Construction Innovation

Etna Street Cottage: Ornament in door frame

1974

Work of Art for Project, Ornament

S's cut with jig-saw after being drawn on one-inch planks; then filled with plaster.

Created by:

Christopher Alexander

Content of

Project

Etna Street Cottage 1974

Etna Street, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Residential, Realized , Construction completed in 1974

Client:

Center for Environmetal Structure

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander with his students in the 1974 Spring studio class Arch. 209, including Walter V. Wendler and Donald Corner

Contractor:

Center for Environmetal Structure

Project cost:

$3.000

Project stages:

Pattern language for the project by C.E.S. Layout on the site No drawings were produced Users involved in the construction Innovative construction methods

Experimental building project, two-story 400 sq. ft. cottage, with a hollow wooden structure filled with concrete and featherweight concrete vaults. Completed in ten weeks, without a building permit at the back of the C.E.S. office on Etna Street, and was ...

Contents

Photographs

Etna Street Cottage: Ornament in door frame - Photographs 01/01/1974

Exterior View, Work in Progress

Photographer:

Christopher Alexander/C.E.S., Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Source:

Digital

Characteristics:

Color

Three images of the entrance door frame with ornament, depicting the frame under construction and finished.

References

Scientific Research

Ornament and Function as Products of Unfolding

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Structure Preserving Transformations

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 ...

Books

The Nature of Order - An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. Book Three - A Vision of a Living World 2005

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Publisher:

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

No of pages:

697 pp

“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, ...

Book Chapters

Chapter 18. Ornament as Part of all Unfolding, 2 / Ornament as Detail Which Emerges Directly from the Process of Making

Publication,

Book title:

The Nature of Order – An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe.
Book Three – A Vision of a Living World

Pages:

582-585

Articles

Sketches of a New Architecture 01/01/1984

Publication, Book Contribution

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Published in:

Architecture in an Age of Skepticism: A Practitioners' Anthology, pp. 8-27

Editor:

Denys Lasdun

Publisher:

Heinemann, London, U.K.

Course Material

Towards a Theory of Units 01/01/1975

Academic, Student Work, M.Arch Thesis

Authors:

Walter V. Wendler, University of California Berkeley, College of Environmental Design, Department of Architecture, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

267-page thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture. The subject of this study deals with the concept of organicness in relation to architecture, and with, which would be the acts that could ...