The Production of Houses

The fifth volume in “The Center for Environmental Structure Series” on architecture published by Oxford University Press, “The Production of Houses” puts Alexander’s theories to the test and shows what sort of production system can create the kind of environment Alexander has envisioned.
The book centers on a group of buildings, which Alexander and his associates built in 1976 in northern Mexico. Each house is different and the book explains how each family helped to lay out and construct its own home according to the family’s own needs and in the framework of the pattern language. Numerous diagrams and tables as well as a variety of anecdotes make the day-to-day process clear.
The Mexican project, however, is only the starting point for a comprehensive theory of housing production. “The Production of Houses” describes seven principles, which apply to any system of production in any part of the world for housing of any cost in any climate or culture or at any density.
In the last part of the book, “The Shift of Paradigm”, Alexander describes, in detail, the devastating nature of the revolution in worldview, which is contained in his proposal for housing construction and its overall implication for deep-seated cultural change.
The book was exhibited at Locus Manifesto-exposition “Re-enchant the World: Architecture and the City facing society´s transitions”, together with others in Science Cabinet #1.