{"product_id":"the-nature-of-order-book-three-a-vision-of-a-living-world-an-essay-on-the-art-of-building-and-the-nature-of-the-universe-9780972652933","title":"The Nature of Order, Book Three: A Vision of a Living World: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe","description":"Christopher Alexander's series of ground-breaking books including \u003ci\u003eA Pattern Language\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Timeless Way of Building\u003c\/i\u003e have pointed to fundamental truths of the way we build, revealing what gives life and beauty and true functionality to our buildings and towns. Now, in \u003ci\u003eThe Nature of Order\u003c\/i\u003e, Alexander explores the properties of life itself, highlighting a set of well-defined structures present in all order and in all life from micro-organisms and mountain ranges to good houses and vibrant communities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom a practical point of view, \u003ci\u003eA Vision of a Living World\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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 this volume.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHundreds 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 colour. Many of the examples are built by Alexander and his colleagues; other buildings explored take us around the world and through time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTaken as a whole, the four books create a sweeping new conception of the nature of things which is both objective and structural (hence part of science) and also personal (in that it shows how and why things have the power to touch the human heart). A step has been taken, through which these two domains the domain of geometrical structure and the feeling it creates kept separate during four centuries of scientific though from 1600 to 2000, have finally been united.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Nature of Order\u003c\/i\u003e constitutes the backbone of \u003ci\u003eBuilding Beauty: Ecologic Design Construction Process\u003c\/i\u003e, an initiative aimed at radically reforming architecture education, with the emphasis of making as a way to access a transformative vision of the world. The 15 fundamental properties of life guide our work and have given us much more than a set of solutions. \u003ci\u003eThe Nature of Order\u003c\/i\u003e has given us the framework in which we can search and build up our own solutions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn order to be authentically sustainable, buildings and places have to be cared for and loved over generations. Beautiful buildings and places are more likely to be loved, and they become more beautiful, and loved, through the attention given to them over time. Beauty is therefore, not a luxury, or an option, it includes and transcends technological innovation, and is a necessary requirement for a truly sustainable culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChristopher Alexander\u003c\/b\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Center for Environmental Structure","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51346463949074,"sku":"9780972652933","price":64.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_83e1a7fc-1d51-43c2-9fca-3d08b0866bb2.jpg?v=1749045624","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-nature-of-order-book-three-a-vision-of-a-living-world-an-essay-on-the-art-of-building-and-the-nature-of-the-universe-9780972652933","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}