In the first book of the four that constitute The Nature of Order, Christopher Alexander lays out the concepts and geometrical properties that lie the core of his architecture. These conceptual and design tools work on a static level; not yet considering how the design process involves a dynamic sequence of steps—this concept is developed in the succeeding Books. Here, we step back to build a deeper understanding of the core geometrical concepts and properties, laying the foundation for exploring Alexander’s dynamics, a unique perspective on the processes of living architecture.

All of Alexander’s work is driven by fundamental questions about what brings an environment to life, and how it is we create this living quality in the built world. In Book One, Alexander starts by highlighting problems in our modern world, pointing to the malaise created in our societies by the physical structure of our built environment—patterns and structures that restrict freedom, disrespect individual and community wellbeing, and prioritize the planner’s top-down perspective over the living experience of place. Something is dreadfully wrong with the way we have been shaping our environment for decades. We have become numb and have let our inborn sensitivity atrophy, accepting what others do to define our world. Alexander argues with conviction and the desire for rooting our sensibilities in new concepts that will allow us to build a world that is whole and alive… and provides the tools for achieving this. 

In his 1983 biography of Alexander (The Search for a New Paradigm in Architecture), Stephen Grabow relates how The Nature of Order came about through Alexander’s dissatisfaction with the impact of his books A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building on our built reality. It was not clear that those built results obtained from patterns alone actually healed the larger environments that they were a part of to the extent necessary. Alexander saw the results that others generated from his patterns could create important small and local improvements—better entrances, livelier living rooms, more beautiful gardens, and so on—but on the whole, when others took a pattern approach, they did not necessarily create buildings with the character of life that Alexander was striving for. But through his extensive built projects, Alexander himself was able to create a certain quality of life in the environment; there were hidden tools being applied intuitively and unconsciously, but those must exist beyond design patterns. 

And so Alexander needed to find a deeper, more complete way to describe and transmit what he had found through creating and orchestrating a large body of built work with an unrelenting focus on creating whole, healthy, and living structures and environments. 

This quest led to The Nature of Order—a four-volume work that re-builds a theory of architecture and a new scientific worldview, centered on the core criterion of life.

Recounting Concepts in Book I

In The Nature of Order Book I, we first grapple with life in space, understood by its ability to generate feeling in us. Alexander posits the underlying substrate of the world (the universe), calling it wholeness, or the mathematical object W, which exists and carries in it a latent order. That order of the underlying wholeness can be expressed (created, grown, embellished) into the world as “living structure,” which is the kind of structure that carries life within it, and, where it exists, generates feeling of wellbeing and wholeness in the observer. Several concepts that we have discussed in this series of essays work together to help us towards understanding how coherence—life in space, or wholeness—can be built up  through deliberate design actions. 

Centers

The entities underlying living structure are “centers”. These are field-like regions of space, which we consider from the size of a framing nail to a city block or a neighborhood, for architectural purposes. (We could say that the largest center is likely the known universe and everything extant within it. Or perhaps the largest center is that known universe along with the overarching void that contains it. We set aside the philosophical discussion until Book IV.)

A “center”, this entity or field-like locus, is simply one instance of a coherent organization of space, and one that can be perceived or felt as such. Windows, tables, chairs, doors, walls, paintings, potted plants, patios, and pediments: these are all centers.

What is initially difficult is that centers don’t need to be things. Centers are also the space of a short garden path, the open volume of a room, a sunbeam shining through the dusty window, shifting patches of light and shade projecting through the leaves, the shape created by the outside of a teacup on its saucer, the “entry space” of a home. Everything, insofar as we can rest our attention on it, that differentiates it from its surroundings in some way, is a center.

Centers are primarily understood by the range, richness, and recursion of their relationships with other centers—those at similar levels of scale, their containing centers, and those centers which they contain. No center is a mutually exclusive entity that can be reduced or isolated as a thing-in-itself. All centers are composed-of, composing, and related-to other centers: this is, in fact, the only means we have of describing them.

