(Journal of Urban Culture Research – Chulalongkorn University Bangkok Thailand)

Keep the cars outside the urban core.
Image: Richard Elmore

The rapid urbanization of the world’s population over the twentieth century is described in the 2005 Revision of the UN World Urbanization Prospects report. The global proportion of urban population rose dramatically from 13% (220 million) in 1900, to 29% (732 million) in 1950, to 49% (3.2 billion) in 2005. The same report projected that the figure is likely to rise to 60% (4.9 billion) by 2030. [Wikipedia]

Urbanization, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin-America has created mega-cities out of small settlements in less than a century. The process has been, and is chaotic and the result as well. In earlier societies the city was a quite well defined entity. The city was often enclosed by a wall. The people inside the walls were the true citizens with their rights and their duties. Today a shanty town may spring up in weeks or months with thousands or even tens of thousands inhabitants and almost no formal structures. There is no certain definition of the city, and even lists of the most populous cities of the world are very ambiguous for that very reason. A city of fifteen million registered inhabitants may have twenty million during work hours because so many from surrounding areas commute into the city. These migrations very so much that any census is uncertain.

The wall sets a permanent limit – No sprawl.
Image: Richard Elmore

The city sprawl has also made it hard to define the limits of the city, where does it end and where does the countryside take over? Is New York a city or is it just a part of a super Megalopolis of fifty million people stretching from Boston to Washington DC. Greater Mexico city is a huge conurbation of more than 40 municipalities in the Valle de México. Jakarta was once before colonialism a small trading port. When the Dutch took over they founded the European style town of Batavia in 1619. Today Greater Jakarta has swallowed the neighboring cities such as Bogor into a metropolitan area, called Jabotabek, of almost 30 million people. And then you have the enormous conurbation of Tokyo-Yokohama where you can travel for hours and still be inside the city area.

In China the biggest migration in human history is taking place. Over the next few decades some 300 million people, that is approximately one USA, are moving into cities. Hundreds of new cities will be built to accommodate them.

The mega-cities are a 20th century invention made possible by the car and cheap petrol. But cheap energy is no longer an option and the city of the 21st century is challenged in a large number of ways. Let’s have a look at the greater picture.

Buildings that honors the natural environment.
Image: Richard Elmore

Peak oil

85 % of world energy consumption are fossil fuels, 37% oil, 25% coal and 23% gas. Fossil fuels have been the energy pushing and pulling the industrial revolution and so also the energy behind urbanization. Now it seems that oil has peaked. World oil production is not increasing any more, new oil fields are few and harder to exploit. In spite of a deep economic recession oil prices have been in the $ 100-120 per barrel bracket. With so high prices one would think that production would increase a lot, but instead it has leveled off. Lately prices have been falling, but that solves nothing, because it means that the marginal oil fields become even less attractive and that the push for alternatives to oil also becomes weaker.

Peak oil will have a profound and long lasting influence on world cities. Oil does not only go into commuting and transport. Electricity which is so crucial to the city is most places produced by burning oil, gas or coal. Concrete from which the cities are build in highly dependent on fossil fuels. The whole building industry is an oil guzzling industry never to be satisfied without it. And of course to feed and give water to the citizens oil is everywhere. Modern agriculture depends on oil in plowing, sowing, watering, reaping, producing, storing and distributing farm produce. The pesticides and chemical fertilizers that made the green revolution possible and by that the feeding of seven billion people, is based on fossil fuels. 17% av the world’s oil consumption is linked to food production. Fertilizers alone consume 5%. Modern man is a walking SUV. In fifty years agricultural oil consumption has tripled. Taking oil out of agriculture is like taking the central pole out of a tent.

Local food becomes increasingly important.
Image: Richard Elmore

Running a car takes oil. And if you prefer an electric car, consider how your city’s electricity is produced and how the car itself is produced. You will find oil and even coal behind the most environmental electric car. To produce one takes about 20 barrels of oil.

Heating and cooling of apartments and houses consume a lot of energy, and since most electricity id produced by burning fossil fuels, it is another carbon agenda.

What about the computers that run your city, or the one on your desk or lap top? No oil in them, to be sure. But to produce one they use at least ten times its weight in fossil fuels. To produce one 32MB microchip they use 1,7 liters of oil. And when you get rid of it it turns into so much hazardous waste. China is the fastest growing economy in the world, but it is also the fastest growing land fill of hazardous garbage.

School classrooms are on the village plazas.
Image: Richard Elmore

And what about our wonderful global internet? It helps us find information from the other side of the globe without moving from our desk or café table. Sure that must be eco-friendly. May be, but running the web consumes about 10% of all energy that is used in the US and close to 6% globally. For most of the people in the world that means oil and coal, and now and then nuclear power.

Producing cement consumes oil in quantity, 1000 kilos equals 1,13 barrels of oil. China alone consumes 1,7 billion tons of cement and counting. India is following suit. Paving of roads with asphalt takes at lot of oil, of course.

The suburbs were unthinkable without cheap energy, read oil. With the increase in Chinese growth alone, the world will not have enough energy long before 2030. Our entire city model is heading directly for a fundamental crisis.

Country towns are part of the rural economy.
Image: Richard Elmore

Synthetic fibers that are used in textile industries is nothing but oil. Plastics are oil. Toys, bottles, machine parts, sports’ equipment, building materials: oil, oil, oil.

95% of global trade is based on oil. Globalization equals oil.

With peak oil we enter into very uncertain terrain and continued urbanization becomes very dubious indeed.

But the trouble doesn’t stop there.

Climate and global warming

The modern city is a CO2-producing unit. Forests can be carbon sinks, but cities not. But the atmosphere already has too much CO2 for future good. Soon we will pass the 400 ppm limit, and that is at least 50 ppm too much. Even if we could stop immediately to emit more CO2 an increase in global temperature by 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial level is a given. But with the present speed in emissions 450 ppm is more likely, and then we might blow the 4 degree level and that is the entry into a very unpleasant planet.

Weather will be warmer, wetter and wilder. There will be more violent storms, more flooding of low-laying areas so typical for most big cities in the world and more diluvial rainfalls.

The modern city is contributing strongly to global warming and the climatic disasters, and it is also a local hot spot itself. City temperatures typically differ from the surroundings by being five centigrades higher. The city is a deposit for store solar heat and the city activity produces a lot of heat by itself.

Rooftop glasfloor harvest energy, water and food.
Image: Richard Elmore

So it is to be expected that the cities are vulnerable to climate change, and particularly the mega-cities in Asia, Africa and Latin-America.

Food and fertile top soil

The modern city is highly dependent of food production that typically tales place outside of the city itself. The city is a parasite. Without the fertile land outside of the city the inhabitants would die. But in spite of that the city destroys arable land as it grows. The level fiends of agriculture is so much more convenient building land than the barren hills, and the market price for building ground is so much higher than farm land. The end result is that that precious fertile soil that has taken numerous generations to create is destroyed to make way for the city. There is no romanticism from me underlining this, it is a fact. The city destroys the land that it feeds upon. In the long run this is of course lethal.

Water and sewage

Hanoi has seen its population swell to almost 7 million over the past few years, yet there is not a single sewage treatment plant in the entire city. Wastewater from toilets and showers ultimately ends up in the region’s rivers, from where it makes its way, dirty as dirty can be, into the ground water.

Residents in Mexico city get most of their drinking water from aquifers under the city. But because of waste and poor water treatment that water is contaminated with cadmium, chrome and other metals that are hazardous for humans. Over-exploitation of aquifers has contributed to the continued subsidence within the city (5-40cm per year), increasing the chance of catastrophic flooding.

In the port city of Karachi in southern Pakistan, around 30,000 people die due to the effects of contaminated drinking water, while in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), there are both traces of feces in drinking water and high concentrations of arsenic in ground water.

In the rivers of Buenos Aires there are high levels of dumped toxins making the Argentine river Matanza-Riachuelo “one of the world’s most polluted waterways”. And millions of people in the city lack safe access to drinking water and are not connected to sewer systems.

In Kenya, the capital city lacks capacity to manage the increasing demand for water. And 60 percent of Nairobi’s inhabitants live in informal settlements with inadequate access to quality water and are forced to buy their water at kiosks at a higher price.

The oceans

Most of the mega-cities lie on the estuaries of big rivers. Their sewage, their excessive nitrogen and phosphate over load go into the nearby sea and add to the dead zones in the worlds oceans. This in its turn destroy the feeding ground for fish and other sea organisms, and then of course threaten the food chain of the city dwellers.

Scientists have measured higher acidity in the oceans and a shocking level of plankton death over the last few decades. Most of it may be linked with CO2 being dissolved in the ocean water creating carbonic acid which is highly detrimental to all life in the oceans.

In the mid Pacific there is a sludge of plastic particles creating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As it disintegrates, the plastic ultimately becomes small enough to be ingested by aquatic organisms that reside near the ocean’s surface. Thus, plastic waste enters the food chain. Estimates of the size of the Patch vary widely, but there is no doubt that i represents a huge problem.

