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✏️ The Timeless Way of Building (under construction)

October 11, 2020

The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander

A book on how architecture should be done but really is on how to be as human as possible.

Finished: 26 August 2020
Rating: ★★★★★

I started reading this because I wanted to learn how to build a house. That in turn, I thought, seemed like a way to feel closer to the earth and be more aware of its workings. The thesis of the book is that there is one true way of building, and if we adhere to it, then our homes, towns, and communities will come alive with what he terms “the quality without a name”. This quality arises when we are able to shed our egos and the images we cling to in order to exert a false sense of order and control. Once we let go of that, a natural order will arise and we will be closer to “reality” on the level that animals live at. We will be able to listen to our most basic human instincts and build our communities and homes according to those. We will build as nature builds: according to broad principles and patterns, but each part will be uniquely shaped for its purpose and place within the whole.

His vision of building is not one of additive parts that comprise a whole, but rather that each part is whole within itself and when it is added to the existing parts, it creates a new whole. I was a few pages in when I realised this wasn’t really about architecture, though the application is specific and he details a whole process of planning, construction, and repair. Rather, it’s about how we do and should live, how we should interact with nature and our surroundings, what reality is, and a surface-level examination of systems and complexity. I don’t know enough about any of those things or architecture to pass judgment on the truth of it, and his skimming of some of the history of building is light and possibly inaccurate. But there’s something compelling about the call to strip oneself of all the images and posturing of modern society and return to an existence that is more in tune with nature — both the world and human nature.

The book is wonderfully designed with a detailed table of contents with summaries of each chapter, and each chapter contains summary paragraphs in italics throughout which are meant to allow a reader to gather the essence of it in about an hour. That being the case, it feels like book notes are redundant since the book itself contains the notes. Nevertheless, I’ve set out my own summary and notes below because it kickstarted a particular way of thinking for my life generally.

Roadmap

This is the way I’ve grouped the chapters together for myself to explain it not only within the context of the book but as a map of principles for my own life. Alexander has his own part titles, as follows, and I’ve included his overarching descriptions of each part. The three overarching parts that are my own invention are in italics.

Structure of Life

Pattern Languages

Part-to-Whole Relation

Structure of Life

The Timeless Way

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 begins to build the grammar of the book. We’re introduced to “the timeless way of building”, the namesake of this tome and the thing toward which Alexander is leading us.

This timeless way of building:

Ultimately, Alexander is saying that the timeless way of building is simply what flows out of us when we allow ourselves to naturally be — in the sense of what we truly are as part of nature. He considers that the fundamental human instinct is to complete a world already begun by nature.

To talk about this, he refers to patterns and processes. These form the major building blocks:

Behind all these processes is a single common process. This:

The beauty, and perhaps frustration, of this book is that each part develops on the last. The description of that single common process sounds like everything and nothing at once. But rather than being a straightforwardly logical sequence, it’s more like watching a blurry image of the whole slowly come into focus. By the end, he’ll bring it back full circle, and the first sections will make more sense.

We’ve obscured this single common process from ourselves by creating artificial rules and concepts. With these rules and concepts, we’re convinced that we must work within a system and with methods. As a result, we’re afraid of what will happen naturally. Without them, we think everything will become chaos.

However, the artificial images of order distort the nature within us. To free ourselves, we must first learn the discipline of the true relationship between ourselves and our surroundings. This is the timeless way of building: learning the discipline and shedding it.

The Quality

Chapter 2: The Quality

To seek the timeless way, we must first know the “quality without a name”, henceforth “the quality”. This is what the timeless way of building will allow us to reveal. It is the root criterion of life and spirit in a person, town, or building. It is the most fundamental quality there is in anything.

A system has this quality when it is at one with itself, and is:

The effort to become true to oneself is the central problem of life. Only those who achieve this are fully “real”. Distinguish between those who are true to their inner nature and those who aren’t — not all of us are equally true or equally real, and not all parts of a system are equally true or equally real.

