Christopher Alexander Quotes

I think architecture is one of the predominant orderings of social space. It can construct and contain our experiences. It defines our days and nights. It literally puts us in our place.

Hippodamus, son of Euryphon, a native of Miletus, invented the art of planning and laid out the street plan of Piraeus.

The aesthetic of architecture has to be rooted in a broader idea about human activities like walking, relaxing and communicating. Architecture thinks about how these activities can be given added value.

Modernist architecture and town planning is inimical to human beings... based on the Darwinian concept that evolution is open ended, that there must always be something new and better.

Downtown Toronto is a very good place to talk about the neutrality of modernist architecture. I'm sure this kind of box-building was interesting in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties, but I think it's absolutely ridiculous to build like this in 2013.

I feel most strongly about Jerusalem, because architects ultimately have to address that city.

What the people are within, the buildings express without.

I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.

Nothing is more linear than a street; nothing has a more fixed beginning, middle, and end.

And exciting buildings are fine periodically.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.

I see my buildings as pieces of cities, and in my designs I try to make them into responsible and contributing citizens.

Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.

Architecture is always the will of the age conceived as space - nothing else. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the struggle over the foundation of a new architecture confident in its aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.

Somehow, architecture alters the way we think about the world and the way we behave. Any serious architecture, as a litmus test, has to be that.

Elevated locations imply elevated purposes, even in American cities departing as radically as Los Angeles does from the traditional planning patterns of the Eastern Seaboard.

I believe that architecture is fundamentally a public space where people can gather and communicate, think about the history, think about the lives of human beings, or the world.

Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.

To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.

Architecture is a slow business, and city planning even slower.

Architecture is about public space held by buildings.

Paris enjoys a high reputation for the style of its public edifices, and, while there is a very great deal to condemn, compared with other capitals, I think it is entitled to a distinguished place in this particular.

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

There's a Danish architecture firm called BIG. I love architecture, and I always check out their work; they're very good at reimagining the way we live. They put the human experience as the focus, with access to air and outdoor space.