Paradigm shift

These ecological problems and the problem with getting sufficient energy are some of the biggest challenges to the future of the cities. The Henry Ford paradigm, that is the car and petrol city, is outdated. But that was the paradigm that fed the city growth, and so far there is no other paradigm in sight that can turn the table and make way for the sustainable city of the future.

Buildings are attached and multi-floor.
Image: Richard Elmore

But there is a lot of research going on in this field, and this is obviously the way to go to turn the city from a parasite and a problem into a contribution to a sustainable society.

There is no energy source in the pipe line of the foreseeable future that can match the versatility and energy richness of oil. The consumption and ultimate depletion of the oil resources is a once in a life time opportunity for a planet. Alternative energies like wind, tide and solar panels contribute but a tiny bit to world energy. And their production and maintenance takes a huge amount of oil. Nuclear doesn’t seem such a bright option after Fukushima and fusion energy remains a mirage very far from the practical world.

So the big picture is that we have to use less energy, per person and in sum total.

• The walkable city. Before cheap oil cities were built for slow and local transport. Commuting over long distances was not an option. We will soon be back there again. Cities must be built or restructured so that people can reach most of their daily activities, including work and play using their own muscles, that is by walking or biking. That means that work places and services must be within a short walk from home.
• City cells. To be walkable, all basic needs must be within walking distance. That means that the city must become a multi-node, multi-cellular city. A city of towns. Some needs that are not daily necessities could be found farther away, like an over-laying grid.
• Quality of life. The city nodes must have a sufficiently rich cultural life to satisfy a wide range and needs. Cultural consumption is normally less energy an material demanding and also gives life and attractiveness to the city environment. Here I think not only of culture for the people, but also of culture by the people. The city must give ample room for the creative activities of the citizens.
• Self sufficiency. The city must become self sufficient and self sustaining to a very large degree. Buildings must produce as much energy as they consume. A certain amount of food production must take place in the city. Sewage must be treated so that phosphates and nitrogen is contained and circulated back to farming.
• Durability. The modern tendency of use-and-throw is creating waste mountains that threaten to strangle the big cities. Durability and reusability are the new modern. Energy, water and other material resources are stretched thin today. There is small room for growth. So economic use of resources will be crucial.
• Urban qualities in the countryside. To contain a too great influx of new millions into the mega-cities, it is crucial to give the countryside some urban qualities. Those qualities that go for the city cells should also be developed in smaller rural centers, when it comes to jobs, housing, culture, recreation etc.

Start now!

Village Towns – Each village has a central plaza.
Image: Richard Elmore

The economic and ecological crises in the world today mean that there is no time to wait for change. The problems are only getting bigger and more difficult to solve as we wait. There will not be any one-size-fits-all solution. What we will be looking for is a complex and multifaceted web of solution, local, regional, national and global. A huge number of people all around the globe are thinking about and working for this. They need resources and sufficient leverage to make results. Also some governments have seen some of the drama in the present situation. China, which has some of the gravest environmental problems, not least in its ever-expanding cities, has declared its new five year plan «The green leap forward». The Chinese have also made plans to develop eco-cities. So far most of these plans remain on the drawing board and the real results are few. One of the problems is that so far these ideas have been top-down technocratic ideas. To succeed I believe such projects must belong to the people, to the grass-roots. People must be deeply involved and have a realistic feeling of ownership to the project. So empowerment, mobilization, real democracy are essential. That is not to say that planners, specialist and scientists do not belong. Their expertise is crucial, but it must be matched with a conscientious popular movement for groundbreaking change. From the Tahrir plaza to Madison Wisconsin, from the streets of London to Wall Street people demand power over their own future. The mismanaging of the earth by the rich elites have gone all too far.

Am I naive, is this an utopian vision? I don’t think so. The most unrealistic plan of all today is business as usual. It is business as usual that drives us to destruction. Be bold, be realistic, change the world!

Pål Steigan

The post The sustainable city of the twentyfirst century appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Please, people of Hurdal in Norway, make sure you make your new urban village an all including process of architecture, filling it with spaces for the soul. The best possible start for your project would be a “Pattern Language”-conference.

– A Pattern Language Conference in the Sustainable Valley of Hurdal in 2017?

And DAMN THE MASTERS’ PLAN! (VIDEO)

The post Architecture as a Process & Spaces for the Soul – A documentary about Christopher Alexander appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Gamla stan in Stockholm is the closest you come to a VillageTown in Scandinavia

The man who invented Public Relations (PR), Edward Bernays, was hired by General Motors for their pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. He was an Ashkenazi Jew from German speaking Europe, where the Bauhaus movement had significant influence, together with Le Corbusier. Just four years earlier Corbusier had made his prophecy, and now Bernays saw an opportunity to fulfill it:

The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work … enough for all. – Le Corbusier, 1935

Ever after this has been the ideal for people around the world, making the car industry the mightiest of industries, reshaping our planet in the image of the car. This ideal was what killed the beautiful Norwegian countryside, the Norwegian culture, my family’s farm, my purpose of life and the future of my daughter!

Across the rural northeast, where I live, the countryside is littered with new houses. It was good farmland until recently. On every country road, every unpaved lane, every former cowpath, stand new houses, and each one is somebody’s version of the American Dream. Most are simple raised ranches based on tried-and-true formulas – plans conceived originally in the 1950s, not rethought since then, and sold ten thousand times over.

These housing “products” represent a triumph of mass merchandising over regional building traditions, of salesmanship over civilization. You can be sure the same houses have been built along a highway strip outside Fresno, California, as at the edge of a swamp in Pahokee, Florida, and on the blizzard-blown fringes of St. Cloud, Minnesota. They might be anywhere. The places they stand are just different versions of nowhere, because these houses exist in no specific relation to anything except the road and the power cable. Electric lighting has reduced the windows to lame gestures. Tradition comes prepackaged as screw-on aluminium shutters, vinyl clapboards, perhaps a phony cupola on the roof ridge, or a plastic pediment over the door – tribute, in sad vestiges, to a lost past from which nearly all connections have been severed. There they sit on their one- or two- or half-acre parcels of land – the scruffy lawns littered with the jetsam of a consumerist religion (broken tricycles, junk cars, torn plastic wading pools) – these dwellings of a proud and sovereign people. If the ordinary house of our time seems like a joke, remember that it expresses the spirit of our age. The question, then, is: what kind of joke represents the spirit of our age? And the answer is: a joke on ourselves. – James Howard Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s (and Norway’s) Man-Made Landscape”, page 166

The car industry made us addicted to cars just like the tobacco industry made us addicted to nicotine. No wonder, as both these industries hired Edward Bernays to fulfil their goals. The car industry has done to the countryside what tobacco has done to our lungs, it has become a filthy place where you cannot breath. My family’s farm has become suffocated by the suburban dream, making it a wasteland where no rural life can thrive. This place was meant to be a carrier of culture and identity, a guarantor for a living landscape, now all lost to a sub-exurban nightmare!

In America, with its superabundance of cheap land, simple property laws, social mobility, mania for profit, zest for practical invention, and Bible-drunk sense of history, the yearning to escape industrialism expressed itself as a renewed search for Eden. America reinvented that paradise, described so briefly and vaguely in the book of genesis, called it Suburbia, and put it for sale. – James Howard Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s (and Norway’s) Man-Made Landscape”, page 37

Suburban houses are not homes, they are bunkers, and for anybody to survive in them they are depended upon a heavy infrastructure destroying the landscape.

It’s a figure that ought to send chills up the spine of a reflective person because these housing starts do not represent newly minted towns, or anything describable as real or coherent communities. Rather, they represent monoculture tract developments of cookie cut bunkers on half acre lots in far-flung suburbs, or else houses plopped down in isolation along country roads in what had been cornfields, pastures, or woods. In any case, one can rest assured that they will only add to the problems of our present economy and the American (Norwegian) civilization. They will relate poorly to other things around them, they will eat up more countryside, and they will increase the public fiscal burden. – James Howard Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s (and Norway’s) Man-Made Landscape”, page 147

These days the suburban burden of my family’s farm is taking on weight again, digging tons of plastic deep into the ground and putting a pump house where the barn used to be. All in service for the subexurbanites and their miserable, pointless lives!

This cannot go on anymore! The cars should be reserved for farmers, as originally was the intention of Henry Ford. Let the countryside be rural for rural people, and the towns to be urban for urban people. Suburbanites, exurbanites and subexurbanites, go home to where you belong, in town!

Of course, we cannot store these poor people in vertical suburbs, as was the idea of Le Corbusier. We must give them real urbanism, we must give them Village Towns!

Related:

Village towns

Wendell Berry And The New Urbanism: Agrarian Remedies, Urban Prospects

A Pattern Language Conference in the Sustainable Valley of Hurdal in 2017?

Nathan Lewis: People Who are Not Directly Involved in Agriculture Should Live in Urban Places

This post first appeared on my blog PermaLiv here.

