Alan, Bin, Ben, and all,
Alexander is tricky in terms of the parts/whole relationship. Alan is right in that pattern language involves a hierarchical structure, whereas, in his later NEW THEORY OF URBAN DESIGN (1987), the parts/whole relationship is much more tentative, with the urban designer becoming sensitive to parts of the city that need "healing" and envisioning an appropriate "part" accordingly. This approach is much more keeping in, say, Jane Jacobs's gradual infill approach.
The 15 properties of NATURE OF ORDER (coming mostly out of his Turkish-carpet study--AN ART FOR THE 21ST CENTURY--1993)emphasize an hierarchical perspective again, though it is somewhat different in that, after PL, Alexander becomes much more interested in the PROCESS of designing and fabricating, thus he begins an emphasis on "wholeness-extending transformations."
To me, the value of his hierarchical perspective may be in envisioning, programming, and designing--in other words, in the effort to CREATE a robust environment. I think the approach is probably much less useful in EXPLAINING a robust environment, and that's one reason space syntax is so remarkable--because it appears to identify and "explain" the importance of spatial configuration of pathways in the life of a place, both vibrant or moribund. With that understanding in hand, the designer can then incorporate the significance of pathway layout into his/her work. Sadly, Alexander never has had that understanding, so a major portion of the whole remains invisible to his work.
I've always thought that both PL and NTUD could be much more powerfully formulated if Alexander mastered the space-syntax argument and incorporated it into PL and the rules of NTUD. He does mention space syntax in one of the volumes of NATURE OF ORDER but it is clear he does not really understand it.
I was trying to make a similar point in an earlier email to Bin: that envisioning a successful place or building is a much different process than understanding how a successful (or unsuccessful) place or building works. PL is valuable because it does get the designer to think about underlying aims and how central and auxiliary design elements might be gathered together in an interconnected way to achieve that aim. Seems to me Bin is assuming this making aspect of place in the way he is seeking out the cognitive map. But cognitive maps are part of the "working of places" that have already been made. So, Bin, I think you're mixing up phenomena.
Again, I would point to the design of the Eishin school campus: It was envisioned through the hierarchical structuring of PL (and I might add, the design was largely developed through a cooperative effort between Alexander's design team and the students, faculty and administrators of the school). But I would guess in the everyday experiencing of the campus (and in cognitive maps, if they were gathered), that hierarchical structure would not be the central aspect of the images if present at all. Rather I bet users would make reference to the usual Lynchian elements present in a certain amount of perceptual disconnectedness. In short, making and living are different situations, and each requires a different "style" of looking, seeing, and understanding.
David Seamon
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