Christopher Alexander Quotes

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Christopher Alexander

Profession : Architect

Birth : October 4, 1936

The structure of life I have described in buildings - the structure which I believe to be objective - is deeply and inextricably connected with the human person, and with the innermost nature of human feeling.

Christopher Alexander

The buildings that I build very often have a dreamlike reality. I don't mean by that they have a fantasy quality at all, in fact quite the reverse. They contain in some degree the ingredients that give dreams their power... stuff that's very close to us.

Christopher Alexander

In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.

Christopher Alexander

Images in the 20th century had a unique power where image became divorced from reality, and often more important than reality... Buildings were judged - at least by members of our own profession - more by the way they looked in magazines than by the satisfaction people felt when using them.

Christopher Alexander

When you make something, cleaning it out of structural debris is one of the most vital things you do.

Christopher Alexander

Everyone is aware that most of the built environment today lacks a natural order, an order which presents itself very strongly in places that were built centuries ago.

Christopher Alexander