Sublime

In the present scheme of large-scale obsolescence a few corporate centers of decision-making impose compulsory innovation on the entire society. Continued convivial reconstruction depends on the degree to which society protects the power of individuals and of communities to choose their own styles of life through effective, small-scale renewal.

A standard Park Department playground design was evolved and architects were given little leeway to deviate from it. If there was to be an indoor playhouse in the playground, there was a standard design for that, too, and if the architect wanted to make variations in it they had better be small ones.

“Designs for Working.” The New Yorker (December 11, 2000): 60–70.

Smart city rhetoric implies that technology follows an inevitable path, can take only one particular form, and is the primary driver of social and political progress—a common attitude, known as “technological determinism.” Tech goggles suggest that adopting newer, faster, and more sophisticated technology is the sole path to improving cities. Inste

Christopher Alexander was known for his theories on bringing humanity into architecture. He believed everyone possessed the ability to create and design a space that he called alive. His book, Pattern language, is based on core belief that people should design their own communities. Observation is that some of the best places in the world were desi

This unqualified identification of scientific advance with the replacement of human initiative by programmed tools springs from an ideological prejudice and is not the result of scientific analysis. Science could be applied for precisely the opposite purpose. Advanced or “high” technology could become identified with labor-sparing, work-intensive d

He went on to rethink modern architecture from a biological perspective and later publicly broke with the environmental movement over nuclear power and GMO food.