The post Village Towns for Norwegian Countryside appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Alexander tried to show that architecture connects people to their surroundings in an infinite number of ways, most of which are subconscious. For this reason, it was important to discover what works; what feels pleasant; what is psychologically nourishing; what attracts rather than repels. These solutions, found in much of vernacular architecture, were abstracted and synthesized into the “Pattern Language” about 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, although he did not say it then, it was obvious that contemporary architecture was pursuing design goals that are almost the opposite of what was discovered in the pattern language. For this reason, anyone could immediately see that Alexander’s findings invalidated most of what practicing architects were doing at that time. The Pattern Language was identified as a serious threat to the architectural community. It was consequently suppressed. Attacking it in public would only give it more publicity, so it was carefully and off-handedly dismissed as irrelevant in architecture schools, professional conferences and publications.

Now, 20 years later, computer scientists have discovered that the connections underlying the Pattern Language are indeed universal, as Alexander had originally claimed. His work has achieved the highest esteem in computer science. Alexander himself has spent the last twenty years in providing scientific support for his findings, in a way that silences all criticism. He will publish this in the forthcoming four-volume work entitled “The Nature of Order”. His new results draw support from complexity theory, fractals, neural networks, and many other disciplines on the cutting edge of science.

After the publication of this new work, our civilization has to seriously question why it has ignored the Pattern Language for so long, and to face the blame for the damage that it has done to our cities, neighborhoods, buildings, and psyche by doing so.

20 more years of time has passed since Salingaros wrote the above, and instead of connecting people with their surroundings and each other, the alienation of our places and societies is accelerating.

In Hurdal in Norway they are now building the “Sustainable Valley”, hosting the country’s first ecovillage and planning for a new urban village.

To be honest I’m not sure if those who planned Hurdal Ecovillage had read the Pattern Language? To me so many patterns from this book seems missing, although I’m not updated on the recent progress of the village. This is strange as David Holmgren, a cofounder of permaculture together with Bill Mollison, used “A Pattern Language” in the design process of Crystal Waters Ecovillage in Australia. Since then Alexander has even outlined in detail how to build a pattern language for a community, using the Eishin Campus outside Tokyo as an example.

Alexander’s Eishin Campus

I love Hurdal and should hate to see the sustainable valley becoming a failure because of ignoring the Pattern Language, and therefor suggest arranging a Pattern Language Conference in this beautiful valley in 2017. Several facilities could serve such a conference, but I recommend the historic context of Hurdal Verk.

A central pattern for designing Crystal Waters Ecovillage was pattern 37; HOUSE CLUSTER. One of the breakthroughs of designing human settlements the later years is POCKET NEIGHBORHOODS, a therm founded by Ross Chapin. Here Chapin has taken the essence of a house cluster and synthesized it into a set of design keys for a successful pocket neighborhood. I have translated these keys into Norwegian here, while they can be downloaded in English here (pdf) and here (slideshow). To connect the houses to the shared common space at the heart of a pocket neighborhood, Chapin has even set up a pattern language for how to arrange a well functioning porch.

A pocket neighborhood from Ross Chapin Architects. No wonder why Sarah Susanka, the author of the bestseller “The Not So Big House“, chose Chapin’s projects to illustrate her book. Both Chapin and Zusanka make it clear that they are inspired by “A Pattern Language” and indebted to the work of Christopher Alexander.

Last year I suggested building a pocket village at Skreia, where I was born. But people there are not able to imagine any other reality than Suburban Hell, so I hope for greater success in Hurdal. Still Hurdal Ecovillage has left to develop their third and last village cluster, and nothing should make me more happy than if this was designed as the world’s first pocket village!

Ross Chapin Architects is an award-winning firm known for designing wonderfully scaled and richly detailed buildings and gardens. We take joy in designing places for people that are both functional and beautiful. Our work shows that neighborhoods, buildings and outdoor spaces can be alive and vibrant, authentic and soulful. We strive to create places that nourish the individual, support healthy family relationships, and foster a strong sense of community.

The human behavioral ecologist Terje Bongard is now translating his book “The biological Human Being – individuals and societies in light of evolution” into English all by himself, and it is to hope it will be finished before an eventual conference. Bongard is a big fan of Chapin’s pocket neighborhoods, as they grow the “bright side of the force” in the handicap principle, these positive feelings and actions that come to the surface in well functioning in-groups. According to Bongard our whole society needs to be arranged around the in-group, both for hard and soft human infrastructure, and Chapin has added very important knowledge and practical examples for how to achieve this goal.

Note that even Hippodamus of Miletus arranged the Greek cities in quarters of 10 families of each, a perfect in-group cluster. Wonder how much this pattern meant for the world’s first democracy?

In 2013 James Alexander Arnfinsen at the podcast show Levevei had a really nice conversation (in Norwegian) with Bongard, titled “The in-group as the guiding principle of a sustainable democracy“.

I suggest a rewriting for our conference: “The in-group as the guiding principle of a sustainable urban ecology.“

Pushwagner’s fabolous picture Klaxton could work as a banner for the conference, illustrating the horrors of our over scaled out-group societies.

A small but important interview with Bongard about solidarity in small groups at Norwegian radio is to be found here.

I really hope to get Terje Bongard and Ross Chapin to lecture on this subject. If the ecovillage will build the world’s first pocket village using Chapin’s design patterns, I’m sure he will jump on the plain to join us!

A proud Ross Chapin in front of one of his pocket neighborhoods

Another person I hope can join the conference is Alexander’s friend Salingaros, still very active in the new science of biophilia, about which he recently published a book on nourishing organic design: “Biophilia and Healing Environments: Healthy Principles For Designing the Built World“.

My friend Bongard recently informed that they have now made a major breakthrough in his field, localizing where language is formed in the brain, and soon it will probably be possible to map our in-group feelings and our feelings for biophilia and organic design-patterns as well. These happen to correlate with classical architecture, which is not a style but a set of design practices and rules nourishing the human mind. The urban village of Hurdal has to be designed according to these principles.

Note that August Strindberg began his days promenading at Strandvägen in Stockholm, because of the nourishing architecture there. I hope that the people of Hurdal Urban Village will have the same experience. It’s even quite clear that information rich environments are beneficial for brain development of children.

Most of all it’s important that the Sustainable Institute of the urban village, in Norwegian “Bærekraftsinstituttet”, gets a high degree of living structure, sending a positive signal to the rest of the Sustainable Valley. I’m happy to inform that professor Bin Jiang at the Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Division of Geomatics, University of Gävle, Sweden, has developed what he calls a “BEAUTIMETER”, a tool to measure the degree of living structure in a building or the surroundings. Let’s hope he can come to lecture on his invention, derived from Alexander’s theory of centers: “Wholeness as a Hierarchical Graph to Capture the Nature of Space”

Hurdal is just north of Oslo International Airport. After its construction there has popped up lots of soulless airport suburbs in the surroundings, like Neskollen.

Neskollen is a typical hilltop suburb around the new airport Gardermoen, consisting of a central shopping mall with some apartments around, and then the McMansions grew bigger and bigger towards the top, with the very biggest ones on the top itself

The municipality of Hurdal deserves credit for not following this anti-social consumer pattern of the rest of Norway, they very much want to create something better, more sustainable and more socially nourishing, bringing up the best of human nature. I feel they really need a Pattern Language Conference for new inspiration, to show them the way ahead. I hope they will understand this themselves too, seeing such a conference as a gift and a new start toward a better goal than what modernist planning and architecture have to offer.

Another gloomy example from Neskollen, an anti-pocket-neighborhood focusing on individualism and uniformity. A human out-group setting, growing the “dark side of the force” in the handicap principle, which guides all human interaction.

I think Hurdal Urban Village should join the Village Towns network: http://villagetowns.com/

VillageTown founder Claude Lewenz has “A Pattern Language” as the inspiration for all of his work, ideas and visions.

Tracy Gayton of the Piscataquis Village Project in Main, USA, is working for a similar project in cold climate: http://www.piscataquisvillage.org/

I hope everybody share my enthusiasm! And if we can’t get the conference up for the 40-years anniversary of “A Pattern Language”, a 41-years anniversary conference should be no less important.

From the old part of Hurdal Ecovillage

Lake Hurdalssjøen has several sandy beaches

It’s interesting to study the organic clustering of Knaisetra in Hurdal, a well preserved area up in the hills where young women tended the cattle during summertime

A girl walking along the cultural path of Skrukkelivegen, the old road toward the west of the valley

Knai is joining the main street of the new urban village, hosting an agricultural landscape of national value. My dream is to establish the Permaculture Resarch Institute of Norway at my family’s farm situated in this landscape.

Welcome to the Sustainable Valley of Hurdal, here seen from Rognstadkollen

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“The European Summer School in Classical Architecture has had a good response but there are places left and still bursaries available.

This is held in July in idyllic surroundings north-west of Stockholm and finishes in Stockholm.  Even without a bursary, the price is very reasonable: €1,500.00 or about $1,700 for a full month of teaching, design and debate, all including accommodation and food – you just have to find your way to Stockholm and back.

If you are interested, do please apply.  As there were problems with the INTBAU website, we’ve extended the application deadline until the end of May.

My firm is hosting the website on http://www.adamarchitecture.com/academic/european-summer-school-in-classical-architecture-2016.htm.