When centers are deeply overlapped, interlocked, intertwingled in certain ways (according to the 15 Properties, described next) and remain coherent in their own right; when all centers in some area of space work to create more strength and coherence for the centers around them, then they begin to mirror the nature of the underlying wholeness. They work in creating a harmony that can generate profound feeling in the observer. They are living structure in the Alexandrian sense. They make this region of space more alive, and humans perceive this quality of “aliveness” directly. 

Fifteen Fundamental Properties

Assume then, that this process of intensifying, overlapping, reinforcing centers creates a feeling of “life”. Then we can move to the fifteen fundamental properties that describe the crucial relationships between centers. Alexander spent 20 years working to find the common geometric properties of living structure. At first, he simply noticed some common characteristics in those places, objects, and activities that could generate a real and profound feeling in the observer. He and colleagues worked to sharpen their ability to discriminate which things and places had more or less life, and through decades of pairwise object comparisons, began to systematically identify the recurring properties present in a living field of centers.

Alexander settled on fifteen: fifteen “properties” that are better characterized as relationships between centers in a given activity or region of space. Fifteen ways that describe how centers can work together to produce living structure, expressed in an intuitive and graspable set of geometrical properties. Alexander notes that this isn’t a final number, but it is like the correct order of magnitude: it will be much closer to fifteen than 5 or 100. The Properties, discussed in detail in Nature of Order #2 and Nature of Order #3, are 1. Levels of Scale, 2. Strong Centers, 3. Boundaries, 4. Alternating Repetition, 5. Positive Space, 6. Good Shape, 7. Local Symmetries, and 8. Deep Interlock and Ambiguity, 9. Contrast, 10. Gradients, 11. Roughness, 12. Echoes, 13. The Void, 14. Simplicity & Inner Calm, 15. Not Separateness.

The fifteen properties are simple, intuitive, geometric, and easily-spotted. Here, Alexander is thinking like a mathematician: an observer can either analyze living structure in terms of its geometrical overlapping centers, or seek those particular fifteen properties that contribute to the overall effect. The question is not either/or, but rather two complementary ways to approach the phenomenon of life. 

In short, these 15 properties give any interested person simple tools to begin working with the Alexandrian way of analysing form. While the properties arise out of complicated mechanisms, identifying and ultimately applying them as transformations are straightforward activities.

The Core Criterion: Life

With his theory of centers and the life they bring to structure laid down, Alexander next moves to the crucial point: we humans, in this conceptualization of the world—like all other natural phenomena—are also centers, also embedded and enmeshed and interlocked into the structure of the word, with the ability to bring forth more life in that structure by our actions of building and creation. 

And this is the ultimate criterion Alexander will lay forth for value in works of art and architecture: does it create profound feeling of life in the observer? Does it make them feel more whole, more humane, more in touch with the reality of their whole true selves? Are we creating an environment where people can respond appropriately and freely to the world around them? How we are able to answer these questions about the space we are working with is the driving force behind our acts of architecture and our judgments about built work and the environment.

Just the act of asking and considering these questions creates a crack in the present-day certainty of design driven by economics, political expedience, and disjointed abstractions. 

The seemingly-simple shift in perspective, from a strictly geometrical analysis of centers and occurrence of the fifteen properties, to sensing how we react emotionally and viscerally to such a structure, is a crucial step in the Alexandrian method. It is also the most jarring for those whose sensitivities to the environment have been numbed. Having felt the calming hush of an ancient stone cluster, the breezy peace of a tree-shaded bench next to the lake, the active joy of a well-designed and well-attended city park—it is hard to imagine how one might deny that our places and our spaces carry feeling, that they generate that feeling in us as we inhabit and interact with them.

For Alexander, people can, must, and do make judgments about life in structure. This feeling of life in the observer is Alexander’s single core criterion for quality, and what he has been ruthlessly striving to create at every step of his work. And here it is not a subjective measure, but seen as a truth that can be near-universally experienced and reported by observers who work to perceive the felt reality of living structure. 

