#22 – Susan Ingham

#22 – Susan Ingham

November 3rd, 2025

Angus Stocking: This is Everything is Somewhere, I’m Angus Stocking. Susan Ingham is a licensed architect practicing in Seattle, Washington. Her firm, Kasaa Architecture, specializes in residential design. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied and worked intensively with Christopher Alexander and his colleagues. Susan is on the faculty of the Building Beauty graduate program at buildingbeauty.org and teaches a studio design course. She’s here to speak with us today as part of this podcast’s continuing series on the work, life, and teaching of architect Christopher Alexander. Susan Ingham, welcome to Everything is Somewhere.

Susan Ingham: Thank you very much, Angus. It’s wonderful to be here.

Angus Stocking: Yes, and I don’t know if you know the premise of this podcast. It’s for land surveyors, and I write and podcast in connection with American Surveyor Magazine, where I’ve written a number of columns over the years about Christopher Alexander’s ideas as applied to the practice of land surveying. That led to a nice introduction to Maggie and Yodan and this series. Part of that comes from being a real fan of Christopher Alexander. I interviewed him a couple of times in connection with magazine articles and absolutely consumed A Pattern Language and then The Nature of Order. I see him as a spiritual figure, a mystic maybe, especially in The Nature of Order. So I wonder today, before we do anything at all, if you could tell us what studying with him was like—what it was like to meet the great man.

Susan Ingham: Sure, I can tell that story. It has a start. I did both my undergraduate studies and my master’s work at Berkeley, but the department is very large. When I was an undergraduate, I didn’t actually know I was going to study architecture when I first arrived in Berkeley from Seattle. I kind of stumbled onto that path. During my undergraduate years, I had no connection or association with Christopher Alexander. At that time, he was teaching mostly graduate students, and again, the department was very large. I maybe had a vague idea of his name and that there was a book, A Pattern Language, but I had never looked at it because I had other professors interested in other things.

Susan Ingham: I left Berkeley, graduated, and lived on the East Coast for a few years working in a couple of architecture firms. I was living in Philadelphia at the time. My husband was a graduate student at Penn, and I was in the process of applying to get my master’s in architecture. I planned to stay on the East Coast. I’m from Seattle, I went to undergrad at Berkeley on the West Coast, and I thought, well, I’ve been enjoying the East Coast and I’d like to stay for a different experience. So I was applying to a lot of East Coast schools. I happened to be walking on the Penn campus and saw a poster for a lecture—the Louis Kahn Memorial Lecture at the architecture school—and Christopher Alexander was the speaker. So I decided I would go.

So I dragged my husband along—he’s not an architect—and we went to this lecture in the big auditorium at the architecture building. The place was packed. Christopher Alexander came out and gave his lecture, and it was very different from any lecture I’d been to. He basically showed a lot of incredibly beautiful images of the Eishin campus in Japan and other objects and historical places and things. He really didn’t say a whole lot during the lecture. He would walk back and forth across the stage, show these beautiful images, and make a few comments. Everyone was transfixed in that full auditorium—you could hear a pin drop.

Susan Ingham: I walked out of that auditorium and knew I wanted to go back to Berkeley and study with Chris. That very coincidental experience of seeing the poster and going to the lecture really changed the path my life took. When I arrived at Berkeley, I immediately took classes with him and with his colleague, Hajo Neis, and immersed myself in what was then the Building Process area of emphasis. They had a whole series of classes, including The Nature of Order, studios, construction experience, and A Pattern Language (class).

Angus Stocking: Thank you for sharing that story. It’s a really beautiful experience, and it’s also a little unusual. I’ve talked to half a dozen or more Alexander students or fans, and the usual way into Christopher Alexander is his books. People have mentioned Notes on the Synthesis of Form, A Pattern Language, The Nature of Order. I haven’t had anyone tell me what it was like to attend one of his lectures. I’ve read about them and watched videos, and you’re telling me it was kind of a happening—transformative or inspiring just as it was—and it set the course of your life. Lovely. Congratulations. And then maybe skipping over the graduate years—you took up practice a while back, sounds like.

