PATTERNS OF ARCHITECTURAL TALKS

The listing flashed across the screen: a Christopher Alexander talk on You Tube. The information was just noted, as there was no time to look at the presentation. One would need a couple of spare hours to give to this occasion.

Some weeks later there was some free time available, so, after listening to some music, the Alexander talks were retrieved; one was opened. It was interesting to hear Alexander talk about his writings to a group of computer programmers; he explained how the ideas had developed. He finished by suggesting a more moral approach to programming that could work to help achieve his goals – an environment that can enrich life. Another session was watched: conversations with a colleague in Alexander’s home in England. One could see the references for The Nature of Order everywhere in this lovely cottage. There was still time for a third session: this was Alexander’s lecture given on his return to Berkeley after twenty years absence in England. He had been working at the University of York in the UK, on the next step in the development of his thinking.

Alexander can be seen sitting in front of the lectern during the lengthy introduction.

The evening’s presentation at Berkeley had a format that was familiar. It made one wonder if there was an essential pattern to architectural talks, prescribed not only as a format, but also with the problems, the clumsy mishaps. This occasion made one think that such a pattern of acts and issues was a necessary part of all architectural talks, for the circumstances seem to appear on nearly all similar occasions attended, almost as exact re-enactments and sequences.

First there has to be a ‘nothing’ period, a no-man’s-land time that anticipates a beginning, allowing for folk to chat, meander in, and settle down when it suits them; perhaps this period is important, allowing time to drag on beyond the intended starting schedule: starting on time never seems to be the right thing to do. Then, eventually, a lone individual strolls up to the lectern, looks around, and calls casually for some sort of order to get the evening going. During all of this time, an image is left projected onto the wall that is the screen, perhaps as ‘something interesting’ for those who arrived on time to ponder.

A brief explanation of the evening is given by way of a primary introduction; then another person is invited to the microphone to give the ‘real’ introduction. The person giving this introductory overview grasps the opportunity to make a lengthy, ‘intellectual’ statement, providing, in this case, a personal analysis of Alexander’s life and works, as if he might be a stranger, all while Alexander sits nearby looking somewhat bored. One wonders what he thinks of the introduction. There is a sense of excess here, of one just trying to be too clever in front of the master, seemingly seeking some sense of acclaim; perhaps some approval, a recognition of the ‘intellectual’ skill involved. The over-kill is completely unnecessary, a little like the long introductions in publications where it looks as though the invited author is attempting to create the first chapter, or to steal the limelight – at least to share it.

Eventually the speaker, here Alexander, comes to the lectern, strolls off to one side and starts talking. No one can hear; the microphone has to come out and be fitted onto his pocket: “Thanks for remembering. Can you hear me now? Is it OK in my pocket?” is the usual type of crackling statement/question if the system works the first time without further adjustment to refine the squealing, electronic muddle. Luckily, in this case, the sound system works the first time. Alexander then starts again and asks for the first image to be projected. This comes up, but the photographs immediately start as a slide show revealing all the images before Alexander is ready to talk to them. Stop; back to the beginning: “Can we see the first photo again please?”

Another ‘expert’ comes out to help sort out the problem with the laptop on the lectern, and the talk starts again; and again it is the slide show. “Oops!” So more folk come out to attend to the matter as Alexander says that he only wants one image at a time, as and when he asks for it. Eventually things get sorted, and the lights go out again as Alexander continues.

Once things seem to have been resolved, the evening starts rolling along as it should have in the beginning. At the end, when Alexander says that he is tired, and has to finish, he is asked by the moderator who gave the introduction, if he will take a few questions. Even though tired, he politely agrees as the moderator turns and asks, begs, the audience for questions. Maybe the moderator, in this case, had no questions himself; usually it is this person who starts the ball rolling with a prearranged thought or unnecessary summary of the presentation. One usually wonders: why should there be any questions after such an erudite presentation? There always is someone who wants to be known; wants to talk! After a lengthy silence, the hand is up and the nod is given. Alexander considers it to be a silly question, and says so - next; then another ‘expert’ seeks an explanation of his own ‘in-depth’ theory/experience that Alexander politely responds to, telling him that it is nonsense; and so on as folk seek prominence in the crowd, with ever more becoming braver as time, that was supposed to be limited, passed slowly, filled in by folk raising matters that have already been resolved by Alexander in his talk. This seems to be the usual pattern.

