The Timeless Way of Building [Hardcover]

Volume 1,The Timeless Way of Building, lays the foundation of the series. It presents a new theory of architecture, building, and planning which forms the bsis for a new traditional post-industrial architecture, created by the people. Read it for inspiration; as a practicing planner, an educator, or a student, you cannot help but be challenged and stimulated by this book. --Dennis Michael Ryan,Journal of the American Planning AssociationVolume 2,A Pattern Language, is a working document for such an architecture. It is an archetypal language which allows lay persons to design for themselves. I believe this to be perhaps the most important book on architectural design published this century. Every library, every school, every environmental action group, every architect, and every first-year student should have a copy. --Tony Ward,Architectural DesignVolume 3,The Oregon Experiment, shows how this theory may be implemented, describing a new planning process for the University of Oregon. The Oregon Experimentis perhaps this decade's best candidate for a permanently important book. --Robert Campbell,Harvard MagazineThe theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. Yet the power of present-day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable, even afraid, to say openly that they dislike what is happening, because they are afraid to seem foolish, afraid perhaps that they will be laughed at.Now, at last, there is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself.The Timeless Way of Buildingis the introductory volume in the Center for Environmental Structure series, Christopher Alexander presents in it a new theory of architecture, building, and planning which has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulll#¼