ALEXANDER’S METHOD – LOOKING FOR GOD

Christopher Alexander spent his life seeking to reveal a method that can capture and hold beauty and meaning. His critique was that our world today is horrible, alien to the spirit of life. His talks detailed his ideas, and described his experiments with these propositions that included the establishment of a set of patterns for a project, and the development of these concepts progressively throughout the work almost as a trial-and-error strategy, but not quite; it is more like a seeking and a discovery involving a knowing assessment along with the development of directions for specific action.

Without delving into the detailed strategy proposed by Alexander, one can note that his process engages a continual sensing and appraisal of issues, starting with the brief and the site. It is not an intellectual or academic approach. Each detailed proposal that requires a decision is considered in depth so as to seek out ways to allow meaning to be embodied; every decision is involved in this questioning as something sensed by the body - felt. Drawings are not prepared until they are required by the authorities.#

Eishin College

Alexander talked about this process, using the craftsman of old as a model. Each individual act once involved working for God, with everything being done with thought, care, and precision because of this. Alexander has described his process as “looking for God in the middle of a field.” One can understand this comment literally in the context of his work in Japan, where he pegged out the buildings on the site of the Eishin College which was a tea plantation, as a beginning of the project’s site planning. In our God-less times, this approach seems somewhat fanciful, but Alexander is not being loose or flippant; purposefully puritanical, cynical, or austere; or bigoted. He is thoughtfully articulate, aware that the notions that he takes seriously – like wholeness and beauty - can easily be mocked by many, and seen merely as claptrap.

Having become aware of the shortfalls of his A Pattern Language after using it himself, he quietly carried out more research over many years and eventually published The Nature of Order, a publication that he saw as another, more refined, more subtle manual or guide for the making of beauty. It was an enrichment of A Pattern Language.

One is astonished by the depth of these publications, and impressed by their intent and extent; but, in spite of this, one hesitates. The projects that Alexander has completed using his systems all seem to be rooted in the past, holding something of a nostalgic twinge in their stamina. One is left wondering if this is always going to be the natural outcome of the process he promoted, while asking if the idea and ideals could be in the same vein as those promoted by Prince Charles in his fanciful town, Poundbury, which is something like a theatrical pretence. Is a reference to the past the only way that we can capture beauty and ‘wholeness’ as Alexander liked to call it?

Poundbury

Poundbury

West Dean College Gardens Visitor's Centre, West Sussex - Alexander.

Eishin College

One has to admire Alexander’s grit; he was determined not to be put off by critics who ridiculed and derided his work. His belief that subtle matters can be exposed and expressed rationally is impressive; but is it so? It is a puzzling position to be in – admiring Alexander, his writings and his ideas, but remaining uncertain about the rationalisation of beauty. In this situation, one can only look to others for assistance. Ananda Coomaraswamy has written about the traditional world, its strategies and relevance. He explains how beauty had rules; that if the rules were not strictly adhered to, the work could never be beautiful.

Ananda Coomaraswamy

This explanation seems to support Alexander. The writings of Geoffrey Broadbent on Design in Architecture (Wiley, London, 1973), tell us how the traditional craftsman worked; Coomaraswamy confirms this. The statement is usually put this way: having concentrated, he set to work. The ‘concentration’ has been described as the complete envisaging of the work, such that the craftsman can be said to have completed it in his mind; that his workmanship is merely reproducing his vision.

This observation can be compared to Alexander’s concepts of the craftsman. Alexander seemingly has a different view; that the craftsman is constantly gauging his work, questioning each step and modifying it appropriately so as to make it ‘good’ as did God in Genisis: Genesis 1:31 KJV: And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. This progressively piecemeal approach seems to be at odds with the way the traditional craftsman’s work has been described. The sense of total control and knowing what has to be done in accordance with the rules, and how, from beginning to end, is a strategy that looks different to that of Alexander’s. Alexander talks of how, when considering where a window might go, the pattern has to be considered and all options pondered so as to be able to put the window in the right position; likewise with a door; a post; everything; every detail.

One could suggest that there was something of both approaches in these strategies: that, while the traditional craftsman might hold a total vision, each step in the making would have come with an assessment of appropriateness, of the measure of the fit of the intention to the pattern or model envisaged, and vice versa. In Alexander’s case, each stage, each part, is assessed against what he calls ‘wholeness,’ which could be seen as being much the same as the traditional craftsman’s ‘whole’ vision.

Perhaps both approaches are best described using Hugh Brody's words from his remarkable Maps and Dreams:

Designing involves pondering a gossamer of possibilities; alighting on several irreconcilable possibilities that give rise to quasi-predictions; no one is committed: something quite new might drift into conversations, other predictions tentatively reached; a new consensus might appear to be forming. Some of the most important variables are subtle, elusive, and extremely hard or impossible to assess with finality, but they are gauged by a sense of rightness.

