The fifteen properties of life

Whole Earth, Winter, 2001 by Christopher Alexander

It should be observed that this fact is not neutral with regard to theories of architecture. One cannot help noticing that the buildings of recent decades (1940-90) are noticeably missing in these properties. I believe that this is intentional, and that various unusual twentieth-century theories of architecture have led architects and designers consciously to move away from these properties in the effort to promulgate some particular style or intention. For people who have been brainwashed by these recent theories of design, it may be uncomfortable to confront the factual nature of the fifteen properties. I believe this cannot be helped.

It is useful, I think, to make some mention of the dates of manufacture of the artifacts shown as examples. Readers and students have observed that many of these properties belong to ancient artifacts. They ask me, Why don't you give more examples of recently built buildings to illustrate these properties? The sad truth is that the works of the last fifty years have consciously abandoned understanding, or use, of these properties. Such works obviously do not serve well as illustrations except in a bad sense. This does not mean that the fifteen properties have anything to do with ancient things as opposed to modern ones. Many of the examples (positive and negative) are made in the twentieth century. Overall, the dates of the objects range from about 1500 SCE to 1997 CE--a span of some 3,500 years. There is a more or less homogeneous distribution of examples over that very long period. The fact that there are relatively fewer examples to be shown from the last seventy years is not polemical, but merely factual and proportioned.

I first identified these fifteen properties during the years 1966-73. By 1976 these were well defined, and it was clear to me that they occurred repeatedly in those artifacts which have life....

However, in 1976, it was not yet clear to me how to interpret these properties. They were, at that time, only raw products of observation. I knew that these features appeared repeatedly both in great buildings and works of art, and in nature, but I had no clear idea what they meant, or where they came from.

... I began to realize that these fifteen properties were indicators, rough approximations of some deeper structure which looked and felt like "all of them together."

... I finally recognized that it is the field of centers which is primary, not these fifteen properties, and that the properties are simply aspects of the field which help us to understand concretely how the field works.

... Simply put, I believe that these properties arise because they are the principal ways in which centers can be strengthened by other centers. They are, if you like, fifteen ways of talking about centers, and the way that the existence and life of centers dominates the existence of life in the world.

1. LEVELS OF SCALE is the way that a strong center is made stronger partly by smaller strong centers contained in it, and partly by its larger strong centers which contain it.