Notes on the Synthesis of Form

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Christopher Alexander

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1964, English

Nonfiction, Architecture; Design, General

8 x 5.3 pages, paperback, 224 pages

ISBN: 9780674627512

Suggested Retail Price: $27.00

From the Publisher. "These notes are about the process of design: the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function." This book, opening with these words, presents an entirely new theory of the process of design.

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Before his spectacular shift from obscure mathematical formulas to folk design, which generated his other masterwork, A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander gave us deep illuminations on the difference between traditional craftsmanship, based on the repetition of forms, and modern design attitudes, founded on the division between “method” and “result.” A post-functionalist insight into form-making.

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