Decatres's mechanistic idea of order

Christopher Alexander describes how we are able to make so many natural observations about what constitutes a "good" environment. This may include several key patterns or elements of design when considering the intended constructive order with building cities, buildings, and landscapes. The intention of the artist and architect is not just merely to make something out of nothing, but to also construct the necessities of life.The architect must consider how we work, how we play, and how we live our lives.
The designer must consider sociological ideas of how we live our lives together as a whole machine or organism, and in turn reflect these considerations and mechanistic qualities with the construction of the environment we inhabit.




With the considering these qualities,we have a discussion of value in the forms of truth. However, Alexander points out that these values expressed as truth can be nothing but opinions dressed up as truth. When we want to discuss this idea of truth with considering the pros and cons of any particular action -in architecture, planning, landscape, each person involved is understood to have a particular personal perspective, attitude, or value orientation. These are based in turn, on their own ideals, thoughts, conceptions, and the relationship they have with their environment.
When similar perspectives merge with common purpose and value, We can see how the construction of these ideals form the details, and general scheme of our environment.





Here we have two videos giving a tour through the streets of Berkeley, Ca. The first one is from 1906; this one does not have sound. The second video was done in 2006 and was created for promotional use, so I apologize for its corniness. I would suggest playing both of the videos together, side by side as a camparison.