[Sdpg] An interview with "Pattern Language" author Christopher Alexander by Rob Hopkins
Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
lakinroe at silcom.com
Fri Jan 7 08:27:00 PST 2011
An interview with "Pattern Language" author Christopher Alexander
by Rob Hopkins
0
http://energybulletin.net/stories/2010-12-23/interview-pattern-language-author-christopher-alexander
I know that I have officially signed off for
Christmas, but I can't resist the temptation to
post this now, think of it as my Christmas gift.
About 3 weeks ago, I travelled to a snow-covered
West Sussex to meet one of my heroes. Christopher
Alexander, architect, thinker, designer, author
of the seminal 'A Pattern Language' and of the
more recent extraordinary 'The Nature of Order'
series of books, has long been someone whose work
I have admired greatly. It is sometimes said that
it is generally best not to meet your heroes as
they usually disappoint, but that wasn't the case
here. I met Chris and his wife Maggie in their
beautiful old home (I'm starting to sound like a
writer for Hello! magazine), and after lunch and
a general chat about the Transition approach
(about which Chris knew very little in advance of
our conversation), we did the following
interview. I am deeply grateful to them both for
a fascinating and illuminating afternoon.
The first question is, how did A Pattern Language
come about? Where did the idea come from?
Oh that I can tell you very simply. In 1961 I
went to India - lived in a village. I was a
fellow at Harvard and I just wanted to go to
India, I always wanted to go there. I had Indian
friends from all over the shop but I'd never been
there. So the Society Fellows were kind enough to
send me out there. I was living in this village -
just mud huts, there was only one brick building
which was vaguely temple-ish.at a scale and
finish of a porch in a cow barn. I actually did
something quite similar to what I was describing
to you, in one of my books - it contains that
analysis - and they're all about issues
pertaining to a simple Indian village. I made a
set of diagrams - it was very early on in my
career, it was one of the first projects I ever
did.
Then it was time for me to go back to the States,
so I went back to Harvard where I still had about
another year to run of my Fellowship. And then
one day I get a letter from a fairly high
official in the state of Gujurat. He had somehow
seen or heard of these diagrams I had made and so
they wrote to me and said, look, would you be
willing to come and plan a village because a dam
was being built in the vicinity and so all those
people were going to be dispossessed. My first
reaction was, how fabulous, I must try to do
this. Then I sat and brooded about this thing for
a couple of weeks before answering the letter.
This was the first sizeable commission of any
sort that I'd ever had. I wrote them a letter and
said, "I'm very, very sorry but I can't take this
project on. I'd love to do it, I have the time
and the energy but I'm not sure it would work
because although I made and an analysis of all
kinds of cultural issues, having to do with that
kind of village, number one I don't know for
sureit's classic for someone who thinks he's a
semi-anthropologist to come in and completely
mis-understand or screw it up". I said I really
couldn't take the risk of doing that when I think
there were a thousand people involved. I said I'd
love to do it but I just can't do a good enough
job, so I don't want to do it. And that was it.
There was no come back to it - I was serious and
I meant what I said.
I was pretty annoyed with myself because I really
wanted to do something like that - but I knew I
was making the right choice. And then.that
Spring I sat and thought in my apartment in
Cambridge, Mass., about this problem and how
aggravating it was, and what could I do about it.
I actually read quite a lot of anthropology,
particularly anthropology governing human
settlements, villages and houses. I became
familiar with the literature of fifteen or twenty
different cultures, just to see how it worked.
What I was asking myself when I read these
various ethnographies, was what was going on? How
come people knew how to build beautiful and
practical buildings without any architects?
Sounds like a ridiculous question, but it was
really troubling to me.
Then I finally realised that every one of these
cultures had essentially a system of rules -
though 'rules' is too strong a word because they
were not binding. They weren't being forced down
somebody's throat, but they were rules that
everyone understood and which had to be used to
get a good result. So I started experimenting
with this and the work of decomposing the issues
that surrounded that village - not the one I was
asked to build, but the one where I was living, I
had to find some practical way that I could put
this to use, and make it into something practical
that Indian village people could use.
But of course, my knowledge of Gujarati and Hindi
was minimal - I couldn't actually communicate
with them on that level. I had some friends that
would translate for me and there were a number of
people in the village that could understand
English as well as I could understand Gujarati.
But anyway, we got along great and I built a
school with them while I was there just in order
to keep my hands busy. But when I was done with
that, then I realised it was effectively the seed
bed for trying to write A Pattern Language. The
first project we actually did was A Pattern
Language for something called 'multi-service
centres' in the U.S. Do you know what they are?
