Our Architectural Services

The Mountain View Civic Center Painting of a project prepared for the City of Mountain View, California

PURPOSE AND AIMS

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A non-profit corporation, established in 1967, The Center for Environmental Structure implements building projects in which towns, landscape, buildings, gardens, are truly adapted to support human existence. CES provides publicly accessible models of working processes able to alter the procurement of buildings throughout the world. We seek to do this in a fashion which permits the creation of a better architecture and provides professional and lay people with working models for new projects in the twenty--first century. Pilot projects of small and moderate size are gradually to be replaced by projects in which size, scale, and impact increase, and are able to be competitive with those very large projects which are now damaging cities and countryside everywhere, in the United States, in the European world, in Latin America, in Asia, and in Africa. The projects we take on have as an explicit aim, the purpose of extending tested mechanisms and processes of implementation to larger and larger cases which can, within a finite time, begin to have impact on the conduct of architecture and planning in the world.

Columbia, Santa Rosa de Cabal, project with new aims

PROCESS INNOVATION

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The most fundamental aspect of CES innovation and practice, concerns the necessity to revise and reconstruct social, technical, banking, and human process, throughout the field of building and environment. We are committed to the view that a good, healthy, and beneficial environment for human beings in the 21st century, can only be created by thoroughgoing changes in the systems and processes in use during the 20th century. During the last thirty years we have frequently proposed, and made, innovations of process. At one time or another, we have proposed changes in almost all the processes that create buildings, because for over thirty years we have tried to identify the kinds of process that are capable of creating a living world. Some of our process innovations include: Analysis of a design task in terms of its functional roots Finite element analysis of complex forms as a method of cycling engineering solutions Involvement of users and lay people in the design process of their houses and workplaces Fixed-fee, non--profit management of construction New forms of construction contract Changes in the flow of money Inventions in construction technique designed to create physical processes that could allow formation of well--adapted, cheap, buildings The nature of the human process that is used to lay out a building The experimental human process needed to improve layout of building interiors Changes in process for consecutive layout and siting of buildings in urban design and construction of city centers Mechanical innovations in setting out the foundations of a building Innovations in engineering process and analysis to get better results in engineering design Innovations in public diagnosis of a community environment leading to changes of process Innovations in the relative order of items in a construction procedure Innovation in the manufacturing process for office furniture designed to make the furniture better adapted to individual needs Changes in the maintenance of buildings, and the maintenance budget and its distribution over the lifetime of the building These innovations have all been innovations of process. We made them because we knew the value of the living architecture we were trying to achieve was dependent on changes in process, and could only be created by these or other equivalent process changes. These process--innovations were often dismissed as dreaming, as not essential, as too radical for architects to propose. Nevertheless, experience has taught us that fundamental practical innovations of process are necessary consequences of thinking correctly about the nature of life, and of facing honestly the task of creating living structure in the world.

COST CONTROL AS FUNDAMENTAL TO THE HEALTH OF THE ENVIRONMENT A major part of CES work during the last 20 years, has been aimed at cost control. New forms of construction management contracts, invented and developed by CES, have provided managed methods of cost control which provide the client the opportunity to obtain maximum benefit for any given level of cost, with security of final cost. Vital to the welfare of the environment, is the possibility of flexible adaptations during construction, and methods of providing that this flexibility can be maintained within a guaranteed cost umbrella. Our innovations provide clients with the advantages of flexibility, without the costs and penalties and cost--overruns typically encountered when construction proceeds within existing forms of bidding and cost control.

BUDGET MANAGEMENT THROUGH PROGRAM BUDGETING Direct control of subcontractors, who are required to provide bids working to a pre--fixed sum, while being permitted to vary the specification of what is delivered. This form of program budgeting is efficient, highly cost-effective, and creates a better relationship with subcontractors, removing the antagonistic relation that exists under existing frameworks, yet creating large cost advantages for clients.

LOW COST CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES New ultra-low-cost construction techniques and new attitudes combine cost-effectiveness, with maximum benefit per unit of cost to the human considerations in the environment.

MAXIMIZATION OF RESOURCE EFFECTIVENESS New forms of cash flow for housing programs that are based, in part, on available resources, may be used to maximize the effect of available cash flow, while keeping client expectations at a minimum, reduce later burdens caused by loan indebtedness.

INNOVATIONS IN INTEREST STRUCTURE Experiments are now under way to encourage mixed use development, through creative forms of variable interest, thus assigning priorities and different forms of cost to components, according to their level of social importance. This has the effect of recovering key components of the urban environment, which are damaged by present types of interest structure.

West Dean College Visitor's Center built for £1100/square meter and estimated value at £2000/square meter

 

ASSOCIATED PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

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In many projects CES combines with engineering professionals of other disciplines and provides a wholly innovative and integrated planning design and construction service; it also frequently engages with other architectural firms. Here are some the professional organizations we have worked with. Banco de la Vivienda, Peru The World Bank, Washington DC Banco de Credito, Baja California Midland Bank, West Sussex Housing Finance Corporation, London Bank of America, San Francisco Allott and Lomax, Engineers, Manchester The San Francisco Museums Prince of Wales's Projects Office, London Helenic Technodomiki S.A. Athens Fujita Kogyo, Heavy Construction Tokyo Bell Laboratories, Illinois Joint Center for Urban Studies, Harvard Hajo Neis and Partners Frankfurt Professor Howard Davis, Eugene Thallon & Edrington, Oregon The Global Business Network, San Francisco Oliver and Komes, Berkeley Life Savings Bank, SSB Austin Halim Abdel Halim and Partners, Cairo Bimal Hasmukh Patel Ahmedabad, India David Week, Sydney Ken Costigan and Partners, Papua New Guinea Nili Portugali, Tel-Aviv Ramzi Kawar, Amman, Jordan Moshe Safdie, Boston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

SOME OF OUR BETTER KNOWN CLIENTS

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Costruyamos, Colombia The United Nations Herman Miller Corporation Sun Microsystems Eishin Gakuen The Mary Rose Trust The City of Pasadena National Institutes of Health H.R.H. The Prince of Wales The University of Oregon The City of Nagoya The City of Mountain View The Government of Baja California, Mexico The Ministry of Works, London Hoechst Pharmaceutical, Frankfurt

 

COUNTRIES AND PEOPLE

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India Mexico Venezuela Nepal Samarkand Canada Israel Alaska Japan Peru Colombia Germany Papua New Guinea Spain England California The Homeless, USA Brazil Austria Canary Islands Haitian Americans Honduras Oregon Greece

                                                                                               

Students at home at school

Mexicali, a new home,

A Home for the Homeless in California

 

 

a home for the homeless in California

 

 

TRUSTEES AND MANAGEMENT

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The Center for Environmental Structure is registered in the United States as a non-profit corporation of planners, architects, engineers and contractors.  C.E.S. was founded in 1967 PRESIDENT Christopher Alexander 1996-- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1967--98 President, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, California. 1963--98 Professor of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley. 1990-97 Trustee, Prince of Wales's Institute for Architecture. 1994 The Seaside Prize, for Contributions to Architecture 1992 Louis Kahn Memorial Lecture, Philadelphia. 1987 Distinguished Professor Award -Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. 1987 Silver medal, Saitama Prefecture, Tokyo, Japan. 1985 Best building in Japan Award, by the Japan Institute of Architects. 1980 Member of the Swedish Royal Academy. 1972 The Research Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects 1965 Research Professor in the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley. 1965 Visiting Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation, Villa Serbelloni, Italy. 1961--3 Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University. 1954--8 Trinity College, Cambridge

 

ADDRESSES

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