This is a specific perspective on recognizing life—the universal and deeper experience of feeling—that is not so naive as to allow for the crush of idiosyncratic preference. There is a process of learning to identify the structure that exhibits this life: guided by experience, through learning to see in centers, by evaluating the presence of the fifteen properties and their effects on the feeling of the whole. Like a tracker learning to recognize animal signs, like a monk learning to relinquish the thoughts of the monkey mind, effort and attention are required to perceive the felt reality of living structure, and to understand the core criterion of life.

Human-as-Instrument

Developing a sensitivity for life, one can begin to make reliable judgments about architectural decisions. Alexander formulates the “Mirror of the Self” test—an exercise for training one’s sensibility, for understanding group convergence, for determining which decision will generate more life in the project at hand. The first version of the test takes paired images of objects, places, activities, and asks the observer to really, truly, judge which of these more resembles his or her own true self. It is an attempt to cut past the idiosyncracy of personality quirks and ego, and often must be reframed a number of times before observers can relinquish the serious self-importance of adulthood that prevents them from entertaining the question as it is truly asked. 

Some may take years of practice to delve beneath the surface, into understanding their ‘truer’ sense of self. (In this way, the act of attempting to earnestly answer this question is instructive; a place for growth in its own right.) Some approach the test with a relaxed and open curiosity, an intellectual drive to really answer the question as it is, and will have a much easier time working with this method as a decision-making tool. And perhaps others may never let themselves go deeper, being held back by their ingrained preconceptions. 

What is paramount here is Alexander’s perspective that our human experience is a valid and reliable source of insight—the built environment is made by people for people, and the source of truth for an environment’s quality can only come from those who interact with and inhabit it. In studies with students in the United States and around the globe, Alexander found that we see fairly consistent and reliable results of 70 or even 80% agreement among observers for specific choices in performing the mirror of the self test. 

Life Is a Primitive

How could it be that the “mirror of the self” question gives an unambiguous answer toward questions of architectural choice? How could people really know when one building, one chair, one stairway really is a better picture of their true self? How could they reliably come to identify the places, the choice, that generate a profound feeling, and can spark life in the sense of one’s own humanity?

First, we go back to Alexander’s opening of Book One. To the beautiful and lively imagery of people and places throughout the volume. His examples—parks, living rooms, riverfronts, pubs, lively streets, meadows, town squares—show that some places are indeed more profound in their feeling, more alive. Alexander takes this feeling and life as the undefined primitive of the universe, the basis from which we should derive everything else.

Imagine the places where you yourself have felt a reverent wonder and a deep and abiding connection to yourself, the environment, and the people around you. Can you deny that this feeling exists? (If you have been raised in an environment where there is no feeling—no deep connection between yourself and an architecture that is economically driven or strictly utilitarian—has it ever been possible for you to find this connection, this life, in the architecture of modernity?)

In Alexander’s theory of wholeness, life, and centers, “we” are not outside the system. There is no bifurcation of nature and society—this is really the crucial point, whose disregard is responsible for a lot of architectural ills. All there is, entirely, is centers on top of centers, within, outside, connected, and interlocking other centers. The degree to which those centers are related to each other by way of the fifteen properties is a proxy for us to understand how well they reflect the nature of the underlying substrate of wholeness. And because we ourselves are centers, integral to the system/structure we use and observe, unfold from that same wholeness, of course we can reliably judge when the structure is more alive, when it gets closer to our true selves. We can recognize life in structure because we can recognize ourselves.

Empiricism and the Cartesian Conundrum

Alexander says that the character of modern science, its “objective nature” arises chiefly from the fact that its results can be shared (Book 1, p. 352). The standard approach is Cartesian: take a machine-like view of some aspect of the world, find the right boundaries by which we can separate it from its environment, create the circumstances where we can reliably observe the results when we perform experiments, and by nature of this shared frame we have an “objective” picture. 