Are they like what they call a Hub now where you
have different businesses based there?
No they weren't businesses but social services,
but it was a hub anyway. We did a whole thing and
wrote a book called A Pattern Language for
Generating Multi Service Centres. I knew that
that would be something that could have worked in
India if I hadn't lost the opportunity. They had
to move those villagers, and they weren't going
to wait for a couple of years for me to figure
this out. But anyway, that's how I came to the
concept of Pattern Languages.
Looking back, what do you see as having been its
strengths and its weaknesses as well, over the 30
or 40 years since it was published?
Well the strengths are fairly obvious because
they do encapsulate the things that are important
to the people that live there and work there,
whether we're talking about a village, urban
community or whatever. So it's the input of the
people and their affectionate cooperation. That
was one of the obvious strong points and was
relatively easy to do because I liked asking
people questions and talking to them. Probably
the most serious negative was that there was a
certain mystery to how these various patterns
would be combined, and although I'd tried to give
an account of that in the Pattern Language book,
the main one I mean, it was very rudimentary.
It does describe some things that are true and
helpful and correct, I think, but it never got to
the point of elegance, let's say, of a Japanese
tea house where it's a definite language. The
people who built those things, not all alike
necessarily, but they all have roughly the same
patterns across Japan. Of course these tea houses
are not being built now - occasionally they are
but the traditional ones were being built a
couple of hundred years ago, and more.That
language was different - it was a sequential
series of actions that you had to take which is
much more like the morphological unfolding of an
organism.
As you probably know, when an organism is being
built - obviously it's happening over the course
of time. At each moment or at each stage in the
history of the unfolding, certain morphological
structures appear, or are given certain
characteristics. It's a one way process, so it's
not like an architect playing around on a piece
of tracing paper trying to see if it can
work.It's one of those things where you do
something and then it's there; you do something
else and then it's there,There's no going back.
These generative processes are the essence of it.
It has a lot to do with biology. I've never yet
given a fully coherent account of how these
generative sequences work, but I have written
about them and I feel now that that would have
been a better approach.But I didn't know that at
the time.
It's not so simple because the canons of Pattern
Language, like the book A Pattern Language, are
sort of multipurpose. You're trying to achieve
many, many different things with this one book of
patterns. These traditional ones aren't like that
at all, the biological ones aren't like that.
With the biological ones there's no fooling
around - this is how this one works. You want an
embryo for a locust, there's only one way to do
it! So that was, I would say, my biggest failure.
Incredibly, so many years later, I have not
solved that problem to my satisfaction. Part of
my trouble is I have so much work so.
What's been your opinion of subsequent peoples'
attempts at doing Pattern Languages - I've seen a
couple of different ones, have you seen many?
Some. They're not that good. The reason I say
that is that the people who've attempted to work
with Pattern Languages, think about them, but are
not conscious of the role of morphological
elegance in the unfolding. In a biological case,
they always are elegant and the unfolding
morphology is a sort of magic. But it's very
simple.It's not as if it's magic because it's
complicated, it's just.like that.
I guess when we were talking before about how a
Pattern Language goes from the large down to the
small, maybe when we were talking about it as
going outwards maybe it is more like an unfolding
process?
I think it is yes. The business of going from the
large to the small was more for convenience.you
could make sense of the book most easily like
that but it isn't necessarily the way to actually
do it.
In the Luminous Ground - I've got the first two
books in the Nature of Order series, but I
haven't got very far with them because they're
very big! They're wonderful - if I'm ever on
Desert Island Discs, they're my desert island
read. That would be the only time in my life I'd
ever get to sit and read them! You wrote in
Luminous Ground:
"Space itself is somehow being-like, has the
potential for beings to appear in it - not in a
mechanistic sense of assembly from components,
but in the far more startling sense of something
within space and matter. That something within
space and matter could be awoken by the presence
of proper configurations."
So how does one, in the light of that, go beyond
a patterned language just being a collection of
things, like Lego, that you would start to
assemble
Well they're not actually things.
Elements
They're not elements either. They are actually
field-like structures that appear in space. They
are not sharp to define. They're not like sets.
As an organism grows, it's a very fluid entity
which is fluid at every moment including its
later stages when it's maturing into a
functioning atom. I think that is the nature of
space - when it has that fluidity it has
unbelievable capacity to form morphological
structures, much more than anything remotely
resembling tinker toys and the like, so it's just
not similar.
The problem in our society in the last forty
years is that some people have thought it is like
a tinker toy, and it's just nonsense! So that's
one of the most absorbing questions in all of
biology and architecture, is how that works. I'm
hoping to have a few more years left to be more
precise about it.
