The Production of Houses

by Christopher W. Alexander, Howard Davis (with), Julio Martinez (with)

As an innovative thinker about building and planning, Christopher Alexander has attracted a devoted following. His seminal books--The Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, and The Oregon Experiment--defined a radical and fundamently new process of environmental design. Alexander now gives us the latest book in his series--a book that puts his theories to the test and shows what sort of production system can create the kind of environment he has envisioned.
The Production of Houses centers around a group of buildings which Alexander and his associates built in 1976 in northern Mexico. Each house is different and the book explains how each family helped to lay out and construct its own home according to the family's own needs and in the framework of the pattern language. Numerous diagrams and tables as well as a variety of anecdotes make the day-today process clear.
The Mexican project, however, is only the starting point for a comprehensive theory of housing production. The Production of Houses describes seven principles which apply to any system of production in any part of the world for housing of any cost in any climate or culture or at any density.
In the last part of the book, "The Shift of Paradigm," Alexander describes, in detail, the devastating nature of the revolution in world view which is contained in his proposal for housing construction, and its overall implications for deep-seated cultural change.

Genres: Architecture, Design, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Construction

381 pages, Hardcover

First published June 13, 1985

About the author

Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander was an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist. He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature of human-centered design have affected fields beyond architecture, including urban design, software, and sociology. Alexander designed and personally built over 100 buildings, both as an architect and a general contractor.

In software, Alexander is regarded as the father of the pattern language movement. The first wiki—the technology behind Wikipedia—led directly from Alexander's work, according to its creator, Ward Cunningham. Alexander's work has also influenced the development of agile software development.

In architecture, Alexander's work is used by a number of different contemporary architectural communities of practice, including the New Urbanist movement, to help people to reclaim control over their own built environment. However, Alexander was controversial among some mainstream architects and critics, in part because his work was often harshly critical of much of contemporary architectural theory and practice.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of what he says about why he tried building in this way completely resonates with me. I also dig how he talks about structuring a practice as a architect-builder with a building yard. The social revolution bit is beautiful, and still sounds remotely plausible 30 years later. The scale of production is where his theory becomes something special but it would be nearly impossible to garner government support for such a process. As he clearly experienced and recorded.

A quick, enjoyable read. He organizes his thoughts very well, and is not afraid of documenting disappointments and failures as well as triumphs and inspirations.

[Richard Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Above all things, this book left me feeling very sad. So much effort and so much misunderstanding by everyone around while the project was in progress and even though the real customers of the project loved their homes so very very much, it felt like they were ignored and treated like fools for wanting something better.

But this is a tale repeating throughout the history of Christopher Alexander, where people cannot or will not understand him, and fight him over it.

The book doesn't add much to the collection of works and you can probably learn everything you need in it from The Nature of Order or other later books. Not a useful research book, but a compelling read regardless.

[Robert Paterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of my core collection of books on design