honestly i think the job was too big for that; it took him a lifetime just to get where he got
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Perhaps. If so, it’s probably a proportionately big task to reclaim his legacy from the misreading you appear to be countering. Like an essay applying his theories to the design of space stations or something.
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Incidentally my first intro to him was quite future-oriented via the Stewart Brand crowd. Straightforward design exercises. Then I found mostly trads getting into it, and I was like “huh, okay, not my scene.”
The patterns on the software side never appealed to me.
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So… what are actual modern examples of his thinking driving the “synthesis of form”? If architects reject him and the software version failed, who’s actually using his ideas for design as opposed to design criticism? Or is it reduced now to a purely analytical/critical frame?
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but seriously though, the design pattern stuff (according to ) was primarily a failure to transmit the important aspects of patterns to the software dev community, but imo to paraphrase gretzky, they were "skating to where the puck was, not where it was going"
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The designs he did himself were mostly utilitarian, somewhat trad looking buildings right? I recall you shared photos of the campus of a school or something.
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yeah though the fact that it looks trad is a red herring; ask yourself instead why contemporary architects have to use wacky materials and dangerous-looking cantilevers etc
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yeah so hopefully now you can see the fundamental impedance mismatch: alexander was never trying to make a "statement" with his work like his contemporaries do, he was primarily trying to build something that worked for his clients—he didn't give a shit about getting in magazines
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for every other architect their current project is an advertisement for their next project
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Isn't the difference whether you're designing/building for something to be used vs something to be seen?
Modern architecture succeeds as art and innovation but fails at creating spaces people love. Both are valid goals as long as the client knows what they're getting.


