The Julian Street Inn – Shelter for the Homeless: Exterior wall cladding with hand-painted and hand-glazed tilework – Photographs of mock-ups

Scientific Research

Color and Inner Light: The Eleven Color Properties

Areas of focus:

Structure of Space

Guiding idea:

Centers and Fields of Centers

Christopher Alexander postulated that centers and the field of centers they create are the building blocks from which wholeness is made. However, he further argued that geometry alone is not sufficient, and that color is the way wholeness comes to ...
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 ...
Strong Centers in all Levels of Scale

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Structure Preserving Transformations

A building can only amount to something as a living thing when the various physical elements which appear in it are profound centers. The dominant feature of the process that is working correctly is that new centers are formed, and ...
Wholeness and Feeling in Structure-Enhancing Transformations

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Feeling as the Core of the Process

Christopher Alexander formulated this principle as follows: In any living process, or any process of design or making, the way forward, the next step which is most structure-enhancing, is that step which most intensifies the feeling of the emerging whole. "Feeling" ...

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Projects

Julian Street Inn - Shelter for the Homeless 1986 to 1990

Julian St. & Montgomery St., San Jose, CA, U.S.A.

Civic, Realized , Construction completed in 1989; final interior painting in 1990

Client:

Housing for Independent People - Al DiLudovico, Executive Director

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, Gary Black, Artemis Anninou, Carl Lindberg, James Maguire, Eleni Coromvli, Kleoniki Tsotropoulou

Contractor:

Oliver and Company, with Center for Environmetal Structure as major specialty subcontractor

Project cost:

$1,700,000

Project stages:

Pattern language for project by clients and C.E.S. Layout by clients and C.E.S. Use of full scale mock-ups Design Development and Building Permit drawings Direct Construction management and on-site design decisions Budget and subcontractors under C.E

Design and construction of a shelter for homeless people, to serve 50 to 100 people, on a site of 13,000 sf. The building of 15,000 square feet includes offices, living areas with a dining hall, sleeping rooms, courtyards and gardens. ...

Drawings

The Julian Street Inn - Shelter for the Homeless: Exterior wall cladding with hand-painted and hand-glazed tilework - Original tile painting and sketch 01/01/1988

Construction Innovation, Sketches, Details

Designers:

Christopher Alexander, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Medium:

Original on Paper

Size:

8 1/2"x11"

Two original tile-paintings; the first depicts the actual tile size with the final pattern and colors painted on it, and the second an earlier study of a different tile pattern in which blue is also used. .