Susan Ingham: Yes. I studied and worked with Chris and his colleague, Hajo Neis, in Berkeley for most of the 1990s. I ended up moving back to Seattle at the end of that decade; Seattle’s where I was born and raised. I worked for a small office for a few years and got my license. That office did mostly residential work—small-scale residential work. I started my own office after I got my license in 2004. My practice focuses mostly on single-family homes: remodels and additions, new houses, cabins, that sort of thing. It’s been very fulfilling work, and I’ve been able to use the principles and methods I learned working with Chris and Hajo in my own work. Working with them and being exposed to the theory and the methods and techniques gave me a great amount of clarity in my own work and with clients. I feel like I can really help my clients in a way that I think is not as common with other architects—where I can get to the heart of their issues: the problems in their house or their true needs and desires for how they want to live. Then I figure out the best thing, the biggest move we can make, to help them get to the vision of how they want to live in their house. I credit Chris and Hajo for a lot of that.

Angus Stocking: It sounds like you were making a substantial effort to apply some of Christopher’s ideas about living structure and the fundamental process—and patterns to some extent—which again is not so common. It’s an appealing idea. Did you face resistance in your practice as you tried to work with prospective clients? Did you have to teach them what you were doing before you did it? Or did they come to you knowing something about Christopher Alexander?

Susan Ingham: Typically they didn’t know anything about Christopher Alexander. A few clients did and actively sought someone out like me who had worked with Chris or knew the material. But most of my clients know nothing about it. I really don’t go into the theory or a lot of what I’m doing behind the scenes. I will tell them at the beginning in our initial meeting that I’m inspired by this, and I usually give them a copy of A Pattern Language. Depending on the project—if it’s a new house or cabin—then we go through A Pattern Language (exercise), so they really get into it then. We do mock-ups; I think mock-ups are where they would notice it as well. Sometimes we’ll do stakeouts—one-to-one stakeouts on the site, again if it’s a new house. For remodels and additions, it’s a little different. We will do certain steps that they will be aware of; I don’t say, “This is what Christopher Alexander does.” It’s just part of the process they experience with me as we unfold the design on the site. Most of them are not that interested in tackling The Nature of Order, but a couple of them do end up looking at that book. I tend to pull whatever I need while working out the design—drawing from my experiences and from the books—but that’s behind the scenes; clients don’t really see a lot of that.

Angus Stocking: Were there any notable early successes that really confirmed for you that you were on the right track with your practice?

Susan Ingham: I think for me the biggest satisfaction happens in almost every project. When the project is done and the clients have moved in and I visit them, they say they never knew it could be so comfortable or so fitting for them. Generally, I’m talking about the bigger things—there are always little things like a disposal not working well, or similar—but a lot of times they’re very surprised at how changed they feel living in the house, changed for the better. That’s something that’s really satisfying for me when they say that.

Angus Stocking: That sounds like wonderful feedback—“We like living in this house, and we’re different people because of it.”

Susan Ingham: A lot of the time, clients will come to me thinking they need another bedroom, or they’ll have a sense of what they need that isn’t super defined—or maybe it’s not extra space, but reworking the existing space. Sometimes they’ll talk about spaces that aren’t working for them, and often that has to do with the lack of natural light, or something like that. I pick up on things when I initially tour the house that have nothing to do with what they thought they wanted—just going through it and looking at things through Alexander’s work. I can pick up on things they haven’t noticed yet or can’t articulate. That’s been a big value for them—like realizing that adding a big window here would completely transform this room, and they’d use it more, for example.

Angus Stocking: I would categorize that as: some of what Christopher did was teach people how to see or judge space. There’s the 15 fundamental properties, which amount to an aesthetic that’s teachable and learnable. It sounds amazing. One more question on that vein: Christopher, of course, is famous for being a builder or a contractor as well as an architect and built a lot of his buildings. Have you done anything with that idea? How involved do you get in the construction?

Susan Ingham: I don’t actually wear a tool belt myself, but I am involved in construction in that I make regular site visits when needed. We also tend to do mock-ups while the house is going up—testing things like window openings, doorway openings, countertop heights, cabinet depths, things like that—while construction is ongoing. But I don’t have a design-build operation.