Thus, not all things are equally alive and real, as physics might tell us. In physics and chemistry, we are taught that what something “is” is entirely separate from what it “ought to be”. Alexander implies that this is insufficient, and that what a system “ought to be” grows naturally from what it “is”. This will become clearer, but it all comes from the idea that when we truly “are” ourselves, that is what we “ought to be” because it means we are as real as we possibly can be.

Freedom from inner contradictions is the very quality which makes things live. To be more real is to have a oneness. This oneness is the fundamental quality for any thing and embodies everything. Note that the sense of oneness is consonant with many traditions and practices that give people a sense of meaning in life — what comes to mind is the Platonic model of needing to balance reason, thymos, and the appetites within oneself to reduce inner conflict. And that reduction of inner conflict will allow us to get more in touch with reality and see the right kinds of patterns.

Alexander then goes on to try and describe the quality with words, and then explains how each of those words are inadequate. It cannot be named but this does not mean it is vague or imprecise — it is more precise than any word. Unhelpfully at this point, he says we can only the word to name the quality when we already understand the quality.

What his examination of select words sums to is that the quality encompasses freedom from inner contradictions yet integration within a whole (community, landscape), and is exact in accordance with and resolution of true inner forces while being fluid and free to grow and be filled with life. The quality is, above all, ordinary.

In other words, the quality is a way of resolving our inner forces and thereby removing our inner contradictions, such that we are both exactly conformed to the free, loose, and life-filled path of our resultant true forms.

Chapter 3: Being Alive

Thus, freedom is when all our forces move freely in us. This quality is almost always automatic in nature because there are no images to interfere with the natural processes of making things, including the making of ourselves. For humans, however, we have images by which we guide our lives. When these images are artificial and false, they distort what we create of ourselves, leading us to bottle up the natural forces within us. We are only free to the extent that we give up those images and the forces within us can then be resolved.

Paradoxically, “being alive” in this manner is not something that can be consciously attained. Instead, it occurs when we forget ourselves completely. These are moments we know only in retrospect. One such example Alexander gives is when we smile unexpectedly. Strangely, despite claiming that “being alive” like this can’t be consciously attained, he says we should hold onto such moments and repeat them. Since Alexander’s focus is on architecture and buildings, he says we can ask which places made us feel like this — his claim is that buildings can create that sense of “being alive” within us. To extrapolate more widely, this feeling arises from something within our surroundings that allow us to be free.

Chapter 4: Patterns of Events

Which is exactly what he says in this chapter: the quality only comes to life in us — that is, we are only “alive” — when it exists in the world that we are a part of. The quality is circular. It exists in us when it exists in our buildings; it exists in our buildings when we have it in ourselves.

So, how do we create it? At what point does “being alive” enter the circle? Alexander will introduce two categories of patterns — one in this chapter, which is the “pattern of events”, and one in the next chapter which is the “pattern of relationships” or “pattern of space”.

Alexander begins by stating that what gives a place its character are the episodes that occur there. These episodes consist of patterns of events. The life and soul of a place, and our experiences there, depend on those patterns. Such patterns need not be human — for example, the existence of a stream outside one’s house can alter the entire experience of the building because of the events and situations it allows one to encounter. This is because it is our situation which allows us to be what we are. In other words, our environments make us, our particular selves, possible.

What I find confusing here, and what I will try to tease apart, is how Alexander defines “patterns”. It’s the kind of thing that the reader is left to get a feel for without exactly having it pinned down. Here, he seems to indicate that a pattern can be a feature of the environment, and then in the next paragraph, a pattern seems to be a behaviour. But ultimately, a pattern is more like a movement, which I see as broader than human behaviour. And this movement is alive and defined by the features of the environment, by which is meant the space in which it occurs and the structure of that space. Those environmental features can be natural, in which case I think they help to create our culture, but our culture also develops in its own way between humans, and that leads us to create features too. An intertwined cycle.

