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Linz Café
1980Built as part of the international exposition "Forum Design" and designed to be "portable". Wooden building overlooking the Danube, with the first floor of the building raised to clear the ten-foot-high river embarkment. Yellow and red exterior, three stories, 2,300 square feet, post and beam construction, handpainted interiors in green, apricot, yellow, red and white.
Contents
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Linz Café: Hand-painted walls with flowers as ornament
1980
Exterior walls painted yellow with some white and a touch of orange to light the orange of the canopy; hand-painted interior walls in green, apricot, yellow, red and green, with ornamental frieze and white flowers on the walls painted by ...
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Linz Café: Chairs, stools and tables for the café
1980
Chairs, stools and tables specifigally designed and built for the café in parallel with the building construction.
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Linz Café: "Aperiodic" grid of the timber post and beam structural frame
1980
Post and beam structural system which fits the structure of the spaces initially conceived, and is based on a structural grid with differentiated spacing of the grid lines in both directions, long and short, keeping the variations regular. The use ...
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Linz Café: Cover letter with enclosures of a completed folder including all plans, photographs, technical description and an information sheet for the contribution of Christopher Alexander to the "Individual Design Concepts" of the Forum Design
11/09/1979
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The Linz Café: Addressing a variety of problems which require solutions
16/02/1980
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The Linz Café: Note accompanying signed original contract
01/01/1980
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Forum Design Temporaerer Ausstellungsbau: Set of drawings for the Forum Design temporary exhibit installations
11/09/1979
Five drawings including the Site Plan designating the location of the Linz Café project, Floor Plans, Sections, Elevations, Details .
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The Linz Café: Alcove & ornament sketches
01/01/1980
One page with four sketches. One sketch depicts the elevation of an alcove with ornaments, two depict abstract plant shaped ornament layouts on boards and the fourth, a composition with a central star and plant shapes; one handwritten note is ...
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The Linz Café: Reference Drawing
18/01/1980
Reference drawing by Forum design with spatial requirements. Diagrammatic floor plan depicting the exhibition spaces for the design products and concepts, by commercial enterprises. Includes a table with the available areas and spatial requirements for exhibition material.
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The Linz Café: Punch list of work to be completed
01/01/1980
List with 39 items to be included in the final building .
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The Linz Café: Specifications for the Linz Cafe and prices
01/01/1980
31-page draft document; design specifications for 27 items identified as Primary Structure or Secondary Structure, with description, original hand drawn sketches and quantities.
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The Linz Café: Handwritten notes and calculations on building materials and elements
01/01/1980
Various lists with costs, open questions on design, quantities to be constructed, notes on architect’s responsibilities; some items listed in German.
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The Linz Café: Photographs of project site
01/01/1979
Site recording sets of photos, most of them pasted together to give the feel of the surroundings; five single images and four collage images composed by four photographs each.
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The Linz Café: Photographs of building interior
01/01/1980
Two interior views of the 1st floor. The first one gives an overview of the space with the stair, alcoves and furniture, and the second shows a corner of the café, with tables, stools, and benches built against large windows. The ...
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The Linz Café: Photographs of project model
01/01/1980
Two photographs of the structural model of the building.
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References
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Geometry and Fifteen Fundamental Properties
Christopher Alexander recognized the importance of the geometry of centers and for years he was looking for the common structural features among buildings, paintings, streets, carpets, doors, windows, etc. which have "life" and "wholeness". He identified fifteen structural features which ...
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Design and Construction is one Integrated Making Process
The design process of a project and its construction process are united into one continuous and intertwined making process, unfolding in a step-by-step sequence. Design ends together with the completion of the construction process. "Making" is a conception of the ...
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Emergence of Geometric Order in Building Structure
Focusing primarily on the pure beauty of the geometric order, which comes, above all, from the building structure (columns, walls, beams, vaults and so forth), specifically from the aperiodic grids which form the abstract underpinning of the building structure.
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The Linz Café, Das Linz Café
1981
“The Linz Café”, a bilingual book, both in German and English, is the fourth in “The Center for Environmental Structure Series” on architecture published by Oxford University Press. The book describes the application of the theory to a single building commissioned by ...
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The Nature of Order - An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe.
Book Two - The Process of Creating Life
2002
“The Process of Creating Life”, the second volume of “The Nature of Order” series presents a dynamic theory of living structure. It begins with an analysis of transformations, which occur in nature, and the distinction between structure-preserving transformations, responsible for ...
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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
“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, ...
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"Taegliches, Alltaegliches, Design" / "Day to Day Design" TV program: Interview of Christopher Alexander by Lisbeth Waechter-Boehm and Herald Sterk
27/06/1980
Interview of Christopher Alexander before the inauguration of the Forum Design Exhibit.
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Exhibition "Die Zeitlose Art der Dinge" / "The Timeless Way of Things" for Forum Design
27/06/1980 to
05/10/1980
“The Timeless Way of Things” was exhibited in the Linz Café during the Forum Design exhibition. It was prepared by C.E.S. and illustrated the basic principles of geometry, in particular the “mirror of self” criterion and 14 geometric principles present ...
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Lecture on "The Nature of Order", given during Fall 1991
14/11/1991
Cassette tape of the nineteenth Fall semester lecture by Christopher Alexander on “Actual Making & Construction Details”, part of a series of lectures on “The Nature of Order”; the duration of the lecture is about one hour and twenty minutes.
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The Center for Environmental Structure: Portfolio of Projects
01/01/1989
A presentation of sixteen projects developed at The Center for Environmental Structure until 1989. 75-page portfolio with Part One “Completed Projects”, Part Two “Current Projects”, concluding with “Additional Projects”. The projects included are: 1) The Linz Cafe, 2) The Sala ...
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Linz Café: Wooden building, post and beam construction - Photographs of drawings
01/01/1980
Two sketches of the building structural grid for each floor and two more focusing on the relashionship of the structural grid to the spaces of the café. The structural system was based on a perfect grid, with a spacing that ...
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The Linz Café: Alcove front - Photograph
01/01/1980
Photograph of Christopher Alexander’s gouache painting on wooden panel.
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Linz Café: Chairs, Stools and Tables for the café - Photographs
01/01/1980
Interior view of one of the spaces where tables, stools and a built-in bench were used. The photo was exhibited during the 10th Annual Louis Kahn Memorial Lecture in 1992, where Christopher Alexander was invited to give a lecture.
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