Quoting Christopher Alexander, Lecture at the Institute of Architecture in London, 1995

When we began the project it was very much part and parcel of it that the families wanted houses that reflected their own dreams, their own feelings, aspirations, and so forth.

[…] When I asked them […] what they wanted in a house, […] the real work was done, essentially, in a 1-hour phone call, where I got the two, man and woman, of each of these three families on the phone with me. And I in effect said “walk me through your house”. Now of course it isn’t quite as easy as that. I know enough about how buildings unfold so that I could keep forcing them to answer the questions that in effect made the design unfold, just in this very brief conversation.

[…] I wasn’t drawing while it was going on. I was just listening. I encouraged them to close their eyes while they were talking to me. I sometimes close my eyes just to visualize: “OK we’re coming in the entrance. To the left we see this, you know there’s the courtyard” and so forth.

[…] The life that these buildings will have, to the extent that they do […] will come entirely because of this. I mean, because these people are deeply invested in it, and it is theirs.

— Christopher Alexander, Lecture at the Institute of Architecture in London, 1995

Links to this fragment: Mike and Patricia Goddu in Christopher Alexander, A Vision of a Living World, 2002

7:12pm on November 23, 2024 from Vancouver, Canada.


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