What gives a building or a town its character, more specifically, are the events which recur and which happen there most often. A person’s life is governed by a small number of patterns of events which she partakes in repeatedly: having a shower, having breakfast, going to work. It becomes clear that very few patterns are available to us as individuals; days blend into days as we churn through the daily grind. Thus, the effect of those few patterns is huge — if they go well, I live well, but if they are bad for me, then I don’t live well.

Alexander makes the point that while a person can modify his immediate situations, he cannot go beyond the bounds of the events and patterns of events made available by our culture. This almost flips the phrasing of Jordan Peterson’s ‘clean your room’ idea that if you can’t control the world, you can at least control your own situation and begin to change yourself. We are our habits. Alexander’s point here takes a similar path in that those daily repetitions shape the vast majority of your life, but writes it large in the context of a building or a city to make the point that those, too, form the few patterns of one’s life to great effect. And the effect is that the ability of the quality to enter our lives depends on the specific nature of these patterns of events from which our world is made.

The patterns of events cannot be separated from the space in which they occur. This, however, doesn’t mean that space creates or causes events. Alexander gives the example of people on a sidewalk. Being culture-bound, they know that the space which they are part of is a sidewalk, and as part of their culture they have the pattern of the sidewalk in their minds. This pattern tells them to behave a certain way on sidewalks. This is not purely because of the spatial aspect of the concrete and the walls and kerbs, for two sidewalks in different cultures can be interpreted differently. Each sidewalk is a system which includes both the field of geometrical relationships which define its concrete geometry and the field of human actions and events which are associated with it. Patterns are inseparable from space but they aren’t the same. To further develop and clarify my earlier explanation — Alexander might refer to a particular configuration of features in the environment as a pattern, such as the number of windows in a room, but my understanding is that the pattern is also the kind of life and movement that such features generate. And it may be that whether one thing is pattern or space depends on the perspective — for example, the windows can be an environmental feature supporting further patterns, but it can also be a pattern generated out of another environmental feature such as four walls in a room.

As in nature, there is no distinction between the the stream, its banks, its winding path, the flowing of water, the growth of plants, the swimming of fish. Each is a living thing. We can only understand these patterns of events by seeing them as living elements of space themselves. A building or a town is a living system, a collection of interacting and adjacent patterns of events in space. To understand the the life which happens in a building or town, we must try to understand the structure of the space itself.

Chapter 5: Patterns of Space

Next, Alexander looks at the fundamental structure of a building or a town, and how such structure supports or generates certain patterns.

A building or town is made of certain concrete elements. Each element is associated with a certain pattern of events. Some physical elements repeat — a building is made of walls, doors, and windows, repeated over and over. Alexander suggests that if we change one of those patterns, we can predict what kinds of changes in the patterns of events this change will generate. This chapter addresses the question of how the structure of a space can support the particular patterns of events it does, and how we can make predictions of change. He seeks a theory that presents clearly the interaction of the space and events.

Because the elements vary when they occur, it can’t be the elements themselves which are the ultimate constituents of space. For example, doors aren’t all the same. So it can’t be doors, specifically, and other such elements that are the building blocks of a building or town. Rather, buildings are — beyond these elements — defined by certain patterns of relationships between the elements. A large part of the structure of a building or town consists of patterns of relationships. Alexander gives the illustration of an American metropolitan region which has a CBD somewhere towards the centre and a high density office block with high density apartments. The phrases in italics denote the patterns of relationships.

He then says the elements are themselves patterns of relationship. That door is a pattern of relationship. So is that CBD, that office block. It’s not as if elements and patterns of relationship are discrete things, and that patterns of relationships exist between elements. Rather, every element constituent of a particular pattern of relationship is itself a pattern of relationship. The way Alexander puts it is that the relationships aren’t separate from the elements — the element is a myth. As I would put it: it’s turtles all the way down.

What repeats throughout a building or a town is the fabric of this pattern of relationships. Each pattern is a “morphological law” that establishes a set of relationships and can be expressed in the general form: X –> r (A, B, …), which means that (1) within a context of type X, (2) the parts A, B, … (3) are related by the relationship r. To apply that — within a Gothic cathedral, the nave is flanked on both sides by parallel aisles. Each law or pattern is itself a pattern of relationships among other laws which are themselves patterns of relationships.

