self’ in it, and that this self, or anyway, some aspect of the personal, is something that influences all matter/space – and everything we know as matter, but now think to be mechanical”

“indeed the universe as we have know it….. has to be replaced by a fundamentally different and more personal view of matter”

“in some degree the ugliness of what has been created is caused by new relations between time, money, labour, and materials and by a set of conditions in which the real thing – authentic architechture that has deep feeling and true worth is almost impossible”

“in tradition society, building was almost always something that stood for human value”

“how is is possible to improve the situation, when the process that causes so much destruction is so deeply rooted in society”

“some things are more beautiful, and some less”

“even the smallest building has ofer of great complexity”

Chapter 1 p28

“in the 20th century, what we meant by life was defined chiefly by the life of an individual organism”

“throughout this book i shall be looking for a broad conception of life, in which each thing- regardless of what it is – has some degree of life. Each stone, rafter, and piece of concrete has some degree of life”

Chapter 3

” we do feel there are different degrees of life in things, – and that this feeling is shared by almost everyone”

“when we see waves in the sea, we certainly do feel they have a kind of life”

“it is also clear that one lake feels more alive than another – a crystal clear mountain lake, for instance, compared with a stagnant pond, which feels more dead”

“we shall see later that this feeling that there is more life in one case than in another, is corellated with a stuctural difference in the things themselves – a difference which can be made precise and measured”

Interested in the idea that all matter has a degree of selfhood, also moved by, and can see clearly now, how the social/economic system is so interwoven through all and everything we create, and its limitiations

Its clear that the question - what nourishes, what sustains, what creates more beauty, and harmony? is inextricably linked to the condition of humanity’s concsciouness as a whole, and is, in a very real sense held/limited by the traditional structures of the past’ strongly – would it be seen as more practical to evolve these strong binds, transitioning them or to try and find enough energy to burst through into a whole new order of complexity and design? I suspect the latter

 

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CA – Day 1 – pgs 0 to 40

Pg 16

How can you make something which has no “I” in it, when the whole process of making anything comes from the “I”?

Pg 26

What is a living world?

Pg 35

We experience degree of life as an essential concept which goes to the heart of our feelings about the natural world, and which nourishes us fundamentally, as a fact about the world.

Pg 36

This quality includes an overall sense of functional liberation and free inner spirit. It makes us feel comfortable. Above all it makes us feel alive when we experience it.

Pg 38

It is rather rough, not manicured. It is comfortable, rough around the edges, smooth as if it has been rubbed together. This kind of life is the ordinary life which is not connected to high art or fashion. It has nothing to do with images. It occurs most deeply when things are simply going well, when we are having a good time, or when we are experiencing joy and sorrow – when we experience the real.

The freedom which arises when life is at its most spiritual, and also most ordinary, arises just when we are “drunk in God”, as the Sufis say – most blithe and unfettered. Under these circumstances, we are free of our concepts, able to act directly to the circumstances we encounter, and least constrained by affections, concepts and ideas. 

Decision -  to explore first through experimentation, rather than conceptualisation.

Experiment 1: trying to inhabit CA’s eyes holding his question in mind “What is a living world” .  Swallowing up his pictures. Based on them, now looking and noticing what degrees of aliveness I might assign to the environment around me. eg 1. the aliveness of different trees – (the things out there that I see). eg 2. the intersubjective spaces . Noticing a new attention. Seeing new things. Asking interesting questions about life. What is my intuitive feeling? What qualities am I observing, valuing? Being swallowed up by the phenomenal.

Experiment 2: asking friends what is most alive for them and getting very different viewpoints. “It is not the actual spaces – it is more about me and whether I am alive in myself.” “It is about my flow and the relationship of my flow to others, or environment around me – can it flow or is it blocked?” 

Reflecting on how to capture life in other ways than the visual, framed, a moment in time images that CA uses. I am too much in my eyes as a result of this first experiment. I am feeling through my eyes. I need to bring on line my other senses. My dog is experiencing life through his nose. Would he describe similar qualities that he experiences in a landscape as the ones CA describes, or I might experience?

Experiment 3: being aware in action of the feeling of aliveness with others in a space…   Image: an intense connected conversation where people are moving from more formal positioning in my patio (see pic ) to: one person  leaning against the table, another cross legged on the table, another leaning forward in a chair. Does being real mean being unmanicured in the use of furniture? Is it about arrangement of the energy of giving and receiving? The degree of comfort we have with each other?  The space itself which nurtures us, helps us to flow and enables us to go deep?  others????

 Then and during…. reading the different posts and comments and facebook…. a stream of consciousness… eloquence…. swirling possibilities “rippling all the ways up and all the way down.” Overwhelm. Focus. Where is the centre? Where is the whole? Is it back with me – my subjective “I”? Or perhaps it is a potential…. a spaciousness opening up.

Where would I like to be sitting or standing or lounging with you all in conversation that would enable the great aliveness of being? I see a community space that enables being unbound, unfettered, the most real, laughing as I free myself from concepts to provide the space for something new, not worried about my rough edges, but knowing that as they rub against your rough edges we will create new shapes together. Hehehehe. :)

Next post I might take off my experimenting hat and put on another. Hmmmm what will it be? What pregnant questions already existing within me can I juxtapose with this journey of exploration?

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Summary of Christopher Alexander

While I was waiting for my order of Christopher Alexander’s books to come through I found this summary presentation from Stanford Uni of Christopher Alexander’s work which gives a sense of context. Very quick to peruse with lots of his quotes throughout.

On centres and wholeness (from Nature of Order. Sorry no page number):

There is a class of entities which I call centers appearing everywhere in space.

They appear where they do, as a result of the configuration which appears in the world. Every part of the world, at every scale, has centers appearing in it. The system of these centers pays a vital role in determining what happens in the world. The system as a whole—that is to say, its pattern— is the thing which we generally think of when we speak about something as a whole.

Although the system of centers is fluid, and changes from time to time as theconfiguration and arrangement and conditions all change. Still, at any given moment, these centers form a definite pattern. This pattern of all the centers appearing in a given part of space—constitutes the wholeness of that part of space. It is this structure, which is responsible for its degree of life.