Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Computer-Aided Rough Patterns of Christopher Alexander

  • Research
  • Published:
Nexus Network Journal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper analyzes Christopher Alexander’s combined use of mathematical graphs and hand-made diagrams, and argues that such affinities marked the insertion of roughness into architectural computational thinking. Within the techno-scientific context of American postwar architecture, the techniques of transcription and calculation used by Alexander at the Center for Environmental Structure reveal the progressive erasure of determinacy that took place within an architecture practice with empiricist, mathematic and computational preferences. Rather than establishing an optimized and quantified standard to which architecture had to conform, Alexander’s rough diagrams and mathematical graphs serialized variation and provided room for indeterminacy and contingency within a clearly defined set of rules.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1

Source: Alexander (1964b: 153). Reproduced with permission from the publisher from Notes of the Synthesis of Form, by Christopher Alexander. © 1964 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © renewed 1992 by Christopher Alexander

Fig. 2

Source: Alexander et al. (1968). A pattern language which generates multi-service centers. Berkeley, Calif., Center for Environmental Structure: 23, 39 (Alexander 1968). Reproduced with permission from Christopher Alexander and the Center for Environmental Structure

Fig. 3

Alexander and Manheim (1962: 4). Reproduced with permission from Christopher Alexander and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Fig. 4

Source: Alexander and Manheim (1962: 6, 12, 16). Reproduced with permission from Christopher Alexander and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Fig. 5

Source: Alexander (1969: up; 1973: 2-3-30). Reproduced with permission from Christopher Alexander and the Center for Environmental Structure

Fig. 6

Source: Alexander (1979: 314). Reproduced with permission from Christopher Alexander and Oxford University Press

Fig. 7

Source: Alexander (1968: 18). Reproduced with permission from Christopher Alexander and the Center for Environmental Structure

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Alexander’s biological analogies are of biological processes, not of forms. On Alexander’s biological analogies used in Notes, see Steadman (1979: 163–179).

  2. This description referred to first research project developed by the Center, published in a book entitled A Pattern Language Which Generates Multi-Service Centers. Interview with Sara Ishikawa by Diana Cristobal. August 25th, 2017.

References

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1964a. A Much Asked Question About Computers and Design. In Architecture and the Computer; Proceedings of the First Boston Architectural Center Conference, 52-54. Boston: Boston Architectural Center.

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1964b. Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1966. Relational Complexes in Architecture. Architectural Record. 140(3):185-190.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1968. Thick Wall Pattern. Architectural Design. 38: 324-326.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1971. A Refutation of Design Methodology. Architectural Design (42): 768-770.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1969. Draft for A Pattern Language. Alexander’s archive.

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1973. Draft for A Pattern Language. Alexander’s archive.

  • Alexander, Christopher. 1979. The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Christopher and Marvin Manheim. 1962. The Use of Diagrams in Highway Route Location: An Experiment. Civil Engineering Systems Laboratory Publication 161. MIT.

  • Alexander, Christopher and Marvin Manheim. 1963. Technology: Methods and Machines to Shape the Future. Architectural Forum. 88-93.

  • Alexander, Christopher; Ishikawa, Sara and Murray Silverstein. 1968. A pattern language which generates multi-service centers. Berkeley: CES.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Christopher; Ishikawa, Sara and Murray Silverstein, with Jacobson Max; Fiksdahl-King Ingrid and Shlomo Angel.1977. A Pattern Language. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Alexander, Christopher with Howard, Davis; Martinez, Julio and Don Corner. 1985. The Production of Houses. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Broadbent, Geoffrey. 1973. Design in Architecture. London, New York: John Wiley & Sons: 224-251.

  • Carpo, Mario. 2011. The alphabet and the algorithm. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daston, Lorrain and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawes, Michael and Michael J Ostwald. 2020. The mathematical structure of Alexander’s A Pattern Language. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. 47(1).

  • Doxiadis Associates (DA). 1970. DA and the computer. DA Review, 6(66): 3-7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erickson, Paul; Klein, Judy L.; Daston, Lorraine; Lemov, Rebecca; Sturm, Thomas; and Michael D. Gordin. 2013. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Galloway, Alexander. 2004. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gamma, Erich. 1995. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harary, Frank and Z. Norman, Robert. 1976. Graph Theory as a Mathematical Model in Social Science. Ann Arbor: Xerox University Microfilms.

  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1954. The Mathematics of Man. International Social Science Bulletin. 6(4): 581-590.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lobsinger, Mary Louise. 2013. Two Cambridges. In A Second Modernism, ed. Arindam Dutta, 652-685, Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • March, Lionel and Philip Steadman. 1971. The Geometry of Environment. London: RIBA Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMahon, Catherine F. 2013. Predictive Machines. In A Second Modernism, ed. Arindam Dutta, 436-473, Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • OED Online, 2020. Oxford University Press, June 2020. Web. Accessed 17 June 2020.

  • Ostwald, Michael J. 2011. The Mathematics of Spatial Configuration: Revisiting, Revising and Critiquing Justified Plan Graph Theory. Nexus Network Journal, 13: 445–470.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steadman, Philip. 1979. The Evolution of Designs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steenson, Molly Wright. 2014. Architectures of Information. PhD diss. Princeton University, Princeton.

  • Steenson, Molly Wright. 2017. Architectural Intelligence. London: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Steingart, Alma. 2020. The Axiom of High Modernism. Center for Comparative Media seminar. 2 March.

  • Teyssot, Georges, 2012. The Diagram as Abstract Machine. V!RUS. 7. <http://www.nomads.usp.br/virus/virus07/?sec=3&item=1&lang=en>. [Accessed: 20 June 2020].

  • Vardouli, Theodora. 2017. Graphing Theory. PhD diss. MIT, Boston.

  • Vardouli, Theodora. 2020. Skeletons, Shapes, and the Shift from Surface to Structure in Architectural Geometry. Nexus Network Journal, 22: 487–505.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Princeton University, Princeton, US

    Diana Cristobal Olave

Authors
  1. Diana Cristobal Olave
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Diana Cristobal Olave.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cristobal Olave, D. The Computer-Aided Rough Patterns of Christopher Alexander. Nexus Netw J 23, 135–150 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-020-00515-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-020-00515-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation