"...
The crucial ingredient in a paradigm shift is the ability to be precise about the consequences of a reality only believed to be existing independently of our knowing it. Copernicus was not the first to suggest the earth’s motion round the sun. Why the idea stuck after Copernicus ( and upset everybody) was the unprecedented mathematical system which he built around the phenomenon in order to explain the motion of the planets.
What distinguishes Alexander from his architectural predecessors is the unprecedented linguistic and mathematical system which he has built around the ancient ideas of differentiating space in order to create a new type of building. He shows that there exists in space, a particular phenomenon which corresponds to those ideas, independently of any attempts to describe them. It is his systematic description of its consequences that will be as tradition-shattering to modern architecture as the Copernican revolution did to medieval astronomy.
Now, the idea of a centrally ordered conception of indeterminate space embracing aesthetic, functional, and technical elements - a unity of space - is not new. Its continuity as an idea was fractured with the modern movement in architecture. As Reyner Banham says “The human chain; ; that extends back from Gropius to William Morris, and beyond him to Ruskin, Pugin, and William Blake, does not extend forward from Gropius. The precious vessel of handicraft aesthetics that had been passed from hand to hand, was dropped and broken, and no one has bothered to pick up the pieces.”
If you look at the “moderns” ( and Gropius is a good watershed figure), they are all united in their affinity for differentiating space into elemental compositions which are essentially cubistic in appearance and determined, in large measure, by the technological forces of the age. They are alike in facts, values, methods and their dependence upon industrial economic determinants, mass production, prefabrication of materials, standardization of construction practices, and the division of labor and activities. There is an absence of any cumulative, internal body of knowledge which describes their consequences.
If, as Alexander does, we start treating question of design as a scientific problem rather than as a mysterious act of artisitic creation, it presupposes a different kind of theory. Such theory would first of all have to precede the act of design. Secondly, it would have to lead directly to the act of building in much the same way that a purely intuitive process, regardless of its shortcomings, does generate an end product. In other words, it would have to generate designs rather than just explain them. Thirdly, it would have to be general enough to permit its applicability to an endless variety of individual circumstances. In other words, it would have to be compatible and congruent with the freedom and creativity necessary to produce a work of art.
A scientific theory of architecture would be concerned with the unlocking of the creative processes that produce buildings. Yet the idea of discovering a set of steps or rules which actually creates something is profoundly disturbing. Even the obvious benefits of the accumulation and expansion of knowledge that such discovery would permit are overshadowed by the belief that somehow such processes can never be known. This is true in many fields. Prior to the discovery of the structure of DNA molecules, the laws of nature were considered to be unknown except for the constraints of natural selection. Natural section could not account for genetic process. Prior to the discovery of generative grammars in linguistics, the origin of language was considered to be unknown except as could be constrained by the rules of grammar. So in architecture, prior to the discovery of a generative theory, the act of design would appear as unknown except as in was constrained by rules of construction. The idea that a set of known rules could generate building is as unsettling as the idea that a human being is generated by a few genetic rules operating on chromosomes or than a poem is generated by a few grammatical rules operating on language.
To the question “Where does the environment come from?” Alexander will answer: It is generated by language-like systems called pattern languages, that its successful adaptation to a complex system requires an enormous amount of minute local adaptations which insists that large numbers of people be engaged in the process. Also that the environment properly constituted has an objectively definable morphology to it with specific geometric properties that must be present if it is to be beautiful. The procedural consequences of these facts include practical changes in the relationship between the architect and society, in the relationship between the architect and the building contractor, in the process of construction, in the flow of money through the environment and in the politics of land ownership and control. Taken as a whole, it leads to a fundamentally different way of perceiving and making buildings and towns than current theory and practice require..."