Now, to tie in the ideas from the previous chapter, each pattern in the space (i.e. pattern of relationships) has a pattern of events associated with it. The pattern of the motorway contains a certain fabric of events defined by rules: drivers drive at certain speeds, rules govern the way that people may change lanes, the cars all face the same way, and so on. The pattern in the space and the pattern of events don’t cause one another. Rather, the total pattern, space, and events arise from, and are invented by, the people’s culture. But there is a fundamental connection between each pattern of events, and the pattern of space in which it happens – certain specific relationships are required to sustain a particular pattern of events.

Alexander’s claim is that patterns (of relationships, I assume) account entirely for the geometric structure of a building or town, as they are the visible things that keep repeating. They are also responsible for the events which keep repeating there. And the pattern of events is where a building or town gets its character from.

To recap, buildings and towns are made of “patterns of relationship”. These are in turn made up of more patterns of relationship. Each pattern of relationship has a “pattern of events” associated with it. The total pattern, space, and events are created by culture. Alexander says that the patterns of relationship and the patterns of event don’t cause one another, but instead have a fundamental connection. But he then says that “patterns” account for a building or town’s geometric structure and are responsible for the events which keep repeating there. I’ve taken that to mean that “patterns of relationship” account for the geometric structure, but that would seem to mean that they cause patterns of events, which is the opposite of what he said. What I suspect is that yes, he did mean patterns of relationship in that context as accounting for geometric structure. However, it’s not a straightforward causation, as events will have some influence on the patterns of relationship. For example, certain pre-existing rituals might determine the layout of the Gothic cathedral.

Chapter 6: Patterns Which Are Alive

The next crucial building block of Alexander’s theory is that certain patterns of relationship create a special sense of life. He goes into the concept of ‘life’ in more detail in The Nature of Order, but suffice to say here that one is alive when all the forces which can arise in a person find expression, and when one lives in a balance among those forces which arise. Life is liberation. Refer back to Chapter 3: Being Alive above. Alexander describes this aliveness as being wholehearted, true to oneself, true to one’s own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations one is in. The person who is alive is also at peace because there is no disturbance from forces which cannot find expression or an outlet, and is at one with oneself and one’s surroundings.

(1) Firstly, he argues that patterns help us to live.

This kind of aliveness and peace cannot be reached merely by work on the inner self. “A person is so far formed by his surroundings that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.” We hear today about how mindfulness and meditation are key to achieving inner peace. Besides the fact that much of this is a misinterpretation of both concepts, Alexander picks up on the fact that we have an environment, and that environment can affect our moods and constitutions. Much like the phenomenologists reintroduced the outside world and embodiment into the very core of our being, Alexander is reminding us that what’s outside is as important as what’s inside.

Even the layout of a room can reinforce or resolve those inner conflicts. Alexander describes two forces acting on inhabitants of a room — first, we have a tendency to go towards the light, and second, if we are in the room for any length of time, we will want to sit and make ourselves comfortable. In a room with at least one window with a place to sit and relax, the conflict between the forces can be resolved. But in a room with no such window place, we are faced with a hopeless inner conflict, and consequently experience constant stress. He describes our instinctive knowledge of the first-described room as beautiful as a knowledge beyond “aesthetic whim” — instead, the sense of the beautiful comes from the fact that the room without tension is a better place to live. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all.” – John Keats

Patterns which prevent us from resolving our conflicting forces leave us in a perpetual state of tension. That build-up of stress stays within us and exhausts us. Our capacity to react to real problems, dangers, and challenges is diminished. This makes us less alive and more dead.

(2) Secondly, he argues that patterns are themselves alive or dead.

