<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">RE: Alexander and Geometry<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">First, my notion of 'geometry' may be too simplistic and too Euclidean. If so, please point out what I may be overlooking.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I did a quick review of Alexander's major works and found few mentions of 'geometry' as I understand the term. One of the major ones was in Timeless Way where he deals with Pattern <b><u>Languages</u></b>. The notion that you could compose architectural insights/truths/novelty by combining patterns much the same way you would construct a sentence using nouns and verbs. He seems to be conveying the idea of a geometry-based "grammar."<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">If you count APL patterns that seem to have any naive geometric aspect, e.g., "Light From Two Sides" it is less than 10%. If you look at the Fifteen Properties (listed below), most (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, and maybe 13) are conceivably 'geometric'. But the most important concept in APL/TO is "QWAN" and in NO, it is "Liveness"—neither of which have any, that I can see, rely on the "geometric" properties as much as they do properties like Deep interlock and ambiguity, Simplicity and Inner Calm, and Not-separateness. In terms of patterns from APL, this would include things like Dancing in the Streets, Sleeping in Public, and Storefront Schools which, like most APL patterns, have little or nothing to do with spatial arrangement/geometry.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I asked Jenny Quillien and Richard Gabriel (both of whom worked extensively with Alexander and Gabriel was responsible for arranging Chris to be keynote speaker at OOPSLA) about the importance of Geometry in Alexander and neither thought it was more than an afterthought or an artifact. Geometry might be inferred because Alexander liked visual images like the ones attached and they do show spatial arrangement, a kind of geometry.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">[ I think Alexander made a major error with his property, Alternating Repetition, precisely because he expressed it "geometrically" rather than in "living' terms as rhythm.]<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Nick Salingaros was a far more accomplished mathematician than Alexander, and did, in much of his writing address more geometric issues/ideas. And Salingaros did work with Alexander. But both of them despised contemporary minimalist, functionalist, deconstructivist contemporary architectural theory which dominated (and dominates) the profession. In this stance they appear to be anti-geometry (and any similar formalism).<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Salingaros interviewed Alexander as to the central or most important ideas, and the revolutionary nature of Alexander's work. Both men seem to agree that the essence is:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>Your point is that architecture is not about</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>building style, but is really a state of mind, and</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>that good architecture is any structure, however</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>modest, that generates an identifiable positive</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>state of mind that allows you to be alive to the</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>fullest extent possible. This idea is profound as</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>well as revolutionary, since it stands architecture</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>on its head. You validate our most basic feelings</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>as human beings and insist that the built environment</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>must nurture our inner joy, sadness,</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>vulnerability, unselfconsciousness, and so on. All</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>the formal architectural concerns — and names</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind — are thus</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>thrown out of the window.</i> [Salingaros]<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>The new form of</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>architecture that I am speaking about is beginning</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>to be understood by engineers, by ecologists,</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>by computer scientists, by builders, by</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>artists, by biologists, by economists. Many of</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>these people recognize that architects are simply</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>not dealing with the problem of the en-</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>vironment in a realistic or useful fashion, and</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>that the task of building now falls on their own</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>shoulders. Under the impact of that kind of</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>thinking, people are now developing new ways</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>of banking, new ways of development, new</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>forms of social reconstruction, and new forms</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>of housing, new forms of sustainable settlements.</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>In many countries, the primary way of conceiving</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>and making buildings and settlements</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>is already people-oriented. It is not recognizable</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>within the existing paradigm as architecture,</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>and architects despise it because it looks</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>low budget, low tech, and is oriented to people’s</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>desperate needs — yet all this is, within</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>the perspective of our new architecture, a major</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>contribution to the new, life-based paradigm.</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>All this is only its beginning. These new</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>kinds of professionals, and new social forms,</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>are beginning to develop and propagate new</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>ways of doing things.</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>And what architects now claim is simply being</i><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>laid aside as the nonsense it really is</i>. [Alexander]<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Still not seeing much in the way for formalism, let along geometric formalism.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Alexander's Fifteen Properties from Nature of Order<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">1. Levels of scale<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">2. Strong centers<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">3. Thick boundaries<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">4. Alternating repetition<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">5. Positive space<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">6. Good shape<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">7. Local symmetries<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">8. Deep interlock and ambiguity<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">9. Contrast<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">10. Gradients<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">11. Roughness<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">12. Echoes<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">13. The void<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">14. Simplicity and inner calm<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">15. Not-separateness<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">On Wed, Sep 28, 2022, at 3:02 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> For construction and repair tasks, I would usually need to do some <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> planning and reflection. Work out ahead of time what is needed with <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> some help from Google. Or just hire out the work to someone that is <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> an expert. Anyway, more power to you and your hardware store friends. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I don’t feel their absence.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> On Sep 28, 2022, at 11:55 AM, glen <<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com">gepropella@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> And there're other things you don't get from delivery businesses: 1) socialization and 2) tacit knowledge. When we set up our "office" in an industrial space in Oregon, the ceilings were very high. We had no real ideas for how to build the welding barriers and other things. We broached the problem to the handy dudes at the local hardware store and all 4 of us came up with an easy and cheap solution. We 1) made some friends 2) with different knowledge from ours.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> I know such things may not matter to some who are anti-social and/or so wicked smart they never need anyone else's ideas. But for this less socialized moron, they're important.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> Amazon is definitely *not* easier or faster at either of those things.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>> On 9/28/22 10:01, Steve Smith wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>>> On 9/28/22 10:38 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>>> Amazon is almost always easier and faster than a local business that have thin inventory and higher margins. A local business is a place get COVID. I find I usually order hardware and equipment online from Home Depot because the store inventory is kept thin on purpose (like because it is stolen). This is why Amazon is on top. It is a better way to do business and they are really good at it.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>> I still buy from local businesses as much as I can *so they will be there when I want/need them*... I also find ordering online and picking up at my front door exquisitely more convenient "in the moment", whether it is Amazon or Home Depot or Autozone. But then there are those times when I don't want to wait a day or three for the plumbing part that gets my bathroom back to working and it would really suck if the (Ace) Hardware store run by the local pueblo were closed (they closed a *lot* during COVID and during the "great resignation" we are still in).<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>>> Not everyone is a cow. We are selected and self-selected into organizations were our personalities and abilities work. Some are farmers, some are cows. When the cows are left to wander, they get frustrated and call for farmers. Il Duce!<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>> You sound a lot like John Galt!<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>>> And just to double-down on the "aphorisms": "when you own a cow, the cow owns you". I think it goes for golden geese also. And I think maybe Mr. Putin is maybe going to get a kick in the teeth by the golden-goose-cow he has owned now for 30? years...<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> -- <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> archives: 5/2017 thru present <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br></div></body></html>