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Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design: Transcript of lecture
17/11/198219-page transcript of the Christopher Alexander lecture on “Architecture’s New Scientific Foundations”, a kind of progress report on the development of his ideas on the order of space as a deep phenomenon, on the importance of recognizing the deep structure of things and the geometric properties. A number of pictures were used to illustrate the points, which are referenced by their subject in the transcript.
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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Wholeness as a Tangible and Objective Quality: The Mirror of the Self
In any process of design or making, the next step which is most structure-enhancing, is that step which most intensifies the feeling of the emerging whole. What ultimately matters in this process is that the work produced generates feeling in ...
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Ornament and Function as Products of Unfolding
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 ...
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Lecture by Christopher Alexander at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University: Visual material used in the lecture for illustrating his points
9 9th example - Persian bowl, 9th century
17/11/1982
Twelve photographs used by Christopher Alexander in the lecture to illustrate examples of physical things which have deep structure, which he called ‘wholeness’. The examples he chose to show were all from traditional or historical societies, and were the following: ...
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Lecture by Christopher Alexander at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University: Visual material used in the lecture for illustrating his points
9 5th pair - The plan of Alhambra paired with the Renaissance Center plan, Detroit
17/11/1982
Pairs of photographs mostly of buildings, used by Christopher Alexander in the lecture, each one comparing side-by-side one contemporary building with a building from the past, in order to argue the point that the “works of our time simply do ...