"a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit"
March 9, 2019 1:58 PM Subscribe
The Quality Without A Name at the Betsy Ross Museum, Sarah Perry, Ribbonfarm:
The Quality Without A Name, a kind of meta-pattern, elucidated by architect Christopher Alexander.
Here I will present some of the components of Alexander’s Quality Without a Name (sometimes called by other woo-sounding synonyms like “wholeness”), with reference to new and old art forms. Alexander was obsessed with Turkish carpets (those same carpets that W. Somerset Maugham hints hold the secret of life in Of Human Bondage) and often uses examples from his collection to illustrate the Quality Without a Name. I have much more experience with lace knitting, twitter, and haiku than with rugs, and will use examples from those domains. Finally, I will try to show how Alexander’s theory of beauty and wholeness fit with information theory and the nature of intelligence.
The Quality Without A Name, a kind of meta-pattern, elucidated by architect Christopher Alexander.
It's been a bit strange and maybe also amusing to see the revival of Chris Alexander, which started in design research circles some 20 years ago and now is all over as anyone can see here on the blue. I don't really know what to think of it. But this post is the first that makes me realize why he might be interesting to a generation raised on programming. Weaving paved the way for computer coders, and it's rather obvious that he was trying to describe design in terms that would work programmatically. I feel stupid that I haven't seen this before, since I have studied Alexander (way back in the early 80's), weaving, and coding. The top book on the stack beside me on the table right now is Pattern and Loom
Alexander was immensely influential during the 70's, so I was a late-comer, and then he disappeared entirely from the mainstream of architectural discourse. When he came up in the (product) design research field, he was still completely forgotten in architecture, and though I find him very sympathetic, I get why most architects aren't rushing to bring him back in that field.
posted by mumimor at 3:46 PM on March 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Alexander was immensely influential during the 70's, so I was a late-comer, and then he disappeared entirely from the mainstream of architectural discourse. When he came up in the (product) design research field, he was still completely forgotten in architecture, and though I find him very sympathetic, I get why most architects aren't rushing to bring him back in that field.
posted by mumimor at 3:46 PM on March 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
I'm surprised to see that Robert Pirsig doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere here. Anyway, this link suggests that Alexander at least considered what Pirsig had to say about this ancient question. Giving it the frame of architecture is nice; I like the idea of positive and negative space at the ribbonfarm link. But it also seems a bit limiting, as though the idea (which is so hard to pin down, and therefore so hard to talk about without just saying "the idea"!) was only a subfield of architecture, when it's so much more than that.
posted by dbx at 4:06 PM on March 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by dbx at 4:06 PM on March 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Every essay should be required by law to inspect a dril tweet in light of whatever the essay is describing.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:16 PM on March 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 4:16 PM on March 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Thanks for posting this essay; I really enjoyed it. This idea of complex compressibility seems like a kind of bridge between the beauty of natural forms and the beauty of geometrical abstractions.
When he came up in the (product) design research field, he was still completely forgotten in architecture, and though I find him very sympathetic, I get why most architects aren't rushing to bring him back in that field.
As a product designer who finds Christopher Alexander's ideas inspiring, useful, and beautiful, I'd be very curious to know why he's fallen out of favor amongst architects.
posted by Kilter at 8:30 PM on March 9, 2019
When he came up in the (product) design research field, he was still completely forgotten in architecture, and though I find him very sympathetic, I get why most architects aren't rushing to bring him back in that field.
As a product designer who finds Christopher Alexander's ideas inspiring, useful, and beautiful, I'd be very curious to know why he's fallen out of favor amongst architects.
posted by Kilter at 8:30 PM on March 9, 2019
Pattern and loom pdf available to download from the author's site (!)
posted by lalochezia at 8:47 PM on March 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 8:47 PM on March 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I read A Pattern Language and found the small scale stuff, such as material choices and room flows, very convincing. The large scale, city design stuff, was interesting in a 70's lefty kind of way - it was very "We have such urban planning schemes to show you!" and having seen the consequences of that line of thinking his absolute certainty became a bit scary.
