The Production of Houses by Christopher Alexander
Here is the link to the book at Amazon. If someone in Uganda wants the book I'll send my copy or would send it to Linda. I probably would try to replace the book with a used copy somewhere.
Back in the mid-seventies, when I first went to college, I became very dissatisfied with approaches to social science, in particular psychology. Not really prepared for college, I was doing really poorly, but trying to come up with an approach to studies which made sense to me. What's very important in study is to be committed enough to ideas to see them through. While I'm hardly very organized in anything, much less my thinking, the position that I roughed out while I was failing out of school is in the constructivist camp. Four books were very important to me at the time:
Values and Teaching by Louis Raths.
Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson
Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
The Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander.
All of these books led me to other books and study. It's probably of little use to put what books I liked when I was a young student. The reason for it is because in many ways “The Production of Houses” is a book which contains theory even while much of the book is quite practical. And the theories of Christopher Alexander seem to fit with other theories which I've studied and found viable. Many people disagree with the sorts of conglomerations of theories along the lines that I'm committed to. Sometimes it saves time when people disagree to know a little of the direction each are coming from.
Christopher Alexander is an architect who makes the case that the structures we build make a big difference in the way we live our lives and feel about our experience of life. Some architecture makes us feel more alive and so he has spent his career trying to identify the ways to make buildings which make us feel more alive. Alexander often finds fault with the way that buildings are made, and the fault lies in the way we think, in our ideas.
Alexander believes that making houses more human, making houses that make us feel more alive is not simply a matter of improving their design. He believes that the character of buildings is a consequence of the deep structure of their production system. So the houses that he wants us to create, houses that make us feel more alive will come when the systems of production of houses is improved.
The System of Production
Seven Principles:
Alexander answers these questions in turn.
So the book, The Production of Houses tells the story of using the answers to the seven questions Alexander sets out as fundamental principles for the designing of houses that make people feel more alive in Mexicali Mexico. Not everything in the experiment in building Opok Farms Village will be the same, but Opok Farms Village is very much an experiment too. Many of the ideas used in Alexander's experiment has some good ideas for how we might think about going about the construction at Opok Farms Village.
I have to laugh, because I don't really expect that many people will wade through all these words. But I'm very happy to hear any responses or questions. I'm sure it will take me several days to lay out a summary of the book. I will quote form the book, as I've done above with the seven principles of a system of production. I want this to be as short as possible and still be clear.
Please feel free to edit this page as you feel contributes to it.
Monday September 24, 2007
The Architect Builder
Most of The Production of Houses follows these seven principles outlined in “The System of Production. So the chapters are:
I want to go through the book and give some indication about the contents of these chapters. Tonight I'll start with Chapter One, “The Architect Builder.
“There are the people who design the building and there are the people who build it. There are architects, and there are contractors.”
Alexander thinks that the separation is a problem which can only be solved by re-integrating these functions. Buildings are complex undertakings. The result we all want is to feel really alive in the buildings we make. Now there are many standard components of building, and this standardization makes it sensible to separate the design from the building. It's almost like a “to-do” list. But what makes a house a home are the intimate details. These details should not be imagined as merely adornment, but can be reflected in the actual structures. What Alexander wants is to find a way to make buildings no longer an object, “but a thing of love, which is nurtured, made, grown, and personal.”
To me, as an outsider, this idea seems especially important for Opok Village Farms. The wounds of such a long war are awfully painful, but even more painful is the numerous ways that that the society has been torn asunder. A friend from northern Uganda here, I like a lot because he tells stories. His grandmother, his father's mother, is featured prominently in his stories. So it was a real shock to me when I learned that his grandmother had been shut in her house as it was set alight. Now I know this, but I still hear the real stories of his grandmother, the ones told with a wry smile. And while my friend's smile always makes me smile, to some small degree I always feel his sadness too. Repair is not a simple thing, but a complex task. To make Opok Farm Village loved is a complicated process of deep repair. Building can be an important part.
Alexander rattles off a list of examples of what makes for a “better house.”
“All of these qualities can only be created by continuous interaction of 'design' and 'construction' during the erection of the building.”
Alexander looks more specifically at each example, and I'm leaving that out. But will present his point the examples serve:
“The great complexity needed by a human settlement cannot be transmitted via paper; and the separation of functions between architect and builder is therefore out of the question. The complexity can only be preserved if the architect and contractor are one. All this makes it clear that the architect must be the builder.”
The opposite is true too:
“...[I]t is axiomatic that the people who build the houses must be active, mentally and spiritually, while they are building, so that of course them must have the power to make design decisions while they are building, and must have an active relation to the conception of the building, not a passive one.”
