Introduction
1971년, ChristopherAlexander는 오레곤 대학교에서 대규모의 설계를 맡게 된다. 그 결과를 1975년에 책으로 저술한다.
이 책에서 그는 커뮤니티에서 건설과 계획을 하기 위한 6가지 원리를 내세운다.
유기적 질서의 원리 The Principle of Organic Order
- 계획이나 시공은 전체를 개별적인 행위로부터 서서히 만들어가는 것과 같은 프로세스에 의해서 인도될 것
참가의 원리 The Principle of Participation
- 건설 내용이나 건설 방법에 관한 모든 결정은 이용자의 손에 맡길 것
점진적 성장의 원리 The Principle of Piecemeal Growth
- 각 예산년도에 기획되는 건설은 소규모인 프로젝트에 특히 중점을 둘 것
패턴의 원리 The Principle of Patterns
- 모든 설계와 건설은 정식으로 채택된 패턴이라고 불리는 계획원리의 집합에 의해서 지도될 것
진단의 원리 The Principle of Diagnosis
- 커뮤니티 전체의 건강 상태는 커뮤니티 변천의 어느 시점에서도 항상 어떤 공간이 살려지고 어떤 공간이 살려지지 않았는가를 상세히 설명하는 정기적인 진단에 근거해서 보호될 것
조정의 원리 The Principle of Coordination
- 마지막으로 전체에 있어서 유기적 질서의 완만한 생성은 이용자가 추진하는 개개의 프로젝트의 흐름을 제어하는 재정적 처치에 의해서 확실한 것으로 될 것
Chapter 1. Organic Order
In the middle twentieth century, most communities which try to take a responsible attitude to their environments have adopted, or intend to adopt, an instrument of planning policy called a "master plan," to control the individual acts of building which go on there. In different countries this master plan is also called a general plan, a development plan, an outline plan.
Master plans take many forms; but almost all of them have one thing in common. They include a map, which specifies the future growth of the community, and prescribes the land uses, functions, heights, and other qualities which may, or should, be built in different areas.
These maps, and master plans, are intended to coordinate the many hundreds of otherwise independent acts of building. They are intended to make sure, in a word, that the many acts of building in a community will together gradually help to create a whole, instead of merely making up an aggregation of unrelated parts, a chaos.
In this first chapter we shall argue that the master plan, as currently conceived, cannot create a whole. It can create a totality, but not a whole. It can create totalitarian order, but not organic order. We shall argue, in short, that although the task of making sure that individuals acts of building cooperate to form a whole is read, the conventioanl master plan - based on a map of the future - can not possibly perform this task. As we shall ses, the conventional master plan cannot solve the basic problem, because it is too rigid to do so - and, because, in addition, it creates an entirely new set of other problems, more devastating in human terms than the chaos it is meant to govern.
In presenting this argument, we shall restate, in some degree, the arguments already presented in The Timeless Way of Building: but we shall now focus on the practical questions which are created by these arguments.
Let us begin with the idea of organic order. Everyone is aware that most of the built environment today lacks a natural order, an order which presents itself very strongly in places that were built centuries ago. This natural or organic order emerges when there is perfect balance between the needs of the individual parts of the environment, and the needs of the whole. In an organic environment, every place is unique, and the different places also cooperate, which no parts left over, to create a global whole - a whole which can be identified by everyone who is a part of it.
The University of Cambridge is a perfect example ofo organic order. One of the most beautiful features of this university is the way that the colleges - St. Johns, Trinity, Trinity Hall, Clare, Kings, Peterhouse, Queens - lie between the main street of the town and the river. Each college is a system of residential courts, each college has its entrance on the street, and opens onto the river; each college has its own small bridge that crosses the river, and leads to the meadows beyond; each college has it own boathouse and its own walks along the river. But while each college repeats the same system, each one has its own unique charater. The individual courts, entrances, bridges, boathouses, and walks are all different. The overall organization of all the colleges together and the individual characteristics of each college is perhaps the most wonderful thing about Cambridge. It is a perfect example of organic order. At each level there is a perfect balance and harmony of parts.
Where did this order come from? Of course it was not planned; there was no master plan. And yet, the regularity, the order, is far too profound to have happened purely by chance. Somehow, the combination of tacit, culture-defined agreements, and traditional approaches to well-known problems, insured that even when people were working separately, they were still working together, sharing the same principles. As a result, no matter how unique and individualsl the pieces were, there was always underlying order in the whole.
Today, this is a lost art. Nowadays, the process of growth and development almost never seems to manage to create this subtle balance between the importance of the individual parts, and the coherence of the environment as a whole. One or the other always dominates.
In some cases the parts take control, and the whole is lost. This has happened, for example, at the University of California at Berkeley. A campus that was once beautiful, is not a litter of fragmented buildings, each one different, each one occupied with its own local problems. The many buildings do not form a whole together. There is functional breakdown at the level of the campus as a whole: the streets are congested; circulation is a maze.
In other cases that whole is made to take control, and the integrity of the parts is lost. This has happened, for example, at the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois. The university has been conceived as a totality by a group of architects; and the need of individual places, or individual groups, are entirely submerged in the totalitarian order imposed by the architectural concept. There is a functional breakdown in the roms within the buildings: they are arbitrarily shaped, without windows, etc. There is a kind of order in the whole, but no possibility of order in the parts.
We define organic order as the kind of order that is achieved when there is a perfect balance between the needs of the parts, and the needs of the whole.
The university of Cambridge is a wonderful place, because it is an organic environment in just thie sense. Today, however, the process by which the University of Cambridge was created no longer holds. Traditions have vanished; problems change fast; cultural agreements have disappeared; individual acts of building carried out whthin tradition, can no longer be relied upon to create organic order. In desperation, people who are concerned with the environment have come to believe that the environment must be planned - for many years in advance - to achieve the kind of order which came into obeing so naturally in earlier time.
Chapter 2. Participation
Chapter 3. Piecemeal Growth
Chapter 4. Patterns
Chapter 5. Diagnosis