ChristopherAlexander의 저작.

이 책에 대한 김창준님 서평. 

ChristopherAlexander의 비교적 최근 저작으로 The Nature of Order의 전초석 역할을 하는 책이다. 아주 단순한 규칙 몇가지를 계속 적용해서 어떻게 복잡한 도시로 성장해 나갈 수 있는지를 보여준다. 그가 말하는 훌륭한 도시는 유기적인 도시이다. (When we look at the most beautiful towns and cities of the past, we are always impressed by a feeling that they are somehow organic.)

궁극적으로 CA가 제시하는 규칙들은 모두 하나를 지향한다. "Every increment of construction must be made in such a way as to heal the city." "Every new act of construction has just one basic obligation: it must create a continous structure of wholes around itself."

이를 위해 그는 일곱 가지의 중간 단계의 규칙들을 제시한다.

 * Piecemeal growth
 * The growth of larger wholes
 * Visions
 * The basic rule of positive urban space
 * Layout of larger buildings
 * Construction
 * Formation of centers

그는 이런 규칙들이 적용되는 과정을 중시한다. (Thus, in our view, it is the process above all which is responsible for wholeness...not merely the form. If we create a suitable process there is some hope that the city might become whole once again. If we do not change the process, there is no hope at all.)

책의 제목과 관련해서 CA는 다음과 같이 말한다.

City planning definitely does not try to create wholeness. It is merely preoccupied with implementation of certain ordinances. Architecture is too much preoccupied with problems of individual buildings. And urban design has a sense of dilettantism: as if the problem could be solved on a visual level, as an aesthetic matter. However, at least the phrase "urban design" does somehow conjure up the sense of the city as a complex thing which must be dealt with in three dimensions, no two.

A New Theory of Urban Design의 서평입니다. 저 서평을 2002년도에 썼습니다. "최근" 저작이라고 썼지만..

Pattern Language 이후 그는 개별 패턴에서 관심을 거두고 이런 패턴을 생성하는 근원적 구조에 더 관심을 갖게 됩니다. 패턴을 따르다 보면 프랑켄슈타인이 나올 수 있다고 말합니다.

Introduction

The process we define, is rooted in a sequence of earlier theoretical and practical innovations.

During the early 1970s a group of us succeeded in isolating a large number of so-called "patterns," which specify some of the spatial relations necessary to wholeness in the city. The patterns we defined ranged from the largest urban scale to the smallest scale of building construction. The patterns themselves have been published and discussed in volumes 1 and 2 of this series.

In volume 3, The Oregon Experiment, the authors showed that a complete and implementable planning process, based on these patterns, could allow the users of a community to take charge of their own environment, and that people could channel the process of development into a healthier course, by using these patterns.

The work reported in volumes 4 and 5 later showed that the physical geometry of an architecture based on these patterns would be entirely different from the one we know, and also that, to produce it, the process of building production would have to be changed drastically.

And other even more important discoveries were being made. During the period of 1976-1978 one of the authors(CA), had become aware of a deeper level of structure lying "behind" the patterns. At this level of structure it was possible to define a small number of geometric properties which seemed to be responsible for wholeness in space. Even more remarkable, it was possible to define a single process, loosely then called "the centering process," which was capable of producing this wholeness (with its fifteen or so geometric properties) at any scale at all, irrespective of the particular functional order required by the particularities of a given scale.

Thus, the centering process seemed capable of generating wholeness in a painting, in a tile, in a doorway, in the plan of a building, in the three-dimensional constellation of spaces which form a building, in a garden or a street, even in a neighborhood.

So far, the theory of these spatial properties and of the centering process, remains unpublished. It will appear in a later volume of this series, "The Nature of Order."

However, as a result of these discoveries, two of the authors (CA and IK) began, in the early part of 1978, to imagine an entirely new kind of urban process, that was guided in its entirety by this single "centering" process.

Part 1. Theory

1. The Idea of a Growing Whole

In each of these growing wholes, there are certain fundamental and essential features.

  1. First, the whole grows piecemeal bit by bit.

  2. Second, the whole is unpredictable. When it starts coming into being, it is not yet clear how it will continue, or where it will end, because only the interaction of the growth, with the whole's own laws, can suggest its continuation and its end.

  3. Third, the whole is coherent. It is truly whole, not fragmented, and its parts are also whole, related like the parts of a dream to one another, in surprising and complex ways.

  4. Fourth, the whole is full of feeling, always. This happens because the wholeness itself touches us, reaches the deepest levels in us, has the power to move us, to bring us to tears, to make us happy.

