Martinez Heavy Timber Carpentry Workshop: Giant white star

The third building completed on the Martinez site was a heavy timber carpentry workshop, 800 square feet of floor area, with 12"x12" columns and 8"x14" beams, specially engineered trusses and wood paneling. .

Three photos of the giant star positioned on the exterior long wall of the workshop.

Photograph of the carpentry workshop main elevation, with the giant white star placed on its front wall .

Christopher Alexander recognized the importance of the geometry of centers and for years he was looking for the common structural features among buildings, paintings, streets, carpets, doors, windows, etc. which have "life" and "wholeness". He identified fifteen structural features which ...

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 ...

Ornament arises as part of the design process, when a person is making and seeks to embellish this "something" while making it. It arises as a result of the latent centers in the uncompleted thing requiring still more centers, requiring ...

“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 ...

“A Vision of a Living World”, the third volume of “The Nature of Order” series, presents, for the first time, a full spectrum of Alexander’s and CES built and unbuilt works. The book describes hundreds of buildings, plans, neighborhoods, drawings, ...