I hope to see you there!
Robert”

It’s important to note that Classical Architecture is NOT a specific style! No, it’s a set of design-rules which have served humanity well through millennials, but which we debunked about a century ago, resulting in today’s hostile environments. Many of these rules and this forgotten knowledge are now recollected for us by important architectural thinkers and urbanists, like Nikos A. Salingaros. Unfortunately this knowledge is still not part of the architecture curriculum, so this summer class is a golden opportunity!

Stockholm is a unique setting for this course, I can’t think of a better city for summertime, with the white Scandinavian summer nights. If you have children your family can meanwhile experience the best city for a child imaginable, where they can run free in the streets of “Gamla stan“, the old town area of Stockholm, free of cars. Or they can enjoy the world’s first and largest city national park, with a tremendous variety of family friendly activities. What about urban fishing? And there are hundreds of smooth rocks and beaches to go bathing, even in the city core. Not to mention the Stockholm archipelago, to where all kinds of boats sails regularly.

Car free streets for children

Urban fishing

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Our biology should dictate the design of the physical settings we inhabit. As human beings, we need to connect with living structures in our environment. Designers thus face the task of better incorporating healing strategies into their work, using factors that contribute to the biophilic effect. 17th, 18th, 19th, and some 20th century architecture show the healing traits of biophilia. After that, architects ignored complex human responses to the built environment in their enthusiasm for the supposed mechanical efficiencies of the industrial approach to placemaking. Design that uses biophilia considers the inclusive, “bottom-up” processes needed to sustain our health. When ornament is coherent with the rest of a structure, it helps connect people to their environment, and creates a positive, healing atmosphere. Biophilia shows how our evolutionary heritage makes us experience buildings viscerally, and not as intellectualized abstractions. This thinking juxtaposes the focus on innovative form for its own sake with biophilic design.

Download: – Biophilia & Healing Environments: Healthy Principles For Designing the Built World.

A hard copy of the book can be bought from Levellers Press here.

Biophilia and Healing Environments, a 10-part series in Metropolis. Available together as a booklet both on paper, and online, published by Terrapin Bright Green LLC, New York.

These essays as they were first published in Metropolis:

1. Why we should be living in “living” houses, 6 August 2015.
2. What do light, color, gravity, and fractals have to do with our well-being? 10 August 2015.
3. What kind of design triggers healing? 13 August 2015.
4. Modern architecture tells an incomplete story, 21 August 2015.
5. What do historic buildings say about our connection to the natural world? 28 August 2015.
6. The growing demand for spaces that consider our health, 1 September 2015.
7. Why do we create ornament to mimic nature? 8 September 2015.
8. Modernist minimalism and our relationship with our buildings, 14 September 2015.
9. The importance of listening to lessons from nature, 17 September 2015.
10. Why we hug the edge of open spaces, 29 September 2015.

Gamla stan, Stockholm

• Shortened version of Biophilia and Healing Environments, Buildotech, 13 February 2016.
• Review by Randy Nishimura, S. W. Oregon Architect, 21 February 2016.

The post Biophilia and Healing Environments: Healthy Principles For Designing the Built World appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The Problem

The industrialized nations made a terrible mistake when they turned to the automobile as an instrument of improved urban mobility. The car brought with it major unanticipated consequences for urban life and has become a serious cause of environmental, social, and aesthetic problems in cities. The urban automobile:

• Kills street life
• Damages the social fabric of communities
• Isolates people
• Fosters suburban sprawl
• Endangers other street users
• Blots the city’s beauty
• Disturbs people with its noise
• Causes air pollution
• Slaughters thousands every year
• Exacerbates global warming
• Wastes energy and natural resources
• Impoverishes nations

The challenge is to remove cars and trucks from cities while at the same time improving mobility and reducing its total costs.

The Solution

The urban automobile can only be supplanted if a better alternative is available. What would happen if we designed a city to work without any cars? Would anyone want to live in such a city? Does it make social, economic, and esthetic sense? Is it possible to be free of the automobile while keeping the rapid and convenient mobility it once offered?

Public transport is typically a disagreeable and slow substitute for the car. It needs to become a pleasant experience and should attain the average speed of a car in light city traffic. This can be achieved using proven technology, but densely-populated neighborhoods are a prerequisite for rapid mobility and economical public transport. Fortunately, dense cities can also offer a superior quality of life.

We should build more carfree cities. Venice, the largest existing example, is loved by almost everyone and is an oasis of peace despite being one of the densest urban areas on earth. We can also convert existing cities to the carfree model over a period of decades.

Design Goals

The design of cities is driven by three principal needs:

• High quality of life
• Efficient use of resources
• Fast transport of people and goods

Design Standards

The fulfillment of these needs in a carfree city gives rise to the following design standards:

Rapid Transport

Provide fast access to all parts of the city. In a city of one million it should be possible to get anywhere in considerably less than an hour. Passengers should never have to transfer more than once.

Nearby Stations

Both in consideration of time and of the limited mobility of small children, the elderly, and the infirm, nearby transport halts are required. The design standard is a five-minute walk.

Nearby Green Space

Green space should be available within a five-minute walk of virtually every front door.

Four-Story Buildings

Buildings should generally be limited to a height of four stories because higher buildings appear to be harmful to the people who must live in them. (See A Pattern Language for a detailed discussion of this point.)

Economical Freight Transport

City economies depend on fast, economical freight transport. A city which intends to keep trucks off its streets must make workable provisions for freight transport.

Going Carfree

The carfree city can be built. Venice is proof enough.

The four billion inhabitants of the developing world seem eager to adopt Western patterns of car use. They should be advised of the costs and encouraged to think about better solutions. Can the planet carry the ecological burden? The developed nations cannot deny developing nations the use of technology and resources that are used in the developed nations. Since most of the world’s cars are found in the developed nations, they must take the lead in designing and building carfree cities.

Carfree cities probably must become the norm by the end of the 21st Century, due to energy constraints. We should begin now to prepare for the change, which is an opportunity to build urban environments superior to any ever known.

Related reading:

• Village Towns: A Safe Place to Raise Children
• December 28, 2014: Life Without Cars: 2014 Edition
• December 8, 2013: Life Without Cars: 2013 Edition
• December 27, 2012: Life Without Cars: 2012 Edition
• December 25, 2011: Life Without Cars: 2011 Edition
• December 19, 2010: Life Without Cars: 2010 Edition
• December 13, 2009: Life Without Cars: 2009 Edition
• December 21, 2008: Life Without Cars

With integrating the car into our lives we cannot live integrated lives anymore, and this way we lose our integrity. Or to summarize the task from the point of view of Wendell Berry:

Here we can see the radical nature of Berry’s vision. Our entire economy, our very culture of work, leisure, and home is constructed around the idea of easy mobility and the disintegration of various aspects of our lives. We live in one place, work in another, shop in another, worship in another, and take our leisure somewhere else. According to Berry, an integrated life, a life of integrity, is one characterized by membership in a community in which one lives, works, worships, and conducts the vast majority of other human activities. The choice is stark: “If we do not live where we work, and when we work, we are wasting our lives, and our work too.”

The post To Minimize the Influence of Cars is a Key Factor for Successful Neighborhoods appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Consider a neighborhood, or neighborhood-to-be, which is now receiving your attention for the first time. Let us assume that a rough boundary of the area has been established. The area may be part of an existing city, in need of new life or refurbishing. It might equally well be a green field site near a town, or on the edge of an existing town or village.

Rule 1. Let us ask ourselves which place in the area dedicated to the neighborhood most inspires us by its life or potential for life, and also has the greatest capacity for becoming the spiritual and emotional center of the new neighborhood?

In order to do this, we need to walk around the place many times, with others, and alone, asking ourselves which place has the natural magnetism to pull us to go there, which makes us want to stay there, which has the power (potentially) to give us life merely from being there.

On a green field site, where a neighborhood does not exist, this feeling will most likely be generated by a view, by the form of the land which has a natural protected area, a declivity, or by a high spot which looks out. Great trees, are also capable of giving us such a place, naturally occurring water, the edge of a forest, the bottom of a cliff. It is impossible to predict with any general principles, what feature of a particular piece of land will have this character. Each piece of land is different, and will tell you, in its own way, what unique feature, on that land, is best suited to become the spiritual center of a future neighborhood built there.

On a site that is part of an existing neighborhood, or part of an existing town, the procedure is not very different, though it may turn out to be more complicated. ….

Rule 2. Let us now ask ourselves how the place we have chosen as the most natural center, may be enhanced and made profound. What we are asking here, is what kind of actions will support the essence of the place, make it convenient and natural for people to come to it, protect it from surrounding influences, so that it can have its own peacefulness and life.

Rule 3. Let us now ask ourselves how this place, which has been activated (in principle) by our response to Rule 2, may also be made beautiful and tranquil, as a work of architecture.

The way to achieve this is to spend time, gazing on the land, at the place where the building is to be, or at the space itself, as a place and as a beautiful entity in itself. Ask yourself — standing there, and closing your eyes — how high it is, what line will enhance the place, where you would most expect to find the front edge of the building, if it is a peaceful and gentle place.

