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Nature Unfolding - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

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Contributing editor Katy Butler speaks with renowned architect Christopher Alexander, who has spent decades investigating the source and forms of beauty. What he has found is a pathway to God. In the late 1970s, a book with the odd title A Pattern Language became a bible to me and to many of my friends. Ostensibly about architecture, it was really a handbook on how to live. In the evenings, I’d sit under a lamp and turn its thin, almost translucent pages, looking at lists of design elements like “Cascading Roofs,” “Alcove,” and “Sunny Spot.” These “patterns” could be cobbled together to make a house. Decades before most Westerners had heard of feng shui, it described how the built world shapes human interaction. It recommended windows on two sides of every room, for instance, because this “creates less glare around people and objects. . . . It allows us to read in detail the minute expressions that flash across people’s faces . . . to understand each other.” More than a recipe book for

Central Building of the Eishin Campus, built by Alexander in Japan in 1985 | Photo © Shinkenchiku-sha, courtesy of the Japan Architect Co., Ltd. For more work by Christopher Alexander, visit natureoforder.com In the late 1970s, a book with the odd title A Pattern Language became a bible to me and to many of my friends. Ostensibly about architecture, it was really a handbook on how to live. In the evenings, I’d sit under a lamp and turn its thin, almost translucent pages, looking at lists of design elements like “Cascading Roofs,” “Alcove,” and “Sunny Spot.” These “patterns” could be cobbled to

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