The Origins of Pattern Theory,the Future of the Theory, And The Generation of a Living World by Christopher Alexander C. What the future holds in store: The Generativity Problem and the Generation of a Living World Let us now consider a problem of magnitude. There are some two billion buildings in the world, about 2 […] read more
Christopher Alexander, 2002-05. The Nature of Order, Books 1-4: The Phenomenon of Life; The Process of Creating Life; A Vision of a Living World; The Luminous Ground. Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure. Reviewed by David Seamon, Architecture Department, Kansas State University, 211 Seaton Hall, Manhattan, KS. 66506-2901 USA. Tel 1-785-532-5953. www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon; triad@ksu.edu. °°°° We […] read more
by Christopher Alexander FOREWORD The following commentary is based upon a letter I wrote in response to William Saunders of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Saunders wrote a review of Book I of The Nature of Order that I felt completely failed to grasp the ideas behind it. Indeed he did not even discuss those […] read more
Author of Notes on the Synthesis of Form, A City is Not A Tree, A Pattern Language and The Nature of Order by Michael Mehaffy Michael Mehaffy: We’re seeing some astonishing things coming out of the sciences just now. Geometry seems to be the hot topic – the complex structure of proteins, the unfolding processes of […] read more
by Michel Bauwens P2P and Communal Shareholding With P2P, people voluntarily and cooperatively construct a commons according to the communist principle: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The use-value created by P2P projects is generated through free cooperation, without coercion toward the producers, and users have free access to […] read more
by Michel Bauwens Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As political, economic, and social systems transform themselves into distributed networks, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer to peer (P2P). As […] read more
by Nikos A. Salingaros Trying to measure the complexity of a system is not straightforward. The simplest measure of a system’s complexity reflects not so much its intrinsic complexity, or the complexity of the process that generated it, but the complexity of the system’s description. As such, this approach is not without its limitations. We […] read more
by Michael W. Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros Originally published in Metropolis 29, November 2011 In 1984, the environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich made a startling discovery. In studying hospital patients recovering from surgery, he found that one factor alone accounted for significant differences in post-operative complications, recovery times, and need for painkillers. It was the […] read more
by Marco Casagrande The current massive urban immigration movement in China, brings people from every areas of the country to the megalomaniac cities, that all are the same. These farmers’ hands are constructing the new anonymous cities. The same hands that know the rural Local Knowledge through physical labor and passing of traditions through generations, are […] read more
JBU Volume II (1&2/2013) Eleni Tracada, Editor in Chief On spatial structure and the 2013 International Society of Biourbanism (ISB) Summer School in Neuroergonomics and Urban Planning read more