Variables are considered as a composite, in parallel, and with the help of a blending of the metaphysical and the obviously pragmatic. The mistake of seeking rationally to focus on any one consideration that is held as primary has to be avoided. The decision - like the action from which it is inseparable - is always alterable, remaining highly sensitive to so many shifting considerations. One has to be always ready to change a decision about the right procedure or action. There is no space left for a "plan," only for a bundle of open-ended and nonrational possibilities.

See: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/08/design-as-dreaming-hunt-not-hunting.html

The words fit nicely as an explanation of Alexander’s approach; they describe the workings of the traditional mind. Is this what ‘having concentrated’ means? Is this the relationship of the whole, the dream, the model, to the subsequent acts: a blending of the metaphysical and the obviously pragmatic? It is a remarkable interpretation of things sensitive and subtle, in words; explaining poetry, the poetic process without dismembering or distorting it.

A map of Heaven**

But what of the expression that Alexander achieves in his projects, that always appears ‘traditional’? If one is thinking of a wheelwright, then there are ways of making a good wheel that can be known and enacted to achieve quality. If one is thinking of a radio, then things are different; and different again for a computer. The proposition has to be questioned: does Alexander’s method only work for traditional things that we find meaningful, and can respond to with some safe, familiar certainty? Does modernity build a firewall to such sensitivities, leaving us floundering with new unknowns needing new approaches and different, unfamiliar solutions – the discovery of things not yet known?

There is some truth in this position that appears to have thrown limitations away, making anything possible and personal. The difficulty we face today is the idea that art is private expression; that an artist is inspired to create; that art has to be bespoke, different, if it is true art – challenging in any way. The concept seems to be that art has to be new, fabricated from the unknown. The beauty tradition concerned itself with is different; it is quiet and impersonal, known in detail; intimately rooted in a communal iconography with layered meanings, both esoteric and exoteric. These are the meanings Coomaraswamy refers to as being essential for beauty – the rules.

The problem today is that we are no longer religious as a community, that we have no communal beliefs that we share. Everyone has the right to believe whatever one is inspired to want to believe, and to express matters likewise. There is almost a competition to be unique in what one knows and understands – the quirkier, the better, so it seems. The artist is seen as the one who is different; who sees the world differently, ‘bespokely,’ and presents individualistic visions for others to admire. This art holds monetary value too, yet another gauge of its ‘value’ - a circumstance that creates yet another challenge.

Martin Lings

There is little wonder that Alexander had so much trouble promoting his ideas, because they are rooted in a world that modernity mocks as being irrelevant: science, rationalism, now holds sway. We no longer know how to capture beauty, but we scramble around collecting and paying huge amounts for the art that is rooted in these other understandings that Alexander is referring to; the art about which Martin Lings said: we cannot marvel enough. We fail to see these works in the context that they were created in; rather we choose to view everything through the same individual eye – “I know what I like.” New and old are all seen as a matter of individual taste, personal assessments; left open to aesthetic judgements that are also used for the quirkiest, most outrageous modern artist who wishes to express him or herself. Coomaraswamy raises the issues involved here in his essay Why Exhibit Works of Art? It is a compelling argument that is ignored today, by a world that sees itself as progressive and personal, far superior to anything old, ancient and out of fashion – times when things personal were seen as deviant distortions; lesser; corrupted.

Alexander was aware of the change that was needed for the methods and outcomes he proposed, sensing impossibility in these times, but forever being hopeful for a better future. We need to know much more about ourselves if we are to further develop Alexander’s ideas, because the process can never be a matter of merely following the prescribed steps. It does involve matters rich and subtle as Brody’s words tell us. There needs to be no necessary firewall to human experience, whatever we are dealing with. We can understand these statements without stretching ourselves into the difficulties we might have with ‘religion,’ so why not begin here and start “looking for God in the middle of a field” as we seek matters rich and relevant to life and living? It will truly mean the giving up of the hunting for dreams, that desire for bespoke visions that will highlight MY individuality and MY personal creativity: MY expression; MY freedom. It is what Alexander spoke of as the desire for an architecture that will make the front cover of the magazines because of its astonishing, stark, bespoke differences.* Tradition had no problems with copying; indeed, it was considered better to copy a master poorly than to invent some ‘original,’ different, distorted form. We need to understand this; and that true works of art have a habit of standing apart from whoever made them+ - that personality is irrelevant.

