Notes on the Synthesis of Form

Notes on the Synthesis of Form, by Christopher Alexander (ISBN 0-674-62751-2), is a book about the process of design.

Design

Alexander defines design as

the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function...

Even though the focus of Christopher Alexander was form in architectural design and civil engineering, the core ideas underlying his approach can be applied to many other fields. It transcends the world of forms. In fact, Alexander's statement about the meaning of the word "design" can be rewritten without impairing the whole content of the book as

the process of inventing solutions which display new order and organization in response to function

and nothing substantial changes, except that, by having taken out the words "form" and "physical" and changed "things" into "solutions", the scope of the process of design is much wider, and expands into non-physical worlds. This extension of the design point of view to non-form-based entities is implicit in the process of design itself and comes from its mathematical foundations (partially explained in the Appendix 2 of the book).

Influence

By the time it was published, the book was considered as being one of the most important contemporary books about the art of design, what it is, and how to go about it, (Industrial Design magazine, 1964).

The book influenced a number of leading software writers, including Larry Constantine, Ed Yourdon and Tom DeMarco.

Alexander's later work

For some reasons--perhaps related to the mathematical difficulties he faced or to the paradigm shift taking place in the design methods movement through the 1960's and 1970's--Alexander did not continue to develop the formal parts of his approach, which, by that time, showed promise. Instead, he chose, temporarily, to work on patterns (A Pattern Language) together with other well-known architects (Sarah Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein). These patterns are visible or material manifestations of the driving forces underlying the synthesis of form. For an example, let us consider the following excerpt from the part one of the book (page 15):

The ultimate object of design is form. The reason that iron filings placed in a magnetic field exhibit a pattern -have form- is that the field they are in is not homogeneous...

Nevertheless, what matters here is not only the form itself but the forces induced by the magnetic field. The fact that the magnetic field induces certain kind of form is relevant for some purposes; however, there are many practical applications not related to form. The equations describing the magnetic field can be translated into many useful outputs, to which, the concept denoted here by term "pattern" is a corresponding material manifestation or articulation. In Alexander's most recent work, The Nature of Order he demonstrates that it is illogical to separate formal manifestations from the underlying processes or sequences which produce the form, as both are observable aspects of the same field, thereby resolving the apparent conflict between this work and his subsequent pattern research.

External links

• "Notes on the Synthesis of Form (review)". Patterns from Nature Wiki. June 2008. Retrieved 2009-10-05. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help)