Now, consider Alexander’s view: a perspective in which the observer forms a part of and is integral to the thing-being-experimented-upon. It is impossible to treat this view seriously and also insist that the observer is removed from the picture for objectivity, as in a standard Cartesian approach. If the method we use to frame our scientific worldview will not allow us to entertain a hypothesis like Alexander’s view of life in space, do we extend the method, or discard the hypothesis? This is the root of Alexander’s scientific approach: he asks us to work seriously with the former option. What we require is an extension to the idea of scientific observation where the observer can be a part of the picture in an objective way, and still insist on shareable and testable observations. 

But—objective or not—are these elusive judgments truly empirical? Alexander states that in fact they are, they are experienced as inner feeling, but their origins are in real and concrete phenomena: they can be measured and they can be shared. Because observers are instruments, because we ourselves are core, we cannot rely on the creation of an external experimental setup. We need a tool like the mirror of the self that allows for an internal experimental setup. 

Objectivity comes because these results are and can be shared. This is an extension to the Cartesian method of science—certainly not always appropriate—that is useful in the context of deciding which actions can create a more-living structure in the world. Observations of the observer’s inner state can tell us real things about the external world, and are one potential for a “post-Cartesian form of criterion for objectivity” (Book 1, p. 364).

I paraphrase and slightly extend Yodan Rofè’s remarks from the Building Beauty seminar that closed out our reading of Book One:

“If you want to make a better and more beautiful world… you must be able to observe the feeling that each decision arouses in you in the process of building and creating. It’s not how you feel in a personal or idiosyncratic sense, the important thing is what’s out there in the world and its capacity to generate that profound feeling in you. The only way you can approach what’s out there is by learning to understand your own sense of health, wellbeing, and wholeness.”

Conclusion

Alexander urges us to throw out any artificial notions of form or function except for the idea of establishing the life of a field of centers. His message is direct and liberating. Don’t give in to the hubris of a modern architect or planner, or believe that you, in all your righteous intelligence, can enumerate all of those goals that will make a building functionally successful. Don’t begin with an abstraction or by forcing the form. Worry instead about bringing about the life in the field of centers: form, function, ornament, will take care of themselves: “In nature there is essentially nothing that can be identified as a pure ornament without function. Conversely, in nature there is essentially no system that can be identified as functional which is not also beautiful in an ornamental sense. In nature there is simply no division between ornament and function.” (Book 1, p. 404).

The most noble task we have is to make the world around us, wherever and however we are capable, more whole and more alive. To help bring forth living structure in the world. To unfold it to get there with the users, experiencers, and inhabitants of that place, so it can become healthy and alive according to the truth of their own deep feeling. 

We have a theory with which to evaluate the potential life in a field of centers, properties we can use to train our sensitivity, a test we can use for making decisions and honing our judgment. Ultimately, what we do when we make these judgments is not to attempt to validate the theory of centers or “prove” Alexander right. Rather we are employing one tool that gets us closer to good decision making in the elusive and catastrophically important task of creating a more whole and healthy world around us. In building beauty.

“When a state of wholeness is reached, we almost inevitably embrace the structure of the actual place. And it embraces us. The elements, centers, and properties are part of that embrace. The wholeness consists of a multistranded chain of interlocking properties and interlocking elements, forming one whole, and being nourished by that one whole. The place has something positive to give, and it nourishes people to be there. And the place has the power to help create life within the people themselves, and their interactions with one another.” (C. Alexander, H. Neis & M. M. Alexander, Battle for the Life and Beauty of The Earth, 2012: p. 414). 

How, then, do we really design or create living structure? How do we make things and places which can truly make people become more whole, more human, more free? The Nature of Order Book 1 contains the tools and static concepts to begin this process. To move into dynamics, and to understand the processes by which whole and healthy environments can truly come to life, we then look to Alexander’s Book Two: The Process of Creating Life.