Finally, after two extra questions, with folk getting up to leave as time dragged on, the evening is closed down: at last. It was all so familiar – every nuance was there. Every architectural talk has these stages that appear to be essential. Perhaps it is useless to tell folk that things do need rehearsal, testing, and better management; but if Berkeley cannot be bothered to sort things out for Alexander, then it all looks pretty hopeless – we are going to be stuck with the embarrassing process forever. Even here, no one thought to shift what looked like a large American flag on a stand in one far corner of the space; it remained there for the whole talk, as an irrelevant thing in storage, fouling up the context of a talk about sensitive environments and awareness. No one could see the irony of the situation. Nothing was new, except the clarity of the talk itself.

Luckily, the presentation was not the usual, over-indulgent hype. We did not get the over-confident, slick, flowing verbal presentation illustrated with cleverly smart images. Alexander sat and spoke quietly and deliberately, every now and then pouring and drinking water, until he needed a break; then he showed what he described as “a lot of images of Eishin College”; too many for him to speak to them individually - there was not enough time for this: so he let the set run through, and then sat and continued to speak about the experience of working on the project, the ideas and aims. One noticed how the images looked old and blurred. The work had begun in 1980, about thirty years ago. There was a refreshing naivety about the images; they did not offer clever angles and distortions, or boast too much. They merely revealed the place and the construction as the passersby might see things, for it was the process that Alexander wished to talk about.

Alexander’s presentation was interesting. It was thoughtful, determined; every word he spoke was considered. He wanted the issues that interested him to be precisely expressed so that they were not misunderstood. The words flowed, and then there was a silence – sometimes a lengthy quiet; then a few muffled grunting sounds would stumble out as background, suggesting discovery, perhaps recovery; then Alexander would start the flow again. The hiatus seemed as though thoughts, or ideas as words, were downloading. It was a little like those annoying buffering pauses one gets in videos, only here it was not annoying: it added to the thoughtful stillness of the occasion. The surprising thing was that these silences made one think that Alexander had lost his train of thought, that he had become muddled - was it age? - but, surprisingly, there was always perfect continuity in the ideas and the words when he began again. It was an astonishing performance; no hiccups at all; just coherent pauses.

It seems that Alexander has had much practise at this. At the beginning of the lecture he must have been thinking back to the times when he was teaching at Berkeley. He noted how he had never prepared any written documents for any lecture he had ever given; but believed that, in spite of this, they did come out as coherent presentations. It was easy to see how, because this evening showed Alexander performing his trade: speaking about this well-considered thoughts and his writings with no texts or prompts. It appeared that he was even re-thinking these propositions as he spoke about them, as if checking them, testing them again to ensure he had not missed anything as he looked for more revelations and intrigues. Even though he must have spoken about these matters many times, it looked as though this occasion was for the first time, such was his consideration and concentration.

There was nothing brash about Alexander; he was humble, often expressing the opinion that folk might consider him mad, and being willing to accept this; but still he persevered with a certain confidence, as he had carefully thought through the issues in his work. Even though he had believed that A Pattern Language had solved the problems that had caused him to ponder about design and building, he noted that the idea of establishing patterns that could be applied turned out to be insufficient. He had noticed how parts of projects using this system might hold some interest, but generally the outcome was poor. He realised that there was something else that needed revealing if there was to be a reliable framework that could give what he called ‘living buildings.’ The Nature of Order was the set of books that tackled the next phase; and while he did not mention it here at Berkeley, he had noted in an earlier discussion that his work at York was taking on the stage after this, noting that it was difficult to talk about the nature of order without speaking about God.

There was much to think about in this talk that spoke of the many challenges for the world that had to be confronted if we were to again get close to true beauty; to get more “deep feeling” into things. To start this process, Alexander noted how we had to be extremely honest with ourselves: “If we honestly love our fellow beings and places, we will get good buildings. It is not magic; it just depends on the intensity and dedication with which one does one’s best.”

“The discipline we have come to know as architecture has gone off the rails. The idea that things can be made by assembly is a crackpot idea.”

“Life is the only criterion for construction of the environment; for all building, be this housing or freeways.”

“Non-living structures on earth have undermined life. Buildings are made from love.”

“I make a mock up of a fireplace; then another. I ask myself: if I am making a fireplace as a gift for God, which option would be best?”

Alexander was aware of the problems with getting close to religion, but insisted that these aspects of our understanding and experience were critical, and could be spoken about rationally. It was a remarkable performance, bringing over fifty year’s of thinking, writing and practice together into what one might call ‘slow talking,’ using the television idea of ‘slow TV’ – where, e.g., the train crossing the Nullabor Plains becomes the one subject for hour after hour, without any dismissive summary.

