Article

The Determination of Components for an Indian Village

01/09/1962

Paper, University Publication

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Publisher:

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.

References

Scientific Research

Good Fit between Form & Context

Areas of focus:

Quality and Values

Guiding idea:

Goodness of Fit

Christopher Alexander states in the "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" that the object of design is form, and consequently the problem of design is to fit the form with its context. Form is the part of the world which ...
Decomposition Process and the Diagrams

Areas of focus:

Structure of Space

Guiding idea:

Early Mathematical Approach

The prevailing idea being the search for goodness of fit between form and its context, Alexander postulated that in today's selfconscious design process, in order to attain a good design there must be an underlying correspondence between the structure of ...

Published Books

Notes on the Synthesis of Form 01/01/1964

Publication, Original Book

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Publisher:

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.

“These notes are about the process of design: the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function.” This book, opening with these words, presents an entirely new theory of the process of design. In ...

Projects

Master Plan for the Village of Bavra 1962 to 1963

Bavra, near Mehmedabad, Gujarat, India

Master Planning, Designed , Completed in 1963

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander

Sponsor:

Government of Gujarat, Village Development Planning

Project stages:

Analysis of requirements by hierarchical decomposition Diagrams

An agricultural village of six hundred people, which is to be reorganized to make it fit present and future conditions developing in rural India, is an example for testing a theory of analysis of functions and sythesis of spatial entities. ...

Articles

Public Events

Conference on Design Methods 19/09/1962 to 21/09/1962

Premises made available by the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College, London, U.K.

Conference, Academic Event

Organized by:

J. Christopher Jones — a lecturer at the University of Manchester in industrial design and engineering — who obtained the support of Imperial College, London, where he held the conference

Christopher Alexander, then a member in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, after studying mathematics and architecture at Cambridge University, was doing research on the design of an agricultural village and on a complete theory of patterns. The results of ...