Patterns are not merely instrumental — they have intrinsic value. Alexander resists an anthropocentric view whereby patterns serve humans. He wants to avoid the kind of arbitrary reasoning that goes ‘if a pattern is to be good for us, then we must decide what we want’. The arbitrariness comes from the fact that patterns do not derive their value and their aliveness from what humans decide is valuable. Rather, patterns have an objectivity of their own. They are valuable in and of themselves; they are alive in and of themselves. And besides, many patterns essential to the harmonious ongoing life of our natural environment are not directly good for humans at all.

This isn’t to say that they’re bad — only that their aliveness doesn’t depend on us or our wellbeing or values. Rather, that aliveness depends on stability. Patterns are good and intrinsically alive when they are true to their forces in a self-sustaining harmony such that each process helps sustain the other processes surrounding it. The system keeps itself going without creating additional forces that will tear it down. Therefore, to say a pattern is alive is the same thing as saying it is stable. “Patterns which are alive maintain themselves in the long run because they do nothing to destroy their immediate surroundings, and they do nothing drastic in the short run to destroy themselves.”

The quality of human patterns equally doesn’t depend on their purpose, and instead depends on their intrinsic stability. He contrasts two patterns. (1) Certain Greek village streets have a band of whitewash outside every house so people can pull their chairs into the street, into a realm that is half theirs and half street. This has the purpose of allowing people to contribute to street life and be part of it to the extent they desire. (2) Cafés in Los Angeles are indoors to prevent food from being contaminated. This has the purpose of keeping people healthy by making sure that they will not eat food that has dust particles on it. For Alexander, the first pattern is alive but the second is dead. This is because the first pattern sustains and heals itself by being in harmony with its own forces and the forces around it — people take care of the whitewashed band (and, I would argue, would partake in pulling their chairs into the street even without it) because it is so much a part of their own lives and experience. The second, however, can only be maintained through the force of law. Without regulation, it would eventually disappear because it doesn’t align with people’s inner forces — in certain types of weather, many people would want to sit outside.

A pattern lives when its own internal forces are able to resolve themselves. A pattern dies when it is unable to provide a framework within which the forces can resolve themselves, such that the forces cause the pattern to collapse in on itself. Living patterns also grow, such as a courtyard that is also alive. People enjoy being there and, as a result, they take care of it — one is able to “feel” the presence of life there. By contrast, a courtyard that is lifeless is forgotten and dies.

People have the quality without a name when they allow forces that they experience to run freely within them, which leads to them feeling most intense, happy, and wholehearted. Alexander considers that this freedom happens most easily when the world around us is also such that its patterns let their forces loose. The quality without a name occurring within us has a direct dependence on the patterns in the world.

Chapter 7: The Multiplicity of Living Patterns

Alexander then extrapolates on the aliveness of patterns as the final piece for outlining the quality with no name. A pattern that is alive is self-sustaining, self-creating, resolves its own forces, and its internal forces support themselves. A pattern that is alive also spreads out its life, helping to sustain surrounding patterns. Similarly, a pattern that is dead will make other nearby patterns fail as well. Once a configuration is out of balance, the unresolved and wild forces remain in the system, making the system collapse in on itself.

Patterns must cooperate for something to be whole. Alexander writes that each living pattern resolves some system of forces or allows them to resolve themselves. In such a place, which will lack disturbing forces, the people are relaxed, the plants are comfortable, and the animals pursue their natural paths. A place that has more life-giving patterns will seem more beautiful. The quality with no name appears when an entire system of patterns, interdependent at many levels, is all stable and alive — that is, it can’t appear when there is only one living pattern, and can only become alive when every pattern in it is alive. As that happens, a whole town will reach the state that individuals reach at their best and happiest moments, when they are most free.

As I read this over again, it strikes me as a vision almost utopian — when everything is in harmony, we too will be in harmony. Within me flares that seed of discontent that I imagine should still be present even in a place of, according to Alexander, the highest beauty. Can beauty exist without ugliness, or pain, or even the mundane? “Ay, in the very temple of Delight / Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine” (John Keats). Perhaps this is a noble ideal towards which we should work, nevertheless. Perhaps it’s just because we’ve never seen such a thing in our lives. Perhaps.

Chapter 8: The Quality itself

last modified June 5, 2022