It will not be out of place, either, to ask childish things, of your inner eye. What color is it? When you close your eyes, what color do you see? What kind of windows does it have? When you close your eyes, what shape are the windows, what figure gives them inspiration, and makes the place worth being in?

Conclusion

As you see, these three rules are not rules in quite the usual sense. The rule does not tell us, magisterially, Do this! Do that!

Instead it is a rule, but the rule says to you, Ask yourself this, and this and this — and it works this way, because the rule knows that if you follow it, the vision of your own heart will answer the question correctly, and know what to do. And it knows, too, that when several of you, do the same — that is, do what this rule tells you, in the way of asking yourselves these questions — then , for the most part, you will find yourselves in agreement with your fellows.

And that is where a lasting sense of unity and harmony within the neighborhood can come from: the results are not arbitrary, but found in the deepest place in your heart. It will last.

The post Three Rules for Starting a Neighborhood appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Original article here.

To appear in Physics Essays, March 1997 issue, volume 10 Number 1. Posted by permission of Physics Essays Publications

Abstract

Inspired by thermodynamics, a simple model uses ideas of Christopher Alexander to estimate certain intrinsic qualities of a building. (a) The architectural temperature T is defined as the degree of detail, curvature, and color in architectural forms; and (b) the architectural harmony H measures their degree of coherence and internal symmetry. This model predicts a building’s emotional impact. The impression of how much “life” a building has is measured by the quantity L = TH , and the perceived complexity of a design is measured by the quantity C = T (10 – H ), where 10 – H corresponds to an architectural entropy. With the help of this model, new structures can be designed that have a dramatically increased feeling of life, yet do not copy existing buildings.

Key words: architecture, design rules, thermodynamic model of structures

1. INTRODUCTION

Architecture affects mankind in a predictable way, and it has its own set of fundamental laws. We have proposed three laws for architecture ^{(1, 2)} that are based on the work of Christopher Alexander ⁽³⁾. An analysis of architectural forms distinguishes three different aspects: (1) the small scale; (2) the large scale; and (3) linking all the intermediate scales together through hierarchical coherence ^{(1, 2)}. This paper examines how the small and large scales contribute to the success of a building independently of hierarchical coherence.

We can systematize intrinsic qualities that govern architectural forms by setting up a simple model. The first part of the model identifies two distinct qualities and suggests how to measure them. The small-scale structure is described by what is labelled the architectural temperature T : the higher the temperature, the more differentiations, curves, and color (Section 2). The architectural harmony H is identified with the degree of symmetry and coherence of forms, and measures the absence of randomness (Section 3). The harmony H carries the traditional meaning it has in architecture, whereas the temperature T is a new concept.

The second part of the model relates the perceived architectural life and architectural complexity to different combinations of T and H . We define the “architectural life L” as L = TH (Section 4), and the “architectural complexity C” as C = T (10 – H ) (Section 5). The life refers to the degree that one connects with a building in the same way that one connects emotionally to trees, animals, and people ⁽³⁾. The complexity is already understood by architects to mean essentially what we define here. Two of the principal emotional responses to architectural forms are thus formalized in this paper.

This establishes a connection between scientific quantities based on measurements, and intuitive artistic qualities based on feelings. Although it is usually difficult to quantify subjective statements, people agree on the ranking of the emotionally perceived “life” of structures, and what we measure here as the architectural life L (Section 6). We emphasize the model’s predictive value in differentiating buildings on a plot of L versus C . There is indeed a pattern independent of personal preferences. One can follow the historical development of architecture in terms of intrinsic qualities rather than styles.

The third part of the model reveals how to endow a building with “life”. The method is to judiciously adjust the individual ingredients of forms. By providing a coherent theory on how to do this, the model becomes an extremely valuable tool for both analysis and construction. The process that raises the architectural life is entirely independent of particular styles, or what the forms look like. This model can help someone to understand and control the interplay between life and complexity in any structure.

Section 7 discusses the model’s origin from an analogy with thermodynamics. The quantity H represents something analogous to a negative entropy. In defining L and C , the model mimics the thermodynamic potentials; like them, the architectural life and complexity are relative and not absolute values. This analogy suggests that similar physical principles underlie organization and disorder in all structures, thermodynamic as well as architectural.

The final section (Section 8) investigates the link between biological and architectural forms. For example, self-similar fractal patterns have high architectural life, which is why they are widely successful in modeling natural forms ⁽⁴⁾. The combinations L and C correspond to the organization of matter in living forms, and this resemblance generates the emotional responses to structures with different architectural potentials L and C . Buildings are created by living people, who have a basic need to instill architectural life into inanimate structures. A building is as successful as the degree to which it reflects this.

2. DETAIL AND TEMPERATURE IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Several factors contribute to perceived qualities in architectural design, and our first task is to distinguish them. The most obvious is the departure from uniformity. A form is either plain, or it is differentiated in terms of the geometry and color. In physics, uniform states in fluids and gases are normally associated with low temperatures. Raising the temperature often breaks the uniformity, leading to gradients and convection cells. Independently of this, heated metals acquire a coloration by radiating.

This suggests that we refer to the degree of detail and small-scale contrast in a design as the “architectural temperature T“. (There is a loose analogy between the architectural temperature and nT_th , where T_th is the thermodynamic temperature, and n is the particle number density; see Section 7). The architectural temperature is determined by several intrinsic factors such as the sharpness and density of individual design differentiations; the curvature of lines and edges; and the color hue. Even though people think of architecture as being concerned with the form only, color is an integral part of experiencing a form’s surface ⁽³⁾.

We propose a very simple method of measuring the architectural temperature T . This rough guide is by no means the only possible prescription; it is a first step to handling an extremely complex topic. We will distinguish five elements T₁ to T₅ that contribute to T . Each quality is measured on a scale of 0 to 2 according to the scale: very little = 0, some = 1, considerable = 2. The different components are listed as follows:

T₁ = intensity and smallness of perceivable detail

T₂ = density of differentiations

T₃ = curvature of lines

T₄ = intensity of color hue

T₅ = contrast among color hues

T = T₁ + … + T₅ , 0 < T < 10

(1)

The limit of perceived textural differentiations at arm’s length is roughly 1mm, though we propose a more generous cut-off of 5mm. Well-defined detail in those surfaces that a person can touch, regardless of whether it is localized or spread over the entire region, makes T₁ equal 2. On regions farther away, differentiations can be much larger so as to appear the same size as 5mm would be at arm’s length. Coarser, or less sharply-defined detail rates T₁ = 1. For detail that is too small or is faintly-defined, T₁ = 0. Smooth or textured monochromatic surfaces rate a 0; to count, detail must be articulated against the ground.

We will treat every geometric differentiation as having the same effect as a greyscale surface design, i.e., T₂ of a colored relief is judged from its flat black-and-white photograph. In this two-dimensional projection, any differentiation or texture is perceived in terms of its contrast in color value, or by the shadows it casts. A high density of sharp differentiations rates T₂ = 2, whereas a plain surface rates T₂ = 0. The color value itself, which represents a particular shade of grey, doesn’t contribute to T₂ directly.

A curve can be approximated by a very large number of straight-line segments. An inflected curve (for example, a higher-order polynomial) or zig-zag has a higher structural temperature than a straight line. The temperature is proportional to the curvature of forms. Curves on the intermediate scales rate T₃ = 1; if they have a high degree of curvature, T₃ = 2. Straight lines and rectangular forms rate T₃ = 0.

A richly colored building, even if it is of one hue, has a higher temperature than a grey building (for which T₄ = 0). A design will have T₄ = 1 if it has some color overall; an intense though not necessarily bright color gives T₄ = 2. The actual hue (i.e., yellow, green, or purple) is immaterial.

The architectural temperature is increased further by contrasting color hues, for example, red next to green. If there is any contrast in color hues, give a 1 for T₅ ; if there is a great variety, or the contrast is particularly vivid, give a 2. A uniform color or no color at all rates T₅ = 0.

In different cases, the architectural temperature T , Eq. (1), will depend on each factor T_i to a greater or lesser extent. While there have been periods and cultures that have been more restrained in their detail, curvature, and color than others, the predominance of buildings and artefacts with high architectural temperature throughout history suggests that this satisfies a profound internal need in human beings ⁽³⁾. In Table 1, we have estimated the architectural temperature T of twenty-five buildings. These include famous buildings ⁽⁵⁾, so there is no need to reproduce photographs here. The numbers given are very approximate, and their derivation is discussed in Section 6, below.

3. RANDOMNESS AND HARMONY IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Randomness is measured by the entropy. Because entropy is not an intuitive concept, we will introduce the “architectural harmony H” to measure the lack of randomness in design. (The relationship between H and a negative architectural entropy is discussed later in Section 7). Where the individual details and shapes relate to each other, the architectural harmony H is high. Symmetrical forms and patterns have high harmony. The harmony H is a property of the whole structure, due to the correlation between the parts on all the distinct levels of scale.

3.1 Estimating the Architectural Harmony

The model depends on direct measurements from perceivable architectural surfaces and forms, i.e., walls, doorways, passages, etc. When thinking about symmetries, most architects immediately look at a building’s plan ⁽⁶⁾. As the plan is not directly perceivable to a user, however, it is not relevant to our model. In a break with both traditional and current practice, we will ignore the aerial view: this model doesn’t cover the formal organization of spaces; only the immediate impressions from a human viewpoint.