Angus Stocking: One more question because it occurs to me. For land surveyors: one of the very interesting conversations I had with Christopher was about a subdivision he was working on in Oregon. He was drafting a proposed land planning document, which included working with land surveyors to do base mapping that showed centers—or views, places that should be preserved—to contribute to his preferred process of building. It sounds like you do some of that with mock-ups and site visits, especially for new construction. For the land surveyors in my audience, how has that gone for you—working with land surveyors or getting your ideas laid out on the ground?

Susan Ingham: I certainly have hired a lot of surveyors, especially for new houses. The survey is really important, especially getting the right information that I need on the survey. As you know better than I do, there are a lot of different types of surveys and a lot of information that can go on them—and a lot that is not put on them. I always start out by giving the surveyor a long list of things that I need specifically, and usually it’s more than the average person asks for, I think. It’s very important. Occasionally, I’ll have the surveyor come back and survey things as things are going along; I find that helpful sometimes, especially if there’s complicated topography.

Susan Ingham: The survey is super important. It’s really important to understand the whole of the site. To understand the site, you have to have a survey—first of all, a good survey with the relevant information on it. Trees and shrubs and things like that are very important because those are very important centers on the site, as is topography.

Angus Stocking: What I’m trying to show is that a good survey will have the same feeling or the same character as the site itself. That’s what I’m looking for. So if there’s a site that has a lot of trees, when I look at a survey, I want to get that sense—look at all these trees—that’s the first thing I want to see on that survey. I’m looking for consistency there. Because I use the survey as a base—as my site plan—so it is really important. In my work, and again, this comes from Alexander, I’m just doing what he did—really having that consistency of feeling and tone on every drawing and on the site and with models. It’s all the same kind of character; that’s what I’m trying to get.

Angus Stocking: So the quality of drawing is important. Everyone has looked at surveys that are hard to read versus some surveys that are drawn really nicely and you can understand well just by looking—even if you squint your eyes, you have an understanding of the site. From a surveyor’s point of view, you sound like an ideal client.

Susan Ingham: I have a lot of respect for surveyors, and I’ve worked with mostly good ones—and some that aren’t so good. Sometimes it’s hard to communicate what I’m looking for, but most of them really get it, I think.

Angus Stocking: When I was in practice, there is kind of a low-level humorous war going on between architects and surveyors. It comes down to layout. Surveyors typically do a lot of double checking because there’s a perception that often dimensions aren’t right, or so forth. It’s nice to hear of a collegial interaction with the same surveyors. Maybe we could turn now to the work you’re doing with Building Beauty and describe what exactly Building Beauty is, how it’s continuing Christopher’s ideas in the world, and what you in particular teach or try to get across there.

Susan Ingham: Sure. Building Beauty is a program—a postgraduate one-year certificate program—that was started in 2017. Christopher Alexander, at that time, was in failing health, and he was interested in starting a school. So he contacted several of his ex-students, including Yodan and myself, and we helped him start the school. Initially it was based in Sorrento, Italy. It’s still nominally based in Sorrento, Italy, but once the pandemic hit we were no longer in person, and now we are an online program. We are a mixed program; we are hoping to go back to Sorrento possibly this spring and continue our work there, but we’re also online for people who can’t travel.

Susan Ingham: We attract people from all over the world who want to study and learn about these methods, techniques, and theory. Yodan teaches a year-long Nature of Order course, which is the foundation of the theory. I teach the studio course where we implement the theory in a series of projects that go from very small to large. I can describe those projects if you want.

Angus Stocking: Sure, please.

Susan Ingham: The studio is based on a studio that I took with Hajo and Christopher Alexander at Berkeley. It’s the introductory studio they taught in their series of courses. The idea is that you really want to learn how to make something with the theory in mind—using the principles and the theory itself. You start with something very small, a small object or ornament, and you make that with your hands. People might make a tile, a candle holder, a tray, a pencil cup, a jewelry box—something they need in their life that they want to use—a mug, that sort of thing.

Susan Ingham: It’s a small thing, but the main point is to get in touch with this idea of wholeness or feeling, and then try to make it. First identifying it—Alexander talks a lot about wholeness and life and feeling—and by “feeling” we don’t mean an emotion like feeling sad or happy. It’s more a state felt in the body. For example, when walking in nature there’s often a feeling of calm or comfort or connectedness: “I feel connected to this place.” One could call that feeling being more alive in the world. If you’re looking at a beautiful painting or listening to music by Bach or Beethoven, you might feel more calmness or connection. That’s the “feeling” we’re going for.