Maggie: Wouldn't you say that's one of the draw
backs of Pattern Language, that people could
treat it like tinker toys?
Absolutely, yes. I forgot to mention that.
Pattern Language looks at built environments and
space - what does the concept of wholeness or
'The Quality That Has No Name' look like in terms
of a community or a bottom up process like
transition. How would you know that a process
like Transition has the quality that has no name?
My hope is, (I'm guessing, just from what I've
heard and picked up) that the people who are
building communities on the basis of Transition
thinking would not be inept enough to make those
kind of mistakes. I would think they would make
things that are somewhat more rough and ready.I
don't mean anything disrespectful by that - I
think rough and ready is good, just like this
house. You probably saw reference to the fifteen
morphological generators (in The Nature of Order)
and those things are by nature fluid, even though
they are quite precise actually. The book that I
have coming out called Sustainability and
Morphogenesis - we'll probably change the title
before we get to it - but anyway it's a book
that's almost complete.
Those 15 properties are the kind of essential
generators which, when they knock up against each
other, because they're all over lapping and it's
a very tight squeeze. What I mean by that is that
every one of the 15 properties is very powerful
as a configuration generator and, in order to
manage to have the result come out, you have to
do an incredible amount of pushing and shoving
and squeezing and pulling. I'm not talking
literally, but I am talking literally in terms of
this morphological process. Heaven is a cloud,
you know!
If you see there's a fence over there beyond
those rose bushes - it's just a bunch of sticks
stuck in the ground with some wire. Obviously it
did not come from the drawing board of an
architect. It's the product of some very simple
things - cutting some poles, sticking them in the
ground at approximately equal centres. By the
time you put it up, it's never going to be
perfect, it's just impossible. After a couple of
years of rainfall and frost and snow and sun,
it's already developed a whole set of
complexities. Architecture as per the RIBA knows
nothing about that - they don't know anything
about it, they don't know how to create it, they
don't want to create it. That's my opinion on
that!
One of the things that struck me..I've been
involved in doing lots of natural building
projects, straw bale building, cob building,
round timber that kind of stuff - it's very hard
to make anything ugly out of cob. What's your
sense of that movement, the natural building
movement and if we're looking at relocalisation
and the move back to predominantly local
materials I mean, this house, for example, is
the result of people being able to build with
what they can get to this site on the back of a
horse and cart. Is your sense that returning to
more local materials, more vernacular forms of
building, inherently we end up with more
beautiful buildings?
Vernacular buildings have always been a huge
influence to me, that's obvious from what I've
built, but that's not because I'm trying to copy
the vernacular. All people who have built
vernacular buildings in any culture all do the
same things, and I do what they do. I'm copying
nothing except the process.
Were people taught that process? Did they absorb it by osmosis?
Common sense really. People have an amazing
amount of common sense. And now, the RIBA is
trying to prove that's impossible and by the
way, I hope to defeat the RIBA.
Good luck!
Oh I will do it. It'll be posthumous but I will do it!
In The Nature of Order books you argue that some
built environments are inherently more beautiful
and life affirming than others. But couldn't you
argue that each generation bemoans the
architecture that follows it and that actually
the Gherkin that you and I might think is
repugnant - kids growing up today see it as part
of their world and they celebrate it?
This is a huge issue, not one that I can embark
on right now. But believe me, it's not like that.
There are real tests - and the morphology is
essential to making buildings work and people
have forgotten, have no idea what that morphology
is. I'm speaking about the morphological process,
not the particular morphology of a flint barn or
something. I'm talking about the way people think
and act with their hands that produces things.
From what you've built you know all about that -
a lot about that, and I'm afraid you won't build
a Gherkin like that
You couldn't build a gherkin out of cob! In The
Nature of Order you talk about the word
'sustainable' and you say: "in a deeper and more
comprehensive sense this is a deeper and more
technological sustainability than that has become
fashionable in recent years." What does
sustainability mean to you?
I'm trying to think - when did I give that lecture?
Maggie: 2004.
2004, so that's only 6 years ago. I was asked to
give one of the Schumacher lectures. At that time
it was very clear that the word 'sustainable'
meant a certain kind of technological track.But
at that time, it meant doing technological
gimmicks which were believed to be important. And
some of them we're still suffering from.It's
beginning to disappear. I think people are now
somewhat more sensible, so that they're more
likely to make friends with materials that are
potentially more organic, more malleable,
cheaper, better! I actually don't use sustainable
as a term. I think I understand what people would
like it to mean. I suppose in that sense, many of
my buildings are sustainable, but not because I
went through a technological check list, and
they're not green listed. I think it's probably
not a terribly good word, actually, because
again, it separates things from one another, so
that it artificially creates divisions. I think
it's a silly idea but it's understandable that
people use it.
