Abstract
There are only two ways of looking at any design problem despite all the elaborations evolved from these two paths. Either a designer directs an outcome and creates a product, or a solution is derived from a process involving the people and circumstances of the problem. The first way is object focused and is celebrated in architectural criticism and journalism. It is the way of the salvational Genius, whose personal insight pierces all preconceptions and launches into innovation. This operational model is called the architectural canon. The second way, working through a process, is how the rest of us grapple with any issue. The power of Christopher Alexander’s life is not about the distillation of a personal perspective (the profession’s stereotypical Genius model) but his vital focus is on the second way a design is created. Alexander is a polymath, open to a process using human criteria and universal opportunities that can discern and convey the way to create. His life efforts show the future of the practice of architecture in a world soon overwhelmed by technology. Alexander’s “15 Fundamental Properties of Wholeness” describes criteria in architecture—but also in the ways designs can evolve in the wholistic realities of any creation. The Building Beauty Program Alexander helped create responds to the present dysfunctional model of architectural education that often ignores these simple verities in favor of following the architectural canon. Meaning in any creation comes from connection to the world around it. A visceral, essential, human response in design is not anti-intellectual, because it can be understood and taught. No matter what its validity is today, the Genius model of advocating a design savior is being replaced by the coming explosion of technology. What remains after that explosion is all we humans, and we are all polymaths. We see, hear, think, and offer what the technology cannot. Therein lies the meaning of Christopher Alexander’s extraordinary life’s mission.
Highlights
There are only two ways of looking at any design problem despite all the elaborations evolved from these two paths
Alexander’s “15 Fundamental Properties of Wholeness” describes criteria in architecture—and in the ways designs can evolve in the wholistic realities of any creation
Alexander helped create responds to the present dysfunctional model of architectural education that often ignores these simple verities in favor of following the architectural canon
Summary
Christopher Alexander’s profession, architecture, is neither one of rote building nor detached theory, because architecture is the synthesis of thought and action in construction and fine arts expression. The singularity of the Genius architect models venerated by the architectural canon [1]. Architecture had become a forum for the Genius persona as held up by celebrated architects in our culture. Figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright [9] or Zaha Hadid [10], are part of an ongoing fashion show of architecture that presents a walkway of unknowable black boxes that define problems in order to reactively, inscrutably, generate solutions. I am one of them, and Alexander has defined the listening polymath as an alternative to the Genius model which has defined the architectural canon [1] in the Modern Era
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