Susan Ingham: The challenge is to make something with that kind of feeling. Students are asked to make something small and make it with their hands, because usually something handmade will have that kind of feeling, rather than something that comes out of a 3D printer or is purely computer generated. So that’s where we start.

Angus Stocking: Briefly, that sounds so reasonable, but I’m guessing it’s unusual in architectural teaching. How unusual is it for students to be asked to make a thing in architecture?

Susan Ingham: I think it’s unusual to actually make an object—that is a little unusual—but it’s not just making the object. The basis is different. In normal architecture school or art school, you don’t start with making something you want to use that is comfortable and has a sense of feeling. In our time, it’s all about the concept; you have to have a concept first—an abstract concept of what you want to make. That’s true in architecture and art school: the concept is an intellectual construct. Once you figure that out, you make something that closely relates to that concept. It doesn’t have anything to do with feeling comfortable or beauty or the things that we’re trying to bring forth; it has to do with something else entirely. That’s the difference.

Susan Ingham: In Alexander’s terminology, this feeling is generally shared. Again, it’s not the idiosyncratic “I’m feeling sad” feeling; it’s a shared feeling. Most people, when they take a walk in nature, feel a connection. Most people, if they’re thinking about places to go in Europe, think about Italy—not Moldova, say—though some might. There is agreement that some pieces of art are worth going to see—people make a pilgrimage, admire, stand in awe—and other artworks are not at that level. You can easily see that in tourism: people go to certain places. The question is, why do people go to those certain places versus others?

Angus Stocking: That’s a really fundamental question that Christopher tried to get at in all of his writing, particularly in The Luminous Ground, Book Four of The Nature of Order. He was quite lyrical on the topic, and that’s where I think he shades into mystic reception. He wrote about actual experiences of wholeness. It’s a wonderful concept and it must be hard to get across. How do you feel you’re succeeding with that in your classes?

Susan Ingham: Just by giving examples like that. People can’t really disagree about travel and where most people want to visit in the world. This debunks “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It always is to a degree, but Alexander says there’s agreement about beauty that our modern society tends to reject because they look at the artist as a genius coming up with interesting concepts, and everyone has different taste or a different angle. Chris argues that’s not actually true. There’s always an idiosyncratic part of all of us—I’ll be drawn to things you’re not, based on personal history—but that’s not what Chris is talking about. He’s talking about the part of beauty and feeling that we share—why people go to Rome.

Angus Stocking: That shared quality can be imbued in the geometry of space, which again is almost an elemental concept. But it’s the most daring, iconoclastic aspect of his work, and it’s what made people angry. Congratulations for seizing on that as your special contribution to the world.

Susan Ingham: A lot of it is common sense in many ways. Once you explain it like that, people say, “Yeah, of course.” It’s a very simple way to think about things. I can talk about how the spatial aspect comes into it. If I go back to the studio, we do four projects over the course of a year, and I talked about the first one a bit. The second is the design of a room. From the object that people try to make with feeling, the next project is to look at a room in their environment—house, apartment, or workplace—and analyze it, thinking about where they feel good in that room and where it doesn’t feel so good. Then the project is to try to improve that room somehow—make as big an improvement as you can. One move that’s really going to make a big difference—not just changing the plate on the light switch.

Angus Stocking: Moving the couch?

Susan Ingham: That could be part of it, since the couch is a pretty big center. But going from the small object to improving a room, students have to think about space and the quality of space, and how that quality changes, even in a small room. Then they think about what is working well and keep that structure, and what is not working so well—and maybe that’s the place they concentrate on. That’s the second project.

Susan Ingham: The third project is designing a house for themselves. This project is larger; they obviously don’t go and build their own house. We ask them to find a site that is open—no buildings on it—somewhere in their city, town, or in the country. We ask them to come up with five to seven really important patterns, or what we call project jewels, thinking about how they want to live in their house—what would be fulfilling. Maybe it’s a certain quality in a study, or a really warm light-filled kitchen because the person likes to cook, or a big table because they want people to gather and they like hosting. So, five to seven of these detailed patterns—jewels.