One will have to take out all of the Alexander books again; finally one understood their connections. Notes on the Synthesis of Form had always seemed to stand off to one side as a bad beginning, but in one discussion it was noted that it was here that Alexander had written: “There is context and function; form is in between.” The awareness of mystery was already there in his thinking.

After this presentation, one was left thinking about the Eishin project. There was a nagging ambiguity here. Alexander saw the whole project as a prime example of his ideas on the process required to give the ‘living’ outcome that he described. He believed the current dislocation in the production of architecture was part of the cause for our situation today. While one was inspired by the words, there was a lingering uncertainty about their application: was it ever possible to prescribe the making of beauty? Parts of the college looked beautiful; other sections looked like illustrations from the book, A Pattern Language; other portions simply looked awkward, uncomfortably faked, a little like Prince Charles’ village, Poundbury – a self-consciously ‘olde worlde’ place, something like a theatre set. Perhaps this is unfair, but it is so.

One really did not want to feel this way about Alexander’s work, but one did – honesty is important. One could see the Eishin project as a beginning, a struggling challenge for rich, inner coherence where everything was new, untried. There are splashes of timeless wonder that live in this work, but there are also portions that one sees as replicas of things past, ‘Poundbury-isms’ rather than as original – in the sense of primal origins - forms and paces with a refreshing ‘live’ present in presence: some outcomes appear still-born. In spite of the concern, perhaps stimulated by it, one recalled Meis’s words to his student who was pointing out some dodgy detailing as they walked through Wright’s Taliesin, perhaps hoping to invoke the master’s – “God is in the detail” - praise: “Just be thankful that it is here,” was Mies’s grumpy response.

Yes, one had to be thankful that the Eishin College was there for us to ponder, to be reminded of the cause, and be thankful for Alexander and his efforts to get the world to understand how important it is to make beautiful things again, and not be distracted by current intrigues. Alexander was not unaware of the difficulty of the task, but he knew its imperative – its necessity, if life on earth was to survive and be enriched: this is how important he envisaged the task.

Sadly Alexander died some weeks ago – 17 March 2022. He has left us all with a challenge that he has defined – the revelation of patterns and order to shape deep meaning. While not really wanting to talk about it, as it was in such an early stage of its development, Alexander did note that his work in York involved AI, using computers to help identify the ‘centres’ that would be involved in a project – knowing these would help guide living outcomes. The task was so enormous that Alexander saw that computers, programming, would play a critical role in its achievement. This is what he told the programmers in the first talk.#

One can only agree with Alexander, not only with his ideas about beauty and its making, but that architecture today has become the work of what he liked to call ‘crackpots.’ We all need to consider Alexander’s work with a new commitment, and reconsider our place in the world which is in an awfully chaotic state when one thinks in terms of architecture, well-being and mental health.

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NOTE

The three sessions that were watched offered not only an interesting explanation of the connection between Alexander’s publications, but it also revealed Alexander over time too: the long-haired thinker talking to the programmers, became the greying, cropped head of the Alexander in England casually enjoying thinking for the camera, who was the older man at Berkeley, keen but easily tired: “I’m a bit wobbly on my feet. I’ll sit down.”

The discussion with his colleague in his lovely home in England, finished with a ‘Five Years Later’ clip. Here one saw a changed Alexander, bearded and grey, sharing time with earlier collaborators, sitting quietly beside his wife as they remembered. While Alexander changed, his ideas stayed on course, determined to find a way to reveal beauty, to support life itself – the only criterion for building.

 4 MAY 2022

“Make sure that any action, thing, picture, poem, or helping someone on a bus, has inner beauty.”

"The sunlight on the leaves is eternal."

5 MAY 2022

AN ASIDE

One hopes that Alexander’s books are not forgotten, left as quirky asides in much the same manner as Howard Robertson’s publications are today: the work of yesterday, now seen as historical relics; irrelevant. One can already see how The Nature of Order has not had the impact of A Pattern Language, but, as Alexander has explained, it is a natural extension of this first publication, an enhancement of it, giving attention and thought to finer, more subtle things.

That Alexander became close to ‘God’ in his thinking is both a revelation and a worry in our secular, self-confident world. It is just too easy to dismiss religion with Karl Marx’s “opium of the masses” comment that squashes all meaning that makes it more than this. We need to re-discover this world and its elusive qualities, and do away with blind, aggressive, self-certain ‘Progress’ that bulldozes everything before it - including life and love.