The Nature of Order, Book Two: the Process of Creating Life: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe

Christopher Alexander's masterwork, the result of 27 years of research, considers three vital perspectives: a scientific perspective; a perspective based on beauty and grace; a commonsense perspective based on our intuitions and everyday life.

Table of Contents:
PART ONE: Structure-Preserving Transformations. 1. The Principle of Unfolding Wholeness. 2. Structure-Preserving Transformations. 3. Structure-Preserving Transformations in Traditional Society. 4. Structure-Destroying Transformations in Modern Society. INTERLUDE. 5. Living Process in the Modern Era: Twentieth-century Cases Where Living Process did Occur. PART TWO: Living Processes. 6. Generated Structures. 7. A Fundamental Differentiating Process. 8. Step-by-Step Adaptation. 9. Always Helping to Enhance the Whole. 10. Always Making Centers. 11. The Sequence of Unfolding. 12. Every Part Unique. 13. Patterns: Rules for Making Centers. 14. Deep Feeling. 15. Emerging of Formal Geometry. 16. Form Language. 17. Simplicity. PART THREE: A New Paradigm for Process in Society. 18. The Character of Process in Society. 19. Massive Process Difficulties. 20. The Spread of Living Processes Throughout Society. 21. The Architect in the Third Millennium. Appendix: Am Example of a Living Process: Building a House.

About the Author :
Christopher Alexander is a builder, craftsman, general contractor, architect, painter, and teacher. He taught from 1963 to 2002 as Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now Professor Emeritus. He has spent his life running construction projects, experimenting with new building methods and materials, and crafting carefully articulated buildings- all to advance the idea that people can build environments in which they will thrive. Acting on his deeply held conviction that, as a society, we must recover the means by which we can build and maintain healthy living environments, he has lived and worked in many cultures, and built buildings all over the world. Making neighborhoods, building-complexes, buildings, balustrades, columns, ceilings, windows, tiles, ornaments, models and mockups, paintings, furniture, castings and carvings- all this has been his passion, and is the cornerstone from which his paradigm-changing principles have been derived. Professor Alexander is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his doctorate in Architecture from Harvard University after completing degrees at Cambridge University in mathematics and architecture. He is the winner of the first medal for research awarded by the American Institute of Architects, a member of the Swedish Royal Academy, recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award from the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and the recipient of the Vincent Scully Prize awarded by the National Building Museum in the US, among many other prestigious awards throughout his career. Christopher Alexander writes ""I believe we are on the threshold of a new era when the proper understanding of the deep questions of space, as they are embodied in architecture will play a revolutionary role in the way we see the world and will do for the world view of the 21st and 22nd centuries, what physics did for the 19th and 20th.

Review :
...Alexander's approach presents a fundamental challenge to us and our style-obsessed age. It suggests that beautiful form can come about only through a process that is meaningful to people...""- Thomas Fisher, Former Editor, Progressive Architecture;

""Alexander's genetic scripts are likely to... play a role so fundamental in the future,that their widespread use cannot even be imagined today. This will change the world as effectively as the advent of printing changed the world.""- Doug Carlston, Co-founder, Broderbund Software, Founder & CEO, icPlanet.com;

""...I can think of no one, certainly no one in the last thirty or so years, who has produced a deeper, more profoundly meaningful, visionary and lasting body of work that both unifies and transcends science and spirituality, than Christopher Alexander.""- Andy Ilachinsky, Theoretical Physicist;

""Five hundred years is a long time, and I don't expect that many of the people I interview will be known in the year 2500. Alexander may be an exception.""- David Creelman, Author, Interviewer, and Editor, HR Magazine""...I believe Alexander is likely to be remembered most of all, in the end, for having produced the first credible proof of the existence of God...""- Eric Buck, Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky