You decide if a possible pun is intended.
I have been reading Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building. It is very rich, full of stuff highly relevant to much here discussed in all three divisions, And I will bring more of him around - once I have it processed, very rich andf very new to me.
But for now, a sample: Does not this quote - from pp 237-9 - even though it is focussed on architecture and urban design - does it not epitomize - to our dismay - what we have seen and are seeing more and more in every area of modern civilized life - science, education, medicine, politics, economics, art and, yes, institutionalized religion?
A lot of us - never say all - must know it even if we do not articulate it. Alexaner says it rather well.
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Since the natural process of building towns no longer work, in panic, people look for ways of "controlling" the design of towns and buildings. Those architects and planners who have become concerned by the insignificance of their influence on the environment make three kinds of efforts to gain "total design" control of the environment:
1. They try to control larger pieces of the environment (this is called urban design).
2. They try to control more pieces of the environment (this is called mass production or systyem-building).
3. They try to control the environment more firmly by passing laws (this is called planning control).
But this makes things still worse.
These totalitarian efforts, although they do control more of the environment, have exactly the wrong effect. They cannot create a whole environment, because they are not sufficiently responsive to the real needs, forces, demands, problems, of the people involved. Instead of making the environment more whole, they make it less whole.
08 Feb 2011, 12:04 pm
