Book Chapter

Chapter 10. Pleasing Yourself, 10 / The Effort it Took to Get the Stark Geometry of West Dean to a State Where it Really Pleases me

Book title:

The Nature of Order – An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe.
Book Four – The Luminous Ground

Pages:

286-291

Content of

Book

The Nature of Order - An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. Book Four - The Luminous Ground 2004

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Publisher:

The Center for Environmental Structure Publishing, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

No of pages:

356 pp

“The Luminous Ground” is the fourth and last volume of “The Nature of Order” series. In this volume, Alexander attempts to show the cosmological underpinning of the nature of order. The book has two goals. First, to show that the ...

References

Scientific Research

Wholeness as a Tangible and Objective Quality: The Mirror of the Self

Areas of focus:

Quality and Values

Guiding idea:

Wholeness as an Objective Quality

In any process of design or making, the next step which is most structure-enhancing, is that step which most intensifies the feeling of the emerging whole. What ultimately matters in this process is that the work produced generates feeling in ...

Projects

West Dean College Gardens Visitor's Center 1994 to 1996

Near Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.

Civic, Realized , Construction completed in Nov. 1995

Client:

Edward James Foundation

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, John Hewitt, students from "The Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture", students from Portsmouth University

Contractor:

Center for Environmetal Structure, as Management Contractor and General Contractor of record, with John Hewitt as Project Manager

Project stages:

Layout on the site by clients and C.E.S. Use of full scale mock-ups Design Development and Building Permit drawings done after layout Direct construction management and on-site design decisions Budget and subcontractors under C.E.S. control Innovativ

The West Dean Center is a simple one-story masonry building with a large red-tiled roof and intricate brickwork for its thick walls. The building is surrounded by gardens, and its south facing wall has large arched windows overlooking the garden ...