 #

NOTE:

On not preparing drawings, one could liken this to literacy, and read Coomaraswamy’s essay The Bugbear of Literacy in order to understand how plans can be a problem. In Brody’s words: There is no space left for a "plan," only for a bundle of open-ended and nonrational possibilities. The mistake of seeking rationally to focus on any one consideration that is held as primary has to be avoided.

See also: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-evolution-of-architect.html and the quote on scale drawings and their impact -

One of its effects was to make it possible for a design to be completely worked out on paper, away from the site, leading to a greater separation between those who did the drawing and those who did the building. That, in turn, allowed architecture to become a gentlemanly profession separate from the work of craftsmen.  

*

The worry is the idea of art for art’s sake / architecture for architecture’s sake that seeks to liberate the architects’ mind from . . . constraints:
Siteless: 1001 Building Forms – Francois Blanciak

Siteless is an interesting book as it seeks to free architecture from site and program constraints. It asks architects to liberate their minds from the constraints of site, program and budget. The book is full of forms, visual ideas for the architectural imagination to draw from. Another inspiration spark.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/siteless

It looks like the new theory is ‘Form follows f..k-all’ – we have a new ‘freedom’ that allows us to do anything at all! One recalls the child’s disbelieving response: “Can I really do anything I want?” as the sensed requirements for the limits of all action were being sought out. It is an understanding that seems to get ignored today, even with children who are allowed to do anything they want – just like adults!

+

p.54 

Stephen Scheding A Small Unsigned Painting A Vintage Book Random House Australia 1998.

COMMENTARY

A “literary” man, if ever there was one, the late Professor G.L.Kitteredge writes: “It requires a combined effort of the reason and the imagination to conceive a poet as a person who cannot write, singing or reciting his verses to an audience that cannot read … The ability of oral tradition to transmit great masses of verse for hundreds of years is proved and admitted … To this oral literature, as the French call it, education is no friend. Culture destroys it, sometimes with amazing rapidity. When a nation begins to read … what was once the possession of the folk as a whole, becomes the heritage of the illiterate only, and soon, unless it is gathered up by the antiquary, vanishes altogether.” Mark, too, that this oral literature once belonged “to the whole people … the community whose intellectual interests are the same from the top of the social structure to the bottom,” while in the reading society it is accessible only to antiquaries, and is no longer bound up with everyday life. A point of further importance is this: that the traditional oral literatures interested not only all classes, but also all ages of the population; while the books that are nowadays written expressly "for children" are such as no mature mind could tolerate; it is now only the comic strips that appeal alike to children who have been given nothing better and at the same time to "adults" who have never grown up.

. . .

American is already a language of exclusively external relationships, a tradesman’s tongue – lest the other peoples should be unable to compete effectively with us. Competition is the life of trade, and gangsters must have rivals.

http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=The_Bugbear_of_Literacy_by_Ananda_Coomaraswamy.pdf

**

NOTE: MAPS OF HEAVEN

The most exact maps to Heaven are possibly those made by Athapaskan tribes in northeastern British Columbia. Hugh Brody has written of this in his great Maps And Dreams. Hunters, some of them, would dream of the hunt they would have and the game they would take. This was a special gift of a few. Amongst these, some would also dream of Heaven and the way to get there. The maps that are made from dreams are very special and not to be seen except on special occasions, such as when the Beaver people were trying to convince certain bureaucrats that they did indeed understand their area in geographic terms and had mapped it. They brought a moosehide bundle into the meeting place:

…they untied the bundle’s thongs and began very carefully to pull back the cover. …the contents seemed to be a thick layer of hide, pressed tightly together. With great care, Aggan took this hide from its cover and began to open the layers. It was a magnificent dream map.
The dream map was as large as the table top, and had been folded tightly for many years. It was covered with thousands of short, firm, and variously colored markings. …Up here is heaven; this is the trail that must be followed; here is a wrong direction; this is where it would be worst of all to go; and over there are all the animals….all of this had been discovered in dreams.
…it was wrong to unpack a dream map except for very special reasons. But…the hearing was important. Everyone must look at the map now. …They should realize, however, that intricate routes and meanings of a dream map are not easy to follow. There was not time to explain them all. The visitors crowded around the table, amazed and confused.
A corner of the map was missing…someone had died who would not easily find his way to heaven, so the owner of the map had cut a piece of it and buried it with the body. With the aid of even a fragment…the dead man would probably find the correct trail, and when the owner of the map died, it would all be buried with him. His dreams of the trail to heaven would then serve him well.

But the bureaucrats did not understand the map nor the Beaver people’s claim to the land. Their mindset was biased toward the geological survey maps being used by the companies who wanted to build a pipeline through Beaver territory. So it is: we are unable to understand the maps of others and we lose our way to heaven.

https://shrineodreams.wordpress.com/tag/hugh-brody/