Susan Ingham: Then we have students do a little sketch and a title with a description for each pattern—a bit like A Pattern Language. Next, once they have found their site, we do an in-depth site analysis. They need to draw a site plan and document features on the site, the path of the sun and wind, noises or views in certain directions. Those are all documented. They also walk around the site and, as with the room, see where they feel better and where they don’t, analyzing the site in terms of the overall structure or field of centers. Then they know which places on the site feel really nice and which don’t feel as good.

Susan Ingham: The third step is really important: we have them place the garden first—not the house volume—but the garden, because the garden is in some ways the most important part of siting a house. We have them take stakes and string and stake out the actual shape of the garden on the site at one-to-one so they can sense how that space feels. They’re actually shaping that garden space. This relates to pattern 104, Site Repair, which is, in my mind, the most important pattern.

Angus Stocking: I think he called it the most important pattern, as I recall.

Susan Ingham: I feel like if anyone takes anything away from all of Christopher Alexander’s teachings, that pattern is a good thing to take. So we have them place the garden first, and the garden should generally be in the most beautiful part of the site—the place that feels the best. Then we have them stake out the volume of the house based on Site Repair. The idea of Site Repair, for listeners who might not know, is that you don’t want to build on the most beautiful part of the site. You build on the least beautiful part, because if you build on the most beautiful spot, you destroy it. You want to build around it, frame it, and enhance that most beautiful part so you can experience it.

Angus Stocking: Parenthetically, I have specifically called for surveyors who are developing base mapping for subdivisions to identify the worst part of the site—and even put it on the plan for developers. It really can be as simple as: this is the worst part; start building here. If you just started with that—

Susan Ingham: That would be world-changing. If surveyors are trained in that way and start doing that, it would be absolutely environment-changing.

Angus Stocking: And it would be a win-win-win. Who in the process would object to that? Maybe a planning committee.

Susan Ingham: I think that would make subdivisions so much better. We still have to work with setbacks and zoning and all that, but that would be huge because it’s really a counterintuitive approach. Most people think, “Where’s my site? Where’s the most beautiful spot on it? I’ll put my house there.” That’s the main way people think, and it’s quite the opposite.

Susan Ingham: So we have students go through that exercise. Once they have the garden staked out and the house volume staked out, we have them place the front door and think about how to get from the street or road to the front door. Then we have them place the main space in the house. From there, they go back to their project patterns—jewels—and start to place those into the interior of the house or the exterior. Some will have an exterior project jewel. That whole project is, in a nutshell, what Alexander and his colleagues are trying to do. And this is all before “construction,” although you could argue putting stakes in the ground is actually the first step in construction, which I agree with.

Susan Ingham: That’s the unfolding process in a nutshell that students go through for a small house. The last project is an independent project with two paths. If we’re working in Sorrento, the students go to Sorrento and work in the garden at Sant’Anna where they stay, and that’s their second half of the year. If they are doing it online, then they need to find a project in their community—it could be a community garden, a gateway, or something in their house. We’ve had all sorts of different projects, but they need to work with a community more than just themselves. The house for oneself did not involve other people to keep it simple so they could go through the steps and grapple with the material themselves. The independent project’s next step is to work with other people and figure out how that process works. One of the main tasks is making a project pattern language with other people. That document is bigger than the project jewels they did for the house. After that, generally the steps are similar to the house project; sometimes we do things slightly differently depending on the project. That’s the new skill that’s learned for the independent project.

Angus Stocking: That sounds like a fine program—a nice balance of theory and practical experience. How many have passed through your course at this point?

Susan Ingham: Oh gosh. Every year for studio we’ve had up to 12 or 13; we need at least five or six to start. Let’s say 10 as an average. We’ve been running since 2017, so I’d say we’ve had 50 or 60 students in studio, but there are quite a lot more who take The Nature of Order and the other classes offered: Self and Wholeness, Construction Experience, a Color class. Nature of Order usually gets 20 to 30 every year; that’s the range we’re seeing now.

Angus Stocking: I’m glad to hear that. So Building Beauty is a going concern, and you’re graduating students who are—do they go on to work in the design fields or to make things that bring more beauty to the world?

