The Timeless Way

The Timeless Way of Building, by Christopher Alexander. Technically it’s a book about architecture but it’s really about so much more. It’s a philosophy on how to cultivate beauty and aliveness in the world around us. It’s about honoring the unique forces within a place and trusting our own intuitions on what feels good:

The TIMELESS WAY is "a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but will happen of it's own accord, if we will only let it".

Which requires knowing THE QUALITY we are seeking. “There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named."

This search for ALIVENESS extends across our lives: "The search we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive"

We thrive when we are free of INNER CONTRADICTIONS: "most men are not fully true to their own inner natures or fully 'real'... When you meet a person who is true to himself, you feel at once that he is 'more real' than other people are".

Here’s a thread I shared that goes into more depth on my favorite ideas and some questions the book left me with. It was fun to see it take off and introduce these ideas to a ton of new people.