The Timeless Way of Building

“The Timeless Way of Building” is the opening work in “The Center for Environmental Structure Series” on architecture published by Oxford University Press. Here Alexander introduces the ideas behind the succeeding books.
The book lays the foundation of the series. It presents a new theory of architecture, building and planning which has, at its core, that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being. It forms, in essence, the basis for a new post-industrial architecture, created by the people…
Alexander writes, “There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. And as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”.