Susan Ingham: It depends. We have a diverse group of people. Some are architects, designers, landscape architects. We’ve not had a surveyor yet, but that would be great. We get builders. We also have a lot of people from other fields—maybe community activists or community builders of some sort. We get people from the software side from Chris’s influence, people from city planning sometimes, or just people who read the books and are interested. We’ve had people who stay home and raise kids and they’ve done the program. It’s really quite open, and most people can join if this is the way they want to work and try things.

Susan Ingham: In the studio, we limit doing architectural-style drawings because that skill can take time. We help some students with tutorials when they have to do the site plan. We have them build scale models, which tends to be easier for lay people. Afterwards, a lot of people come to us with a particular project in mind. We had a student from Nigeria last year who is trying to lay out a new development in his town, and he’s continuing with that project and will be working with us a bit to keep it going. Another person finished a rooftop community garden in Sweden; he worked on that as his independent project and then finished it a little later. He’s a software engineer, so I don’t know if he’s going to do more building projects per se, but just being able to do that and bring a community together was great. A lot of people have a big project like that in mind, or if they don’t, they discover this way of working and then apply it to other things they’re doing. We have a lot of alumni who come back, and we offer a course called the Atelier—an ongoing, more casual studio where we meet a couple times a month and give support and feedback on ongoing projects. It’s a nice way to keep connected.

Angus Stocking: This is all interesting and helpful and makes me feel hopeful about the state of architecture moving forward—although not exactly my place to be hopeful, I guess. I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad to hear that ideas from The Nature of Order are making an impression on the world and leading to positive change.

Angus Stocking: My main trade at this point is writing about infrastructure. Another thing I’ve tried to get across to folks is that paying attention at this base layer—dams, roads, sewers—if there was just a bit more Alexandrian influence on the built world at the most fundamental levels, it would make a huge positive change to all of civilization. It’s actually a pretty important initiative that could be undertaken. Well, it sounds like we’re in agreement on that. What else should people know about you before we draw to a close? Have you got some other projects you’re working on, or are you working on a book?

Susan Ingham: I’m more of a practitioner, so I’m always working on projects. What I’d like to say is: sometimes when you read a lot of Alexander, it can be a little overwhelming—like, “I’ve got to change a whole city.” But there’s a lot people can do themselves. It’s a matter of understanding where they’re living, analyzing it, looking at it objectively, and then seeing something that would make a big difference—and then just doing that one thing. I’ve found that even small changes in people’s lives can make a huge difference.

Susan Ingham: There’s a recent book by Lisa Heschong called Visual Delight in Architecture. She talks about how your environment makes a big difference in your well-being—your physical and mental health. She even talks about the idea that if you’re working in an office and you have a view outside—hopefully to some view of nature—you are going to be more productive and a better, more productive employee than if you don’t have a window. There have also been studies about hospitals: patients with rooms that have views of trees and nature heal more quickly than patients whose rooms look at a brick wall.

Angus Stocking: I actually have a personal reference for that. I’ve had four strokes over the last five years. On two occasions, I was in an upstairs room in Grand Junction with a view of the tremendous buttes out there—the red rock hills and so forth. It’s subjective, but I can tell you that I felt a lot better and recovered quicker, and there were miracles of healing that happened. An experiment of one, but I very much agree with the idea that a little bit of a view or some beauty within eyesight makes a big difference.

Susan Ingham: That’s at the heart of what Alexander is trying to teach us. It’s something we can all be aware of. Think about where you’re spending most of your time—where you are working—and what you can do to make that environment a little nicer so you can do your best work. Those can be small things. It can be overwhelming to read all this and feel you have to do this, this, and this, but really it’s about making small changes that can make a big difference in your overall physical and mental health. I think people aren’t generally aware of that.

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Angus Stocking: Thanks for listening to this 22nd episode of Everything is Somewhere, and thanks to Susan for being such an interesting guest. As always, I welcome feedback. You can send me feedback directly at angusstocking at gmail.com or anonymously at podcast. You can follow me on X or Twitter at twitter.com/Surveying

Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I hope that you will subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify or rate the podcast or the episode. Finally, if LinkedIn is your thing, I hope that you will reach out and connect with me. I’m easy to find. There is only one Angus Stocking.