[marginalium]
Christopher Alexander and his patterns
10 Jun 2025
Christopher Alexander and his patterns. I talk about Christopher Alexander quite a few times in my content. His concept of a ‘centre’ in particular:
for example … a fishpond … Obviously the water is part of the fishpond. What about the concrete it is made of? .. the air which is just about the pond? … the pipes bringing in the water? These are uncomfortable questions … The pond does exist. Our trouble is that we don’t know how to define it exactly … When I call a pond a center, the situation changes … the fuzziness of edges becomes less problematic. The reason is that the pond, as an entity, is focused towards its center. It creates a field of centeredness … The same is true for window, door, walls, or arch. None of them can be exactly bounded. They are all entities which have a fuzzy edge, and whose existence lies in the fact that they exist as centers in the portion of the world which they inhabit.
Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order: Book 1
This is how the world often works for us—how the brain sees it.
Anyway, here is a tech guy explaining why tech people also like Christopher Alexander. I think he does a good job.
Anthologies: Gratification, Thought Architecture, Neurotypica, Abstractions as Gods