The Nature of Order, Book 3: A Vision of A Living World: An Essay on the Art of Building and The Nature of the Universe

By Christopher Alexander

From a practical point of view, this is the most compelling of the four books. Hundreds of photographs and plans of new buildings that have living structure, and the processes which gave them life, demonstrate, for the first time, what the concept of living structure can mean in buildings of our time and of the future.

The really good building. The really good space. Places that reach an archetypal level of human experience, reaching across centuries, across continents, across cultures, across technology, across building materials and climates. They connect us to ourselves. They connect us to our feelings. What is more, as we study them, we realize that they all share a similar geometry. How are they made? The practical task of making beauty is the principal subject of A Vision of a Living World.

In the four books of The Nature of Order we have been given a new framework for perceiving and interacting with our world, a methodology for creating beautiful spaces, a cosmology where art, architecture, science, religion and secular life all work comfortably together. The third book shows us visually, technically, and artistically what a world built in this cosmology and framework is likely to be: what it may look like and be like.

Hundreds of examples of buildings and places are shown. New forms for large buildings, public spaces, communities, neighborhoods, lead to discussions about equally important small scale of detail and ornament and color. Many f the examples are built by Alexander and his colleagues; other buildings explored take us around the world and through time.

In all instances, it is the uniqueness and adaptation of each place and its parts, and their comfort, which hold attention: uniqueness coupled with geometrical simplicity and beauty of form and color.

With these examples, lay people, architects, builders, artists, and students are able to make this new framework real for themselves, understand how it works, and understand its significance. The book is a feast for the eyes, and mind, and heart. Places created by living process (Book 2) have living structure (Book 1), and they connect us to our essence as people (Book 4). The seven hundred pictures of Alexander's buildings and works of art shown in this book demonstrate in detail what he means.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Center for Environmental Structure
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735078120

Christopher Alexander

Chris Alexander is a diplomat and politician who served for eighteen years as an international public servant and Canadian foreign service officer. From 2005 to 2009 he was the UN deputy special representative in Afghanistan, helping to lead the largest UN political mission in the world. Alexander was also the Canadian ambassador to that country and a key contributor to the effort to stabilize and support post-Taliban Afghanistan. He returned to Canada in 2009 and is now the Conservative MP for Ajax-Pickering, where he lives, as well as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defense.

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