I'm glad architects don't rate him highly. He's the hippy Le Corbusier in his architectural totalizing attitudes I think.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:20 PM on March 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm glad architects don't rate him highly. He's the hippy Le Corbusier in his architectural totalizing attitudes I think.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:20 PM on March 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Christopher Alexander’s ideas have probably had a bigger direct influence on software engineering than anywhere else.
The book “Design Patterns” explicitly set out to develop a “pattern language” for software and has been immensely influential; essentially every major company that develops any software uses some of these ideas and you have to be able to talk about them to make it through many job interviews.
Of course they are often applied badly and in frustrating convoluted ways, which makes some people really dislike them (perhaps something similar happened in architecture?)
But I would guess the starting point for reviving these ideas was in the 1990s when “Design Patterns” was first published.
posted by vogon_poet at 12:45 PM on March 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
The book “Design Patterns” explicitly set out to develop a “pattern language” for software and has been immensely influential; essentially every major company that develops any software uses some of these ideas and you have to be able to talk about them to make it through many job interviews.
Of course they are often applied badly and in frustrating convoluted ways, which makes some people really dislike them (perhaps something similar happened in architecture?)
But I would guess the starting point for reviving these ideas was in the 1990s when “Design Patterns” was first published.
posted by vogon_poet at 12:45 PM on March 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
But I would guess the starting point for reviving these ideas was in the 1990s when “Design Patterns” was first published.
Could you post a link to the book? I can't find it anywhere.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:32 PM on March 10, 2019
Could you post a link to the book? I can't find it anywhere.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:32 PM on March 10, 2019
This book? It's pretty well-known. Sometimes called the "gang of four book".
posted by traveler_ at 8:59 PM on March 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by traveler_ at 8:59 PM on March 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Thanks, I mistakenly thought it was by Alexander and got interested in it.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:07 PM on March 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:07 PM on March 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who finds Alexander’s ideas very intuitive. I didn’t really know much about Alexander so my friend got out one of his books and showed me a bunch of photos from it with the idea that I say which one I find more pleasing, and then my friend explained Alexander’s ideas as expressed by that pair of pictures. Which is apparently a method that Alexander uses to present his ideas.
Long story short, in the first two examples I gave the expected answer and my friend explained why it was that Alexander had predicted I would do that and how it fit his larger theory. But in the third one I chose the picture that I wasn’t supposed to, according to Alexander’s theory. It was a pair of chairs, one of whom was a low bench and the other a kind of barstool.
My friend was surprised, because the other choice felt intuitively correct to him. The low bench was roughly made, but sturdy and simple. The barstool looked mass produced. However, my immediate reaction to these photos was to imagine myself sitting on them, and the barstool required a seated posture I find comfortable while the low bench seemed like I wouldn’t be able to sit comfortably.
We talked about this and my friend said that he never thought like that about pictures, i.e. didn’t place himself into the image in any way. For me, when thinking about a concrete object in a picture, I relate it to my self in so far as how it would feel to use it. My friend said that he always thought of things in photos in terms of their existence as a photograph. Now, we both can and sometimes do think the other way, but these are our automatic reactions. Our conclusion was that perhaps my friend tends to abstract the concrete, while I tend to concretize the abstract.
Alexander’s ideas seem to me to be a way of making sense of the world by abstracting it. I do think his ideas are interesting and valuable, but on some basic level I don’t relate to them. I don’t think my way of comprehending reality is inherently better, but it is mine and therefore Alexander offers me an interesting and fruitful perspective on the world, rather than explaining it to me.
posted by Kattullus at 5:19 AM on March 11, 2019
Long story short, in the first two examples I gave the expected answer and my friend explained why it was that Alexander had predicted I would do that and how it fit his larger theory. But in the third one I chose the picture that I wasn’t supposed to, according to Alexander’s theory. It was a pair of chairs, one of whom was a low bench and the other a kind of barstool.
My friend was surprised, because the other choice felt intuitively correct to him. The low bench was roughly made, but sturdy and simple. The barstool looked mass produced. However, my immediate reaction to these photos was to imagine myself sitting on them, and the barstool required a seated posture I find comfortable while the low bench seemed like I wouldn’t be able to sit comfortably.
