Quoting Christopher Alexander, The Process of Creating Life, The Nature of Order, Ch. 9. Each Step is Always Helping to Enhance the Whole, Vol. 2, p. 266, 2002, The Center for Environmental Structure

In a living process, what is always happening is that every step (large or small, whether it comes late or early) is done in such a way to as to increase the beauty – the life – of the whole. The process starts with a vision of a possible whole that comes out of the circumstances, that is felt as something which grows out of the form of the world.
— Christopher Alexander, The Process of Creating Life, The Nature of Order, Ch. 9. Each Step is Always Helping to Enhance the Whole, Vol. 2, p. 266, 2002, The Center for Environmental Structure (via)