The theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. Yet the power of present-day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable to say openly that they dislike what is happening, because they are afraid to seem foolish, afraid perhaps that they will be laughed at.
Now, at last, there is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself.
The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume in the Center for Environmental Structure series,
Christopher Alexander presents in it a new theory of architecture and planning which has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being.