The architectural harmony H is decomposed into five components, each of which assumes a value from 0 to 2. Again, this is only an expedient that gives very approximate numbers. We will use the scale: very little = 0, some = 1, considerable = 2. The architectural harmony H ranges from 0 to 10, and is the sum of the five components described as follows:

H₁ = vertical reflectional symmetries on all scales

H₂ = translational and rotational symmetries on all scales

H₃ = degree to which distinct forms have similar shapes

H₄ = degree to which forms are connected piecewise

H₅ = degree to which colors harmonize

H = H₁ + … + H₅ , 0 < H < 10(2)

An average numerical value has to be assigned for the presence of symmetries on all scales, not just for the largest scale. The quantity H₁ depends on the orientation of the symmetry axis, because gravity defines a preferred direction for both man and materials. Of the possible axes for reflectional symmetry, the vertical one raises the architectural harmony the most. Symmetry about a diagonal axis clashes with natural symmetries created by gravity, and the ensuing imbalance lowers the harmony (i.e., the leaning Campanile of the Cathedral at Pisa). Lack of reflectional symmetry on different scales rates H₁ = 0.

The quantity H₂ measures translational symmetries (and the less common rotational symmetry) on walls, doors, and windows; not on a building’s plan. If elements are repeated regularly, then H₂ equals 2. In plain surfaces with no distinguishing elements, H₂ is defined by the edges; if they are parallel, then H₂= 2. Elements repeated randomly lower H₂ to 0.

Self-similarity raises the architectural harmony: scale up the same figure to several different sizes, then align all the scaled copies. The contribution H₃measures the similarity of overlapping or spatially-separated figures occurring at different sizes. For example, a group of parallel lines or nested curves is related by a scaling transformation, so H₃ equals 2. Large plain surfaces with no distinct subfigures harmonize by default, so H₃ equals 2. Pieces with different shapes do not harmonize, and H₃ equals 0.

The quantity H₄ estimates the presence of geometrical connections. Internal and external connections can take many different forms: connecting lines or columns; intermediate transition regions; a wide surrounding border, etc. Piecewise connections raise H₄ to 1 or 2. Edges that touch but fail to join, jutting overhangs without obvious supports, and breaks in lines lower H₄ to 0. The main connection of any building is to the ground; if this is not strongly expressed, then H₄ = 0.

A building of a single color or without any color at all has color harmony, so H₅ = 2. If different colors are used, one has to estimate how well the various hues blend to create an overall color harmony. Even with bright colors, a harmonious ensemble has H₅ = 2. The departure from a unified color effect – something unbalanced, clashing, or garish – lowers H₅ to zero.

Together, these quantities give a numerical measure for the architectural harmony H , Eq. (2). In Table 1, estimates of H are provided for twenty-five buildings using the prescription outlined in this section.

3.2 Architectural Harmony and Pattern Recognition

The connection between harmony (as negative entropy) and information in thermodynamics carries over to architecture. Any symmetry in a design reduces the amount of information necessary to specify shapes. A form with bilateral symmetry needs to be specified only on one side, which is then reflected. A design with translational or rotational symmetry is defined by the information contained in a single unit that is repeated. Recognition of an unfamiliar object is greatly simplified if it has as many internal symmetries as possible ⁽⁷⁾.

Juxtaposing different materials lowers the harmony H by breaking the symmetry across an interface or gap. Disconnected forms near each other create ambiguity, thus lowering the structural harmony. When a form’s basic attachments are missing, the brain continues to seek visual information that would establish the necessary connections ⁽⁷⁾. If these are not obvious, the ensemble is perceived as incoherent. Recognition is frustrated whether structural information is missing, or is overwhelming. Since pattern recognition is a low-level brain activity ⁽⁷⁾, we may be intrigued intellectually by a low H form, but our gut reaction is negative.

The harmony of multiple structures unrelated by either symmetry or scaling is raised through piecewise connections. A structural connection relates two separated forms geometrically. Each form connects individually to a third, intermediate region, which itself must be large enough for this to occur. Mathematically, the two original forms relate by establishing a minimal transitive relation via an additional connecting form. The linking is successful only when the two forms and the connecting region together define a coherent larger unit.

3.3 Raising the Harmony by Lowering the Temperature

Adding some of the same hue to areas of different color connects them harmoniously, raising H₅ by lowering T₅ . This is very tricky to do while at the same time preserving any existing contrasts in color hue. In successful examples, areas are brought together by relating their color hues so that the overall result is intense rather than muddy. Further harmonization, however, can eliminate color contrasts that contribute to the architectural temperature. This shows that Hand T are related in general.

Two very different techniques raise the architectural harmony in a random design. The first re-arranges existing details to create a maximum number of symmetries, starting from the smallest scales and working up to the larger scales. This maximizes the harmony with the constraint that the architectural temperature remain constant. The second method eliminates all details, curves, and colors, which lowers T . The mostly plain surfaces that are left can be made totally symmetric, which raises the harmony H . This alternative method can raise the architectural harmony the most by eliminating all randomness, but it loses the architectural temperature as well.

3.4 Lowering the Harmony by Raising the Temperature

The architect Lucien Kroll lowers the harmony by randomly arranging small and intermediate-scale components in a building ⁽⁸⁾ (building No. 23 in Table 1). Design decisions that use random numbers as input escape from the monotony of a strict bilateral or translational symmetry, which in most cases is arbitrarily imposed. Nevertheless, any lack of architectural symmetries in historical buildings is usually the result of accommodating functional or structural needs, and so is not really random. Functionality is inextricably linked to the form, as first stated by Louis Sullivan, and demonstrated by Alexander ⁽³⁾.

Adding small-scale structure that doesn’t relate to the ensemble lowers the harmony of a design. This could be either a random pattern, or a regular pattern that fails to connect to existing patterns. Excessive decoration lowers the architectural harmony, and makes an overall coherence difficult or impossible. Many architectural styles evolve historically to reach an overly-decorated Baroque style, which is invariably followed by an anti-decorative reaction ⁽⁵⁾. This cycle re-establishes high architectural harmony.

3.5 Raising the Harmony and Temperature Together

The main message of this paper is that the most responsive architecture is created by raising both H and T together (developed in the following sections). Raising T while not lowering H involves adding detail or color so as to enhance and not clash with existing patterns and colors. One preserves the existing geometry and adds on to it. What is already there acts as a matrix for guiding all additional structure. This is the basis for the theory of architecture proposed by Alexander ⁽³⁾.

There are two approaches to accomplishing this:

1. Add T very selectively, while being careful at each step to raise or at least not to lower H .
2. Add as much T as necessary to bring a design to life, then come back and rearrange everything in order to raise H .

The first method works well on site, and is recommended for the transformation of existing buildings. Most buildings today have acceptably high H , but very low T , so this change is called for. The second method is better applied to the computer-aided design of new buildings, where many changes can be tried and evaluated before the structures are fixed.

4. THE ARCHITECTURAL LIFE OF A BUILDING

Whereas the quantities T and H must be measured in every structure, the combination TH is directly perceivable without any direct measurements. Amazingly, the product TH connects emotionally to an observer. For reasons that will later become clear, we call this the “architectural life L“. (Section 8 below discusses the connection between L and biological forms).

L = TH , 0 < L < 100(3)

Before the 20th century, builders unconsciously tried to achieve the highest architectural harmony consistent with the highest architectural temperature: they didn’t measure this, they felt it. The greatest historical buildings maximize their architectural life L , as can be verified by looking at a survey of the world’s architecture ⁽⁵⁾ (see Section 6, below). A separate point is that the greatest buildings do not eliminate randomness entirely. The optimal value for the architectural harmony is below its theoretical maximum. Every great building has some degree of randomness, which can manifest itself on different scales.

Achieving architectural life is not trivial, because T is actually a function of H . Raising the harmony H by lessening the degree of small-scale differentiations and straightening out curves can eliminate the architectural temperature T . This lowers the life of a design. The necessity for a high architectural temperature makes it impossible to raise the harmony above a certain value. Visually, the link between T and H is expressed as contrast between regions of different H .

For example, a portion of the building material itself can be arranged randomly so as to contrast with an overall symmetry. Carved human figures break the small-scale symmetry in a portion of a building, which is otherwise highly symmetric (buildings No. 1 and 6 in Table 1). In Islamic buildings, calligraphic script provides the small-scale randomness necessary to contrast with the large-scale symmetry (buildings No. 3, 9, 11). Alternatively, large-scale randomness may contrast with highly-ordered detail (building No. 12).

Many modern buildings have a very low value of architectural life L . We see how to minimize L , Eq. (3), by reducing the architectural temperature or the architectural harmony as much as possible. Lowering T with fixed H is straightforward: eliminate all detail, color, structural differentiations, and curves (see Section 2). We are then left with a plain rectangular grey box (buildings No. 19 and 21). On the other hand, lowering H while T is fixed requires creating randomness on both the small and large scales.

