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Christopher Alexander

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Also known as Christopher Wolfgang Alexander, Christopher W. Alexander, Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander

American architect and design theorist (1936-2022)

Person · Open Library

Born
4 October 1936
Died
17 March 2022
Works
24

Top works

  • The design of highway interchanges
  • The use of diagrams in highway route location
  • A pattern language
  • Community and privacy
  • A New Theory of Urban Design

via Open Library + Wikidata

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
249
Total plays
656

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Christopher+Alexander">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Christopher Alexander

Quotes

  • In my life as an architect, I found that the single thing which inhibits young professionals, new students most severely, is their acceptance of standards that are too low.
  • ...we have so far beset ourselves with rules, and concepts, and ideas of what must be done to make a building or a town alive, that we have become afraid of what will happen naturally, and convinced that we must work within a "system" and with "methods" since without them our surroundings will come tumbling down in chaos.
  • A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions. When it is at war with itself, and gives rise to forces which act to tear it down, it is unwhole. The more free it is of its own inner contradictions, the more whole and healthy and wholehearted it becomes.
  • When we know those moments, when we smile, when we let go, when we are not on guard at all – these are the moments when our most important forces show themselves; whatever you are doing at such a moment, hold on to it, repeat it – for that certain smile is the best knowledge that we ever have of what our hidden forces are, and where they lie, and how they can be loosed.
  • Every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there.... These patterns of events are locked in with certain geometric patterns in the space. Indeed, each building and each town is ultimately made out of these patterns in the space, and out of nothing else; they [patterns in the space] are the atoms and molecules from which a building or a town is made.
  • Look more carefully...to find out what it really is that is repeating there .... Beyond its elements, each building [or town] is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements.... These relationships are not extra, but necessary to the elements... The elements themselves are patterns of relationships.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Wikidata facts

Image
ChristopherAlexander2012 cropped.jpg
Show 4 more facts
date of birth
1936-10-04
Commons category
Christopher Alexander
name in native language
Christopher Alexander
date of death
2022-03-17
Sources (6)

via Wikidata · CC0

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