The assorted finds of Artefact Publishing
Today I was given the first two volumes of Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order. Having read only the preface, I can confidently say that I am going to love this work, as I loved his earlier books (primarily The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language) when I discovered them in Cambridge, England some years ago. I had been searching for them, without knowing they existed, ever since reading John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider, in which the town of Precipice is designed according to various principles and works, is alive. I had hoped that there was a real set of principles that could create that fictional place, and a couple of pages into The Timeless Way of Building, I knew I had found it. I remember vivedly opening the nicely bound but plain book, the sun coming in through a window of the university library, and then sitting out in a park beneath a lovely old tree alternately reading and looking about me at the people sitting, cycling, playing.
For those following along, these books talk about matters not a million miles away from what I talked about earlier.
There are reviews of The Nature of Order (or the currently published parts thereof), which may be useful for those with no previous exposure to Alexander’s thought.
Posted by jamie on December 2, 2003 20:33+13:00