Small-scale randomness lowers H but it also raises T , so it is not entirely effective. With an already low T after eliminating design details, one lowers H by generating randomness on the large scale. This comes from a lack of bilateral and translational symmetries, and a lack of geometrical connections. We obtain a disjoint, unbalanced, and asymmetric large-scale form without details. Large pieces in strange shapes are constructed out of plain materials, with abrupt juxtapositions between surfaces and volumes (buildings No. 18 and 20). If there is any color, it consists of uncorrelated hues. This type of structure is the result of minimizing L by lowering H .

5. THE ARCHITECTURAL COMPLEXITY OF A BUILDING

The “architectural complexity C” of a building or design can be expressed in terms of its architectural temperature and harmony:

C = T (10 – H ), 0 < C < 100

(4)

The quantity T (10 – H ) is perceived directly as a building’s complexity, which can range from dull ( C = 0), through exciting (low to medium C ), to incoherent (very high C ). It is the complexity of an object that arouses a viewer’s interest; the complexity is the inverse measure of how boring a building is. Using color and contrasting color hues, small-scale differentiations, and curves contributes to the complexity, as does any randomness and asymmetry. The buildings of Antoni Gaudí provide good examples of architectural complexity ⁽⁹⁾ (building No. 15 in Table 1). The highest C structure in Table 1 is the curious Watts Towers built from pieces of junk by Simon Rodia (building No. 17).

Independently of any particular theory or architectural movement, the commercial sector recognizes that people do not connect to plain walls, but to bright colors and contrasts. Putting this into practice has generated a high T environment defined by a profusion of colored signs and surfaces. Such an environment is uncorrelated, so it has a very low harmony as well as high temperature, and is therefore very high C . All over the world, this process is a major force driving building practice.

The vernacular architecture of the commercial environment is taken seriously by very few architects ^{(10, 11)}. As long as this phenomenon is not understood as arising from certain very basic forces, those forces cannot be controlled and directed, and an incoherent environment continues to proliferate unabated⁽¹⁰⁾. As a result, most of us have to experience built regions with far higher complexity than the Watts Towers during large portions of our daily lives.

At the other extreme, pure 20th century modernist forms have a very low complexity C . Architects reacting against low C forms are today creating buildings with slightly higher values of C . Post-modernist architects define more structure on the small and intermediate scales, and break some of the symmetries of modernist buildings ⁽¹²⁾. That increases the temperature and lowers the harmony to varying degrees. Some raise C by introducing a host of uncorrelated forms to lower a building’s harmony ⁽⁵⁾ (buildings No. 23 and 24). Others use bright overall colors to raise T .

Another movement today, the neo-classical style, is defined by classical symmetry and proportion, which means that the architectural harmony is very high. Since the Renaissance and Palladio, applying and developing the Greco-Roman vocabulary has produced countless successful buildings ^{(5, 10)} (building No. 10). Contemporary neo-classical buildings, however, rarely have the sculptural friezes, nor the degree of detail and color of classical buildings. Consequently, their complexity and life tend to be measurably lower than that of classical buildings, or earlier neo-classical buildings.

6. THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND COMPLEXITY IN ARCHITECTURE

Values of the architectural life L and architectural complexity C for prominent buildings are computed in Table 1. The architectural life as defined in this paper corresponds very accurately to what people feel as the “life” of a structure, independently of whether they may like it or not. The numbers given forL and C of a particular building are only approximate, yet most people will agree with the relative ordering of the values. Table 1 is used to produce Figure 1, which permits us to follow the evolution of architectural styles.

Figure 1. Numbers corresponding to the buildings in Table 1 are plotted on an L C diagram of architectural life versus architectural complexity. Numbers 15 to 25 represent 20th century buildings. Every sructure in history, and every structure not yet built, fits inside this triangle.

6.1 Difficulties of Estimating the Parameters

We have chosen some of the best-known buildings in history. Even so, the readings necessarily reflect the altered state of many buildings. Sculptures, mosaics, and colors are missing; exteriors and interiors have been altered; parts have been extensively re-built; windows are not original. Our estimates are based on their present condition, with a partial correction for their conjectured original forms.

The key to estimating values for T and H is to observe a building’s exterior and interior from the human viewpoint. Architecture books favor a view from a great distance that is rarely experienced by a user, but small-scale differentiations are seen only by people close up; in entrances and inside a building, in regions that impact a person immediately. It is necessary to find close-up photos in color showing sufficient detail of the buildings accessible regions – both inside and outside – to determine how far the small-scale patterns are correlated. The author has been to fewer than half the buildings given in Table 1, yet that remains the only accurate way of judging them.

Another problem is to decide on a particular viewpoint – the values of T and H evolve as one approaches and enters a building, sometimes varying drastically. We have selected a single representative value for T and H in each case. The changing experience as one walks through a building will not be analyzed here. It represents the time dimension of architecture, and was carefully controlled by the greatest architects to create the maximum effect on the user ^{(5, 6)}.

6.2 Analysis of the Carson, Pirie, Scott Department Store

Louis Sullivan’s Schlesinger & Mayer building, now the Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. store (building No. 14), is a high point of American architecture ^{(13, 14, 15)}. We illustrate our model by going through the measurements of T and H . First, the glorious cast-iron facade has detail down to 1mm ( T₁ = 2). Looking up from the street shows the detailed pattern outlining the upper windows, which cannot be seen in photos taken from a height ^{(13, 15)}. Altogether, there is a very high density of differentiations ( T₂ = 2). The facade is an organic complex of curves ( T₃ = 2). It is dark green, while the upper stories are faced in white terracotta tiles ( T₄ = 1). There is no contrast in color hue ( T₅ = 0). The original interior did have color contrasts, but it is now completely altered.

The building is almost bilaterally symmetric, and its facades and windows are piecewise symmetric ( H₁ = 2). The windows define rows and columns of translational symmetry ( H₂ = 2). The cylindrical pavillon on the street corner is similar to the curved corner stories on top of it, while the storefront windows maintain the same scaling as the upper windows ( H₃ = 2). The facade is connected internally, and the cylindrical corner portion of the building has columns in relief all the way up; but the facade is not connected to the upper stories ( H₄ = 1). The overall color harmony is pleasing, though the terracotta does not harmonize with the dark metal ( H₅ = 1). The removal of the original roof projection and its replacement with a sheer edge has lowered the architectural harmony ^{(13, 15)}.

6.3 Some Comparisons Between Buildings

To demonstrate the utility of this model, we compare entirely dissimilar buildings in form, that nevertheless have similar values of C or L . Table 1 shows that Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel in Germany (building No. 4) has the same values as the Phoenix Hall of the Byodo-in Temple in Japan (building No. 5). The former follows an octagonal Byzantine plan, whereas the latter is a development of the classic Buddhist temple tradition. No two buildings could be more different in appearance, yet a viewer responds in a comparable way to both of them.

In the same way, the Romanesque Baptistry at Pisa (building No. 8) compares with the Art Nouveau Carson, Pirie, Scott store (building No. 14). Louis Sullivan’s great achievement is that he generated the same degree of architectural life without copying anything that had been built before him. By coincidence, the Parthenon (building No. 1) also shares the same values as these two buildings, but this is not a fair comparison, since it has lost most of its sculptures, walls, and coloration.

Two modern buildings that share similar values are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kaufmann house “Fallingwater”, in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (building No. 16), and Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House (building No. 22). Both are free, innovative, interesting, and generate feelings of similar intensity, despite having entirely different characteristics.

A case of contrast occurs between two religious buildings: Salisbury Cathedral (building No. 7), and the Pilgrimage Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, France, by Corbusier (building No. 18). They have about the same value for the architectural complexity – i.e., the same level of interest – but the former has more than thirty times the architectural life of the latter. The comparison belies the statement, common in architecture books, that this particular building by Corbusier is not susceptible to systematic analysis with respect either to his other work, or to other religious buildings.

6.4 The Universal Drive to Raise the Architectural Life

Figure 1 shows that man worked very hard to raise the architectural life of his surroundings, up until the 20th century. People with entirely distinct conceptions of beauty, using very different materials, and driven by similar motivations, managed to build structures that cluster together in the top corner of Figure 1. These buildings do not resemble each other in form. Furthermore, our choice of buildings is only a representative sample: hundreds of buildings from before the 20th century lie in the top corner of Figure 1.

Like animals with the instinct for complicated courtship and nest-building, we have an instinct to build things that embody certain qualities. For thousands of years, structures were built that do not meet any obvious utilitarian need; and yet they occupy a central role in cultures, requiring vast commitments in manpower and time. A simple shelter does not require the incredible sophistication that people have invested in buildings. Throughout history, buildings have reflected mankind’s drive to transcend materials and produce something to which we can relate directly on a deep emotional level.

What about houses and ordinary buildings? This model applies to all structures, and not just to important historical buildings. Vernacular architecture has reflected the values of L and C of “official” buildings throughout history. For instance, classical Greek and Roman houses were sufficiently detailed and coherent to give high values for L similar to those of contemporary temples, despite having an entirely different form. Although houses and commercial buildings in our time are strongly influenced by architectural fashion to have low L , their inhabitants instinctively raise L by decorating interior surfaces.

