Contents
The book surprised me, in that the kind of solution proposed did not quite match my prior understanding of the author's philosophy.
This is a book about design, which Alexander conceives as the synthesis of form (by opposition to function, in an Aristotelian dichotomy).
After a first part in which he analyzes the quality of fit of designs in unselfconscious cultures, and the reasons for misfit in selfconscious ones (like ours), he goes on proposing a very formal (based on a mathematical processing) approach to design.
This feels -to me- so naive, that I missed the validity proof completely. I must admit though, that his first appendix, on applying his method to the design of a village in India, is quite convincing.
Now, the foreword, written 10 years later, only advises to use diagrams such as those produced during the process. Should I take it as an indication that the author has actually changed his mind?
p 48
[The] rigidity of these behavior patterns, by preserving techniques, preserve the forms themselves and make change extremely difficult.[ Relationship between process and quality? ]
p 54
So we do not need to pretend that these craftsmen had special ability. They made beautiful shawls by standing in a long tradition [...] But once presented with more complicated choices, their apparent mastery and judgment disappeared.
p 74
Indeed, we might almost claim that a problem only calls for design [...] when selection cannot be used to solve it.
p 95
The context [...] is fixed, and will remain constant for the duration of the problem; it may therefore be described in as much detail as possible.[ Also a consequence of "closeness": the analysis being based on set theory ]
p 102
The best we can do therefore is to include in M all those kinds of stress which we can imagine. The set M can never be properly called complete. The process of design, even when it has become selfconscious, remains a process of error-reduction [...]The fact that the design process must be viewed as an error-correcting process has a further consequence. The errors that seem most critical to one person will not be the same as those which seem most critical to another.