The Production of Houses by Christopher Alexander, 1985

In 1975 officials of the state of Baja California in Mexico expressed interest in architect Christopher Alexander’s work. Alexander parlayed their interest into an agreement to support a new housing development in Mexicali, thirty houses built according to Alexander’s principles of architectural design and construction. The development was organized into six clusters of five houses each, and this book — the forth volume in the series on Alexander’s work — is a detailed description of the design, implementation and management of the first cluster. In addition, at the front Alexander describes his view of mid-1980s housing development and how his principles improve on them, and at the back extrapolates the principles to examine fit for other demographic, cultural, and environmental conditions.

Alexander’s approach has those affected by an outcome involved in producing the outcome. The five families chosen for the first cluster collectively laid out their plots, then each family designed their house. Once designed, each family helped build their house. The designs were guided by a language of 21 patterns. The book is a mixture of process and outcome, and the interplay between them as matters progressed. The material is covered in detail: how the blocks were made, how the houses were built. The design is also covered in detail, but the extent to which the pattern language was a driver is unclear. The book interprets the resulting designs in terms of the pattern language, but how much the owner/designers embraced the pattern language and used it to guide the design is left mostly implicit (one telling exception is the story of the porches, in which Alexander runs a little too close to Howard Roark). The more interesting, and potentially more troublesome, interpersonal aspects are mentioned in passing and around the edges. The initial analysis is a rehash of the first volume in a contemporary context, and the extrapolations are straightforward back-of-the-envelope calculations that are more suggestive than convincing. Overall a thought-provoking book, particularly with respect to extrapolations, and perhaps an inspirational one, at least with respect to the five houses built.