Favorite Reads: Christopher Alexander, "The Timeless Way of Building"

The third in a series on favorite reads related to human nature, society and information technology

I marvel at the 'great' architecture of the world, both modern and ancient. I even cherish a baseball autographed for me in 1988 by the renowned architect Frank O. Gehry. Yet I find other places shaped by anonymous collaborators perhaps more inspiring. I refer from experience to the Cinque Terre in Italy, Santorini in Greece, and Lijiang in China. These built environments posess grace and charm beyond description. Each is magically gratifying to stroll through, and draws admirers from throughout the world. When the architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander speaks of architecture fit for living in, I believe he has such examples in mind. He champions an 'unheroic' architecture, where the people of a community assume primary responsibility for shaping their living environment, applying proven design patterns to suit their aims, perhaps under the guidance of a new type of architect who helps them with the planning, design and building process. Alexander's arguments are profoundly democratic, and represent a dissenting voice within an historically aristocratic profession. Alexander champions iterative approaches to design and construction as the best means of creating truly livable communities and towns. Though his ideas have been criticised within his own profession as impractical, they have been embraced by software developers, many of whom favor deploying rough implementations of applications quickly, and seek user feedback to shape subsequent revisions. The prevailing modern programming languages support this process explicity. Admirers speculate Alexander will ultimately have a greater impact on computer science than on architecture.