Alexander outlines the responsibilities of the architect builder:
That's a big fat pile of responsibility! The subsequent chapters go into details about how such a load can be managed. While the planning process is decentralized in this case, as will be the building process, this role of architect builder seems important. From what I know, I imagine Norbert in this role, perhaps it will not be him. Whoever has the role, will need much support and figuring out the right ways of getting that support to the architect builder is important.
At Flickr there is a photo essay Development: Akwlgo Bridge over the Eze River which was part of a story told at the blog Grandiose Parlor a couple of years ago. It's a neat set to look at. The architect builder for this project is Dr. Todd Stong. Dr. Stong is a retired engineer who travels the world now donating his skills to create innovative water projects. It's probably an "American thing;" Dr. Stong seems a rare individual, but also a man whose role seems familiar. In that familiarity at least I get a glimpse of what this role, architect builder means. This project is an 80 meters long bridge over a river, built by regular people in sixty days for much less money anyone believed possible.
Thursday September 27, 2007
The Builder's Yard
It's raining very hard as I write. I'm always a bit apprehensive as I've lost three computers to close lightening strikes. I suppose I'm more generally apprehensive. I do think the book “The Production of Houses” contains so useful insights for Opok Farm Village. There's a strange sense of proselytizing in that. Now certainly converts are sometimes gained, but most of the time I ignore proselytizing, and imagine most do too. Oh well, I guess I'll soldier on, still I feel a little foolish about it.
The Builder's Yard is in a sense the physical compliment to the role of the Architect-Builder. The Architect-builder has more decisions to make than either a conventional architect or builder, but makes those decisions in the context of fewer projects. If the model of Architect-Builder were to take hold there would need to be many of them to accomplish the tasks at hand. Architect-Builders are needed to account for the feedback from the actual occupants of structures, that constructions are not made in an abstract universe of ideas, but right on the ground where building takes place. Decisions are localized and dispersed.
In developed countries building materials are manufactured in a centralized way. But in Alexander's model much more decentralization is required. Just as the Architect-Builder model involves the close attention to the specifics of really local structures, Builder's Yards are intended to make the necessity of building materials local. So just as in the model of Architect-Builders the world will need more of them, there will need to be more Builder's Yards. They are not temporary set ups, but integral parts of communities of intended structures.
In the “Production of Houses” a specific experiment using Alexander's model is presented. It is a group of five houses in Mexicali Mexico. The intention was that further development of houses would continue, but that didn't happen.
For the houses in Mexicali stabilized soil blocks were used. So the Builder's Yard was a place to make these blocks. There was also a need to test materials and construction methods. The whole discussion of the block making is rather interesting given that Opok Farm Village intends to use stabilized soil blocks in construction as well.
But it gets a little tricky. I noticed that the hope is for a block maker from World Vision that can make 3000 bricks a day. It's a pretty rough estimate, but I was figuring that means handling about nine tons of soil a day. Of course the weight of materials is why there are all sorts of machines associated with production block makers; i.e. screening soils, and also mixing the cement.
I'm still wondering about the composition of the soils there in Northern Uganda. Since fired bricks are traditional, I presume that the soil has a high clay content. Such high clay content soils are not ideal for making cement-stabilized bricks, sandy soils preferred.
One of the purposes of the Builder's Yard at the Mexicali project was to test materials. It will be very important at the Opok Farm Village to also test materials and methods. There is such an urgency about time, especially for the creation of farm stores. Banking on systems of production that can create 3000 bricks a day seems likely to lead to confusion in planning.
There is a very deep vision inherent to the Opok Farm Village. One of the most important reasons for thinking “The Production of Houses” might contribute to this effort is the observation that the structures we make are a physical representation of our ideas and visions. Something that might reasonably be said of Alexander's research is that patterns of African architecture have not been adequately studied. I'm not sure I've heard that said, but I've thought it. My Aunt always subscribed to National Geographic. When as children we would visit, I would always look through them. I don't have a particular memory of seeing pictures of African villages, but I do have a memory of a positive emotional response; a response I still feel.
Alexander presents that there are patterns in building. It was very interesting to me to discover the work of an American mathematician, Ron Eglash. Eglash noticed fractal patterns in aerial photographs of African villages. This observation led him on a career studying African mathematical ideas, and the observation that the history of mathematical ideas in Africa is another stream in the great river of human mathematics. I wonder if my deep feeling for pictures of African villages ever since I was a child, is in some way related to a well developed history of ideas by African people?
