Preface

1. My Intention in Book 3

In Book 1, The Phenomenon of Life, I have offered a view of the natural and built worlds in which order is seen as underlying all life, and life -- visible as living structure -- a common and necessary feature of buildings.

In Book 2, The Process of Creating Life, I have argued that it is a special kind of adaptive process, not a mechanical or arbitrary application of properties, that creates life. Life in nature, and in the humanly constructed world, is generated by a process of unfolding in which living structure grows in stepwise fashion from a current condition (the system of centers which exists) and takes on greater life by a series of structure-preserving transformations, or adaptations. This life-generating process is, I have argued, knowlable and can guide human actions. The process is inherent in nature's infinite complexity and can only be grasped to a first approximation, but my hope is that readers will entertain and use the conception of living process as a reasonable approximation of how the built world comes to life.

Throughout Books 1 and 2, I have not disguised my belief and anger that the modern world -- especially with the advent of professional architecture separated from building -- has lost touch with life in the world we are making. We live in a world degraded and overwhelmed by construction which is driven by forces very different form, and often oblivious to, what I have been describing as necessary conditions for creating living order.

In this book, A Vision of a Living World, I try to show what happens if living processes are used pervasively, in widespread fashion, in our own era, and what kind of overall environment we may expect to see from their effects. I show examples of large buildings, small buildings, neighborhoods, gardens, public space, wilderness, houses, construction details, color, ornament.

The views I am advocating on building process are not widely accepted and they are often at odds with current ways of doing things. Still, I can only be grateful for having had so long and wide-ranging a chance to develop and to try many of my ideas on how to construct a wholesome, life-supporting world around us.