Influential urban theorist and architect, Christopher Alexander has passed away at 85
22/03/2022.
[West Sussex - England] UK
metalocus, JAVIER ARIAS
metalocus, JAVIER ARIAS
The world of architectural theory is in mourning after news that architect, urbanist, AIA Gold Medalist, and former UC Berkeley professor Christopher Alexander passed away at 85, in his home inWest Sussex, south of England Thursday following a long illness.
Alexander was a pioneering theorist and early proponent of the New Urbanism movement who authored several crucial texts including The Timeless Way of Building and was recognized as the father of the "pattern language" movement in computer science, 1973’s seminal A Pattern Language.
Alexander was a pioneering theorist and early proponent of the New Urbanism movement who authored several crucial texts including The Timeless Way of Building and was recognized as the father of the "pattern language" movement in computer science, 1973’s seminal A Pattern Language.
Un lenguaje de patrones de C. Alexander, S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein. Ed. Gustavo Gili, 1980
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Ed. OUP USA, 1978
The Eishin Campus was built in Saitama prefecture outside of Tokyo, Japan, using Alexander’s methods. Image © The Center for Environmental Structure
The Eishin Campus was built in Saitama prefecture outside of Tokyo, Japan, using Alexander’s methods. Image © Dan Klyn
Architect and theorist Christopher Alexander. Photograph by Sophie Elizabeth Alexander / Wikimedia Commons
Christopher Wolfgang Alexander (Vienna, 4 October 1936 – West Sussex, 17 March 2022) Born in Austria in 1936, Alexander read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge (1956) before immigrating to the United States to attend both MIT and Harvard in 1958. Alexander joined the faculty as Professor of Architecture at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design in 1963.
He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature of human-centred design have affected fields beyond architecture, including urban design, software, and sociology. Alexander designed and personally built over 100 buildings, both as an architect and a general contractor, in California, Japón and México.
He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature of human-centred design have affected fields beyond architecture, including urban design, software, and sociology. Alexander designed and personally built over 100 buildings, both as an architect and a general contractor, in California, Japón and México.
As a theorist, he was instrumental in developing still-used planning methods first published in The Oregon Experiment in 1975. He was also especially relevant to be known for influencing the development of a software engineering concept that ultimately led to Wikipedia.
As an architect, he demonstrated a striving towards what he called "wholeness" using theories that were articulated in his 2012 work The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth and embodied in the designs for San Jose's Julian Street Inn supportive housing development and the Eishin School in Saitama Prefecture Japan.
Alexander’s last published work during his lifetime was 2012’s The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems.
“There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been,” wrote Alexander in The Timeless Way of Building. “The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. And as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to building which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”