All traditional towns have these features in their growth.

But the modern practice of urban development does not have these features. It does not deal with growing wholes at all.

  1. First, although the growth often is piecemeal, the piecemeal character does not contribute to a growing wholeness. It is merely piecemeal, and produces unrelated acts, which lead to chaos.

  2. Second, the growth is not, in any deep sense, unpredictable. It tends, most often, to be controlled by conceptions, plans, maps and schemes. But these plans do not have the capacity to generate a g rowing wholeness. Instead they force an artificial, contrived kind of wholeness.
  3. Third, planned development is also generally not coherent... not in a deep-felt sense. It is supposed to be. But if we ask ourselves whether the final product of current urban design projects actually is coherent in the real, deep sense that we know from traditional towns, then we must say no. The order is superficial , skin deep, only in the plan or in some contri ved orderliness of the arrangements. There is no deep inner coherence, which can be felt in every doorway, every step, and every street.
  4. And fourth, this modern planned development which we think of as normal, certainly has NO power to evoke deep feeling. It can, at best, ask for some kind of admiration for "design." But of deep feeling there is no word, not a tremor, not a possibility.

2. The Overriding Rule

We are faced then, with the question: what kinds of laws, at how many different levels, are needed, to create a growing whole in a city or a part of a city.

Most simply put, the one rule is this:

Every new act of construction has just one basic obligation: it must create a continuous structure of wholes around itself

These results establish the following facts:

  1. Wholeness, or coherence, is an objective condition of spatial configurations, which occurs to a greater or lesser degree in any given part of space, and can be measured.
  2. The structure which produces wholeness, is always specific to its circumstances, and therefore never has exactly the same form twice.
  3. The condition of wholeness is always produced by the same, well-defined process. This process works

incrementally, by gradually producing a structure defined as "the field of centers," in space.

  1. The field of centers is produced by the incremental creation of centers, one by one, under a very

special condition. Namely:

As one center X is produced, so, simultaneously, other centers must also be produced, at three well-defined levels:

  1. Larger than X. At lea5t one other center must be produced at a 5calc larger than X, and in such a way that X is part of this larger center, and helps to support it.
  2. The same size as X. Other centers must be produced at the Same size as X, and adjacent to X, so that there is no "negative space" left near X.
  3. Smaller than X. Still other centers must be produced at a scale smal ltr than X, and in such a way

that they help to support the existence of X.

This process is hard to grasp.

In order to solve this problem, we invented seven simpler rules . . . rules that we may call intermediate rules.

These rules were concrete and clear. They gave people instructions about what to do, and how to do it.

These seven intermediate rules-actually each one is itself a system of several subrules-help to make the one rule concrete , and make it feasible to implement the one rule, from day to day.

We have already said that the overriding rule requires only one thing: That every act of construction, every increment of growth in the city, works towards the creation of wholeness. More fully, the one rule will require the following of the urban process: Every increment of construction in the growing city must be designed to preserve wholeness at all levels, from the largest level of public space, to the intermedi ate wholes at the scale of individual buildings, to the smallest wholes that occur in the building details.

The seven rules, quite simply then , try to make sure that this happens. They are practical, and easily implementable rules, whose applicati on will embody the one rule.

But they are intermediate rules, because they are, at best, versions of the one rule. None of them is ultimately reliable. None of them can be repeated mechanically. None of them can be relied on to produce wholeness, without thought. At best, we can say that use of these intermediate rules gradually shows people how to make urban space whole.

But the more they understand these intermediate rules, the less necessary the rules are, and the more the users will approach a real understanding of the one rule.

The seven intermediate rules which we have defined are:

  1. Piecemeal growth
  2. The growth of larger wholes
  3. Visions
  4. The basic rule of positive urban space
  5. Layout of large buildings
  6. Construction
  7. Formation of centers

As they stand, these seven rules are imperfectly formulated. Each one leaves much to be desired, both in its form, and in its detailed content. In any future attempt to carry out a real process of urban design, along the lines reported in this book, the seven intermediate rules will probably have to be improved considerably. They will abo have to be adjusted according to local context.

However, we are fairly certain that the general range of these rules is correct, and that some version of these seven rules is always be needed, to embody the overriding rule correctly in a city.

3. The Seven Detailed Rules of Growth

Rule 1: Piecemeal Growth

Rule 2: The Growth of Larger Wholes

Rule 3: Visions

Rule 4: Positive Urban Space

Rule 5: Layout of Large Buildings

Rule 6: Construction

Rule 7: Formation of Centers

Part 2. Experiment

Part 3. Evaluation