brainstorms

Sunday October 31, 2004

notes on "notes on the synthesis of form"

trying to get to the core of alexander's notes while waiting for my son's martial arts class.

this is the earlier, foundational work of alexander on the analysis of design problems and resulting diagrams, what later came to be known as patterns. but this is a flawed work: even though it is an attempt to formalize the design process, using logical structures to represent design problems (probably an influence of logical atomism at the time) it seems strangely incoherent in places, quasi-formal, as if he found it tiring along the way and gave it up. [at this point, i am not so sure if he really had a good handle on the mathematics and logic to do his idea justice] looks like appendix 2 mathematical treatment of decomposition needs a close reading to see if it is correct and complete, and more importantly, works. [he mentions that these were programmed for a 7090]

here is an important quote, from the opening of goodness of fit

the following argument is based on the assumption that physical clarity cannot be achieved in a form until there is some programmatic clarity in the designer's mind and actions; and that for this to be possible, in turn, the designer must first trace his design problem to its earliest functional origins and be able to find some sort of pattern in them. I shall try to outline a general way of stating design problems which draws attention to these functional origins, and makes their pattern reasonably easy to see.

this is how it all started...

Christopher Alexander. Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1964.

(2004-10-31 16:54:28.0) Permalink