In any case, I suspect strongly that the power of indigenous buildings, their great quality of being alive, is not solely the result of how they are build, but the whys inherent in their construction, the ideas that are fundamental to them. How buildings are built, for example the materials used is obviously important, but the context of the patterns of why is essential.
One could say that Ugandans will take new technologies and make them Ugandan, or Acholi. There's probably some truth to that. But I've seen pictures of “dream houses” of some of my friends in Uganda. Something that stands out to me is the prominence of the attached garage in these pictures. That's a pattern I dislike in American houses—what a crank I am! I think there's something significant to pay attention to in the patterns of buildings and their relationship to one another and the places they exist. The big garage door for the house is very symbolic of the gasoline age, what is “modern.” I think that's why what looks to me like a Southern California tract home captures the imaginations of young Ugandans.
A Ugandan friend was the oldest of five children, the youngest still a toddler, when they were orphaned. One of the essential tasks for the was to assert their claim to property so that it wouldn't be taken from them. To do this they build a daub and wattle house had roofed it with metal sheets their parents had already purchased. On one hand the house was a source of pride, because after all through their efforts they had remained together as a family, even managing to stay in school. On the other hand it was a source of shame, the shame of being poor.
There's a sense of urgency at Opok Farm Village: Farm stores must be provided for. There are structures needed for programming. From an urgent perspective the sort of attention to details, to the really local concerns of the people inhabiting structures, that Alexander believes essential for making buildings “alive” may seem a frivolous, or a precious notion. Indeed the “rap” on Alexander's architectural ideas is they won't work because their impractically expensive.
For whatever flaws the experiment in Mexicali reveals, the houses were indeed made at the cost projected, which was far lower than the prevailing cost of building in the area. Furthermore, despite Alexander's sense that the houses weren't quite right, it's clear the people living in them love them.
The idea of an Architect-Builder sounds very much like a boss on some level, but at its core is empowering real people to make decisions about buildings they'll inhabit. In urgency, the sense is that decisions will have to be centralized. In regard for simplicity attention to details will be stripped away so the essential decisions can be attended to.
The essential vision of Opok Farm Village is a deep vision. By deep, surely the meaning is that the vision is attentive to a wide variety of connected ideas. So we imagine that we can easily determine which details can be dispensed with to enable urgent progress. But what are the ideas which underly our simplifying? We just know what is essential and what is not; or do we?
Another book I like very much is How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand. Brand looks at what happens to buildings after they are built. I think what I like most about the book is what it has to say about creating things. Things aren't limited by the ideas that created them in the first place, they always seem to take on a life of their own. Or rather, it is people with all their ideas that keep on creating new ideas for things. In the book Brand points to a fabled Building #20 on the campus of MIT. A much loved building built as a temporary structure during WWII to house research into radar.
What has made Building #20 so useful over the years for conducting research has to do with it being built as a temporary structure in the first place. The University brass, didn't really care that much what people did there, after all the building was slated for demolition right after the war. So researchers had freedom to drill holes, and to alter the structure in ways that would never have been allowed in more permanent structures. The building is long, rather than high so the researchers working there had more chances to bump into each other walking here to there. Because it was a temporary structure all the services, like plumbing and electric are visible. People could experiment there, because it was easy to, and as the preeminent research institution that MIT is, lots of very important research has been conducted there.
In wartime, steel was scarce, so many essential details were ignored in the construction of Building #20. Among them was that an all wood structure didn't meet fire regulations. Perhaps most importantly nobody was too concerned about how the building looked. But attention was paid to the essential function of the building, which was a place for research. With such attention to those fundamentals the building succeeded long after its intended life span.
The family knows that there are more profitable ways to develop the property of Opok Farm Village than to pay attention to the needs of the orphans and former child soldiers. Fundamental to the vision of the development is the repair to the larger society of northern Uganda. There may be more profit in other ways to develop the land. Being raised a Christian, I thought of Paul and his letter to the Corinthians. I not really faithful, but still the endurance of love in Paul's words till seems significant.
What of others who have lost something essential to their culture? Jonathan Lear wrote a book, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. “Lear takes as his basic text a statement by the tribe's great chief, Plenty Coups, describing the transition many years after in the late 1920s, near the end of his life: 'When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.'"
There is something much more important than money involved with Opok Farm Village. In trying to figure out what details can be dismissed so that work can proceed, whatever those details which can be dismissed are, certainly the values which underly making a decision to develop the land in ways that are not optimal for profit must be attended to.
Alexander's approach to architecture is relevant because his ideas take these deep values, what is essential about Opok Farm Village seriously. The methods and the experiment are a model for building where what is essential is not neglected.