Maggie: Would you say that if you follow a
morphological process would you end up with
something that is sustainable?
Not automatically, there are considerations to do
with stability and heat and moisture and so on.
You can't remove all those things obviously. I
think that the architectural establishment has
just done incredible damage, much during the
course of the twentieth century.The way
architects talk and gesture and draw is ludicrous
in my opinion, and it sets up conditions that
make it virtually impossible to make a good
building or a beautiful one.
I always think it's also the fact that very few of them do draw anymore
That's true.
I increasingly think Transition isn't an
environmental approach but more a cultural one -
about how you build a culture better equipped to
build resilience.and to see these times as an
opportunity. How do you see your work informs and
deepens a process like that?
Well, the answer to that question is sitting on
my desk but it's not published yet, and it's a
long story, it's not a simple thing to answer. I
hope we'll send it to the printer in the spring.
This is called Battle.
The last question is just what do you think about
the idea of using the Pattern approach to look at
how Transition works, what your thoughts are on
what we discussed before?
I think this is very interesting. I would caution
you - I'm not trying to knock my own work - but I
would caution you. Don't automatically say I'm
going to do a Pattern Language because it's such
a great idea or whatever. I would want to know a
little bit more about Transition and what it
means. As I hear it in my head, Transition could
be like the word 'sustainability'. I would hate
Transition to get coupled with that whole
insufficient idea of sustainability.
I think if it's understood as a transition to an
enlightened form of living, that's something else
and then I'm completely behind it and all for it.
But I do think that has to be made incredibly
clear, though not if you don't agree with it -
but I think you probably do. It's a source of
confusion I think for people who haven't thought
very carefully about it. I think it would be very
sad if it did get coupled with that mechanistic
sustainability thing, or a mechanistic Transition
either.
I suppose the tension now is always around - if
you're working with very diverse communities and
you're doing a process, which is ultimately not
purely a transition about local food and energy
but a big cultural shift in reconnecting with
each other and coming home to each other,
building those relationships. There's always a
tension between what's made implicit and what's
explicit. Because if you start the process and
you say up front, 'This process is about the
collective enlightenment of this community'
there's a handful of people up at the front that
say, 'yeah, fantastic!'. But actually a lot of
people.we have to be very careful with the
language I think. There's always a tension within
Transition and the wider movement about how much
is made explicit and how much is implicit.
I understand exactly what you're talking about. I
would say that what needs to be said can be said
in common sense language and words like
'enlightenment' do not need to be used. There's
no point and it's just pretentious. It's not
really pretentious if that's what you think
about, but to drag it in by the heels is not
going to help because people will freak out or
turn away. I try to keep my own language pretty
down to earth if I can, unless my wife drags me
into
Maggie: Actually I was just thinking about
simpler language in reaction to your question -
if Transition was successful, what the community
would feel - it would feel like home. Simple.
Everyone can feel that feeling. You know it when
you see it; it just feels like home. You walk
down the street and somebody's planted nut trees
and they're excited to tell you about all the nut
trees they've planted and about how much
protein.just like you rattled off. And how it
can replace wheat or what it was you said.
They're excited because they're making their home
- that's what it looks like!
We just had a conference in Scotland, Transition
Scotland, and it was called 'Diverse Routes to
Belonging' and it was all about.particularly
that question of being indigenous to place. And
one of the exercises was about tracing where your
grandparents came from and where your own parents
came from, and where your life has taken you. The
question was 'where is home?' It was interesting
because I was saying, 'well, I guess where I live
now.' But in terms of home home I can't think of
anywhere because I've moved around so many times.
And the guy on my table lived in Glasgow, grown
up in Perth in Scotland and his mother lived on
the Isle of Skye - he'd never been to the Isle of
Skye but he'd grown up with her telling stories
about the Isle of Skye though he'd never been.
His mother was in her 80s and he took his mother
to Skye on a visit, the last visit she'd be able
to take there, and he said he just had this
aching feeling of home, though he'd never been
there. I think so many people, we've lost the
connection to that, but it's about creating home
wherever we are
Maggie: I never felt it until I came here. Now I
feel like I have roots into the ground and I ache
when I leave but I was 52 before it happened.
I hope to die here. You never know where you're
going to die so you can't ordain it but that's
what I hope for.
Thank you very much.
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