We talked about this and my friend said that he never thought like that about pictures, i.e. didn’t place himself into the image in any way. For me, when thinking about a concrete object in a picture, I relate it to my self in so far as how it would feel to use it. My friend said that he always thought of things in photos in terms of their existence as a photograph. Now, we both can and sometimes do think the other way, but these are our automatic reactions. Our conclusion was that perhaps my friend tends to abstract the concrete, while I tend to concretize the abstract.
Alexander’s ideas seem to me to be a way of making sense of the world by abstracting it. I do think his ideas are interesting and valuable, but on some basic level I don’t relate to them. I don’t think my way of comprehending reality is inherently better, but it is mine and therefore Alexander offers me an interesting and fruitful perspective on the world, rather than explaining it to me.
posted by Kattullus at 5:19 AM on March 11, 2019
Alexander’s ideas seem to me to be a way of making sense of the world by abstracting it. I do think his ideas are interesting and valuable, but on some basic level I don’t relate to them.
I'm not sure what pictures you are talking about, but Alexander regularly says that different people have different sitting needs (for example when he talks about sitting), so that all chairs should not be the same, shouldn't be immovable, and should be different heights, so I think you understand Alexander better than your friend and his or her flashcards do.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:19 AM on March 11, 2019
I also wouldn't describe Alexander as someone who only thinks in abstracts. His books are filled with minimum sizes (for example) and maximum sizes for various things. I'd describe him as a usability/accessiblity designer who tries to apply universal usability design to the built world.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:23 AM on March 11, 2019
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:23 AM on March 11, 2019
As a product designer who finds Christopher Alexander's ideas inspiring, useful, and beautiful, I'd be very curious to know why he's fallen out of favor amongst architects.
There are maybe two things. First, the general dislike of 1960's and -70's planning was certainly a factor. But during the last decade, there's been a revival of a lot of -60's and 70's architecture, and still I'm not seeing young people looking much at Alexander. I think it is because he is trying to systematize perception and beauty within his own very limited understanding of form.
During my life as a teacher and researcher, I've often met people who are frustrated with the dimensions of architecture that are hard to box. Usually, they are either engineers, or their quality of life will be vastly improved if they shift to engineering. But some of them spend a lot of time making theories of form and design that just don't work in real life. Though they seem to be opposed to each other, I find "A Pattern Language" a lot like the Prince Charles type of Neoclassicism. There is a lot of redundant form in Alexanders formlessness.
Structuralism in architecture in the broader sense is based on a very open set of ideas. You can start from structuralism and end with something quite poetic and human in scale, by treating the forms differently than the brutalists did back in the day. (And anyway, brutalism doesn't look nearly as bad at this distance in time).
To me it is almost exactly the same with the usability guy whatsisname, Jakob Nielsen. He talked and talked about usability in structural terms and disregarded form, so in my experience his designs were completely useless.
posted by mumimor at 10:14 AM on March 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
There are maybe two things. First, the general dislike of 1960's and -70's planning was certainly a factor. But during the last decade, there's been a revival of a lot of -60's and 70's architecture, and still I'm not seeing young people looking much at Alexander. I think it is because he is trying to systematize perception and beauty within his own very limited understanding of form.
During my life as a teacher and researcher, I've often met people who are frustrated with the dimensions of architecture that are hard to box. Usually, they are either engineers, or their quality of life will be vastly improved if they shift to engineering. But some of them spend a lot of time making theories of form and design that just don't work in real life. Though they seem to be opposed to each other, I find "A Pattern Language" a lot like the Prince Charles type of Neoclassicism. There is a lot of redundant form in Alexanders formlessness.
Structuralism in architecture in the broader sense is based on a very open set of ideas. You can start from structuralism and end with something quite poetic and human in scale, by treating the forms differently than the brutalists did back in the day. (And anyway, brutalism doesn't look nearly as bad at this distance in time).
To me it is almost exactly the same with the usability guy whatsisname, Jakob Nielsen. He talked and talked about usability in structural terms and disregarded form, so in my experience his designs were completely useless.
posted by mumimor at 10:14 AM on March 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
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