''The Timeless Way of Building'' is a 1979 book by

Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist. He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature ...

that proposes a new theory of architecture (and design in general) that relies on the understanding and configuration of

design pattern A design pattern is the re-usable form of a solution to a design problem. The idea was introduced by the architect Christopher Alexander and has been adapted for various other disciplines, particularly software engineering. The "Gang of Four" boo ...

s. Although it came out later, it is essentially the introduction to ''

A Pattern Language ''A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction'' is a 1977 book on architecture, urban design, and community livability. It was authored by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein of the Center for Environmental Struc ...

'' and ''

The Oregon Experiment ''The Oregon Experiment'' is a 1975 book by Christopher Alexander and collaborators Murray Silverstein, Shlomo Angel, Sara Ishikawa, and Denny Abrams. It describes an experimental approach to campus community planning at the University of Oreg ...

'', providing the philosophical background to the Center for Environmental Structure series. It has had a huge influence on creative thinking, especially in the areas of architecture and software design.

Summary

In the book, Alexander introduces the concept of the "quality without a name", and argues that we should seek to include this nameless quality in our buildings. Alexander attempts to define the idea by surrounding it with existing concepts that reflect a part of the quality with no name but are not sufficient to define it individually. It is written as a long series of italicized headlines followed by short sections providing more detail; as Alexander suggests in the foreword, the 552-page book can be read in an hour by only reading the headlines, which frame the book's argument. There are also numerous full-page photo illustrations throughout the book, some of which are referenced by the text and some of which are simply an additional visual argument to complement the words. The style used in ''The Timeless Way of Building'' is also unusual for an architectural text, at times resembling prose poetry or religious scripture. Indeed, some consider it not primarily an architectural work at all but "a book on philosophy with architectural examples." Other books in the same series are: * ''

'' (volume 2) * ''

'' (volume 3)

References

External links

PatternLanguage.com

The ''Nature of Order'' series

Article: New Concepts in Complex Theory. May 2003.
1979 non-fiction books Architecture books Oxford University Press books {{architecture-book-stub he:The Timeless Way of Building