The Nature of Order, Book 2: The Process of Creating Life

By Christopher Alexander

Part 2 of Alexander's magnum opus

When a plant grows in a forest, the forest does not first establish a larger plan for the forest as a whole. What happens instead is that each small process contributes to the larger whole.

This speaks to Alexander's idea that the only way to create something which is whole and has life is through step-wise evolution.

In the mechanistic view of architecture we think mainly of design as the desired end-state of a building, and far too little of the way or process of making a building as something inherently beautiful in itself.

This stood out to me because how often in product design do we think about delivering a mock representing the "end state" of our product, even though most of the products we work on don't have end states? We draw up blueprints that tend to ignore all the insights the emerge throughout the building process, which fundamentally change our understanding of what we're trying to create.

Why is this process-view essential? Because the ideals of 'design,' the corporate boardroom drawing of the imaginary future, the developer's slick watercolor perspective of the future end-state, control our conception of what must be done yet they bear no relation to the actual nature, or problems, or possibilities, of a living environment.

The blueprints we draw up blind us to the real problems and possibilities inherent in the living environment.

The idea of a blueprint speaks to another thing we do at work sometimes, which is adhere to images an renderings of complete forms in the face of reality:

Instead, you are leaping to a complete form (probably at odds with the environment) without any possibility of life-giving adaptations: and you have to maintain this arbitrary form, rigidly, in the face of common sense.

Sometimes we design something, and stick to it even when the building process uncovers insights that render the plan obsolete. We anchor onto a high fidelity picture of something and don't build in flexible areas—where the vision is workable and we've left some leeway in the way it should be executed.

However it seems to me like flexible can't mean "we're willing to completely change directions at the drop of a dime." That would be frustrating for all involved, so you need to find ways to de-risk before you start, while maintaining the possibility of flexibility in the right areas.

Doing small good things

When you're deciding what to do next, you can ask yourself what the most minimal thing you can do which will give the product life is. Find the "centers" that are already latent in the product and strengthen them. And strengthening a center does not have to be an additive process; you can strengthen by pruning away excess, too.

The goal should be to move the entire product forward in a deliberate and explainable way. If you simply go slow and take small steps that's no guarantee of creating something that has life. There is some element of size involved at each step, where you have an idea, do the thing, and then assess whether it has had the desired effect.

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Reference

Alexander, C. (2002). The Nature of Order: The process of creating life. United Kingdom: Center for Environmental Structure.