6.5 The Limits of Architectural Life and Complexity

Figure 1 includes all buildings within a large triangle, whereas the older and modernist buildings are each restricted to within much smaller triangles. This is a mathematical consequence of our definition of L and C . From equations (3) and (4), we have the identity:

L + C = 10T

(5)

The maximum possible value for T is 10, so Eq. (5) defines an upper limit for the architectural life in terms of the complexity as L = 100 – C . This relationship is represented by the diagonal in Figure 1. All structures in history, and all structures yet to be built, therefore lie inside the large triangle of Figure 1.

Measurements establish the fact that traditional buildings strive for a high value of architectural life L . They inhabit the top corner of Figure 1, shown as the upper small triangle. It is already explained in Section 4 why the complexity C of high L buildings does not vanish, and for this reason the triangle enclosing them is displaced from the L axis.

A similar but distinct relationship holds for modernist buildings. Their architectural temperature is very low, and this provides an upper bound for both the architectural life and the architectural complexity. The purest modernist buildings included here are numbers 18, 19, and 21, which occupy the triangle L < 10, C < 10 with the diagonal bound L = 10 – C . The pure modernist idiom, whether defined by aesthetic principles, or by pioneering buildings that are used as models by succeeding architects, is restricted to a very narrow range of parameters represented by the lower small triangle in Figure 1.

7. THERMODYNAMICS AND THE ARCHITECTURAL MODEL

The model we have described is inspired by thermodynamics, which provides insight into the fundamental processes of architecture. We have taken concepts such as symmetries and coherence that are well known in architecture ⁽⁶⁾, and combined them into a sort of thermodynamic potential. Whereas in the past they have always been considered separately and qualitatively, we made the relevant qualities measurable, and then synthesized the values obtained into a consistent and robust model that has predictive value.

The model depends on the degree of randomness, which is measured by some sort of architectural entropy S . The word entropy is used in a very particular sense, and its meaning is analogous to but not the same as the thermodynamic entropy in physics. The entropy of a design is defined as the degree of randomness in the patterns. We used the architectural harmony H in order to measure S indirectly as S = 10 – H on a scale of 0 to 10. Since the architectural entropy S represents the absence of symmetries, connections, and harmony, it is more difficult to measure than the presence of those qualities.

The architectural entropy is, like the thermodynamic entropy, an extensive or bulk function. What we define here as the architectural entropy is the average over the entire form. This is not the entropy directly, but it permits us to compare the architectural entropy of two buildings of different sizes. Without normalization, the architectural entropy of the sum of two buildings would be the sum of the entropies. Since the architectural entropy is normalized, the entropy of the sum is the entropy of the ensemble, which is more useful for architectural purposes.

The thermodynamic temperature is an intensive or point function that measures quantities locally. The temperatures of two separated points do not add. The architectural temperature T as defined here, however, takes into account both local and average qualities. Each component T_i of T measures the maximum point value anywhere in the design, as well as the average of that quantity over the entire form. This combined method is the best way to measure local differentiations as departures from equilibrium, and at the same time, as a value on an absolute scale.

In physics, T and S have different units. Here, T and S are dimensionless numbers, and are combined to get other dimensionless numbers such as H , L , and C . It is the thermodynamic potentials that characterize a system, so we define the architectural complexity C as the product TS . This makes C look like the internal energy or the enthalpy. The architectural life L = 10T – TS would then correspond to something like the Gibbs potential or the Helmholtz free energy. Combinations such as these also characterize the state of an architectural system, which is the key to our model. The idea is that similar laws should govern organization in thermodynamics as well as in architecture.

8. THE LINK TO BIOLOGICAL LIFE

The notion of “life” in architecture is due to Alexander ⁽³⁾, who has worked very hard to achieve it in his own buildings ^{(16, 17, 18)}. Our formulation attempts to codify some of Alexander’s results. More than just creating a utilitarian structure, mankind strives to approach the intrinsic qualities of biological forms in its traditional and vernacular architectures. This result is not obvious, because very few buildings actually copy living forms: the resemblance is obtained by raising L via the structural temperature and harmony.

Starting initially from a traditionalist point of view, Charles, the Prince of Wales has also discovered style-independent rules that raise the architectural life. He calls these his ten principles ⁽¹⁰⁾. Although the approach and details are different, these developments are supported both by Alexander’s results, and by the model of this paper. The links between biological and architectural life are now being recognized formally. We are witnessing a convergence of ideas coming from several different directions, and forming an entirely new approach to architecture.

One class of examples of artificial objects that mimic living forms is beautiful self-similar fractal curves. The design temperature T of fractal curves is very high; the harmony H is also very high because they are self-similar (any portion, when magnified by a fixed factor, looks exactly like the original form) ⁽⁴⁾. Therefore, they have a high degree of architectural life L . As is well-known, fractal pictures resembling natural objects provide excellent representations⁽⁴⁾, and this property serves to support our model.

The connection between biological life and architecture arises from the thermodynamics of living forms. Life is the result of an enormous amount of purposeful complication. Biological organisms are marvelously connected on all different levels, and they are characterized by very high design temperature and harmony. The connective thought processes underlying cognition themselves mimic the thermodynamic and connective structures that are characteristic of living forms. This helps to explain our instinct to relate to forms having a high degree of architectural life.

The architectural temperature mimics the activity of life processes, which is highly organized and structured. It should not be surprising that living beings instinctively copy the intrinsic qualities of living systems in their own creations. How can humans put an image of life into a building? Apart from figurative icons and statues, we work with emotions: structures are carefully tailored to generate positive psychological and physiological responses. Far from merely being a plausible hypothesis, this model suggests that humans have a basic need to raise the architectural life of their environment.

9. CONCLUSION

A model for architectural forms was inspired by thermodynamics. By measuring the architectural temperature T and the architectural harmony H , we estimate the architectural life L of a building by analogy to a thermodynamic potential. Incredibly, the value computed for L in this way corresponds directly to the emotional perception of a building’s “life”. A different potential, the architectural complexity C , is a distinct combination of T and H . Again, the computed value for C in any building corresponds directly with what is emotionally perceived as its “complexity”. This establishes a link between intrinsic qualities of architectural forms, and the subconscious connection they establish with people.

The model represents a first attempt at analyzing architecture with a quantitative method. While the results depend on the detailed definition of the variables, the basic principles are fairly robust. One of the results is to critically distinguish older historical buildings from those of the 20th century. This was illustrated dramatically in a plot of the architectural complexity C versus the architectural life L of twenty-five famous buildings. We interpreted this in terms of the attempt to mimic fundamental processes in nature. Traditional buildings derive their structure from physical and biological processes, whereas modernist forms seek innovation through features that do not occur in nature.

This quantitative description of architecture was based on the buildings themselves. We looked at buildings in isolation and gave them a quantitative place on a scale. The model, which follows ideas of Christopher Alexander, also applies to the impact of a building on its environment. Alexander’s approach is holistic, and considers a building and its environment to be a whole unit. The measure of architectural harmony applies especially to the juxtaposition of a building with adjoining buildings, natural scenery, the sky, and the ground. Even if a building is internally harmonious, it creates a low-harmony impression when its edges clash with the environment. A built environment with high architectural life therefore connects all structures to their surroundings.

Acknowledgement

I thank my colleagues Drs. J. M. Gallas, D. Gokhman, R. E. Hiromoto, P. Hochmann, and W.-K. Kwong for fruitful discussions. I am especially grateful to Sir E. C. Zeeman for his suggestions.

Résumé

L’auteur présente un modèle architectural simple, fondé sur l’analogie avec la thermodynamique, à partir des théories de Christopher Alexander. Ce modèle quantifie les qualités architecturales intrinsèques d’un édifice. (a) La température architecturale T est définie comme le degré de detail, courbure, ou couleur des formes architecturales; et (b) l’harmonie architecturale H est définie comme leur degré de symétrie et cohérence spatiale. Ce modèle prédit la force émotionelle d’un édifice. L’impression de combien de vie un édifice possède correspond à la quantité L = TH , tandis que la complexité du dessin correspond à la quantité C = T (10 – H ). La quantité 10 – H est analogue à l’entropie architecturale. Un architecte innovateur peut appliquer ce modèle pour bâtir des édifices qui ne ressemblent pas au bâtiments du passé, mais qui possèdent une vie architecturale tres élevée.

References

1. Nikos A. Salingaros, “The Laws of Architecture from a Physicist’s Perspective” Physics Essays 8, 638-643 (1995).
2. Nikos A. Salingaros, “A Scientific Basis for Creating Architectural Forms” J. of Architectural and Planning Research, (to appear in 1997).
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13. William H. Jordy, “The Tall Buildings”, in: Louis Sullivan: the Function of Ornament, Wim de Wit, Ed. (W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1986)
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• Nikos A. Salingaros
  Division of Mathematics
  University of Texas at San Antonio
  San Antonio, Texas 78249

This article is to be found as a chapter in the book A Theory of Architecture, in an upgraded version with more illustrations.

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