#26 – David Seamon

#26 – David Seamon

January 13th, 2026

Show notes, including recommended reading and additional resources are available here.

###

This is Everything is Somewhere, I’m Angus Stocking. David Seamon is the editor of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, a long-running academic journal now in its 36th year. David shares an interest with me in what we might call the metaphysical aspects of the system of thought bequeathed to us by the late architect, general contractor, and cosmologist Christopher Alexander.

David reached out to me to chat about our mutual interest in Alexandrian ideas and because his journal has featured writers who have also appeared on Everything is Somewhere, for example, Susan Ingham in episode 22. He’s joining the podcast today to talk with us about Christopher’s concepts of wholeness and life in the built environment. I’m hoping he will also tell us what phenomenology is, because I don’t know.

David Seamon, welcome to Everything is Somewhere. Before we get into Christopher Alexander, maybe you could tell us about the journal. Thirty‑six years is quite an accomplishment in the academic world or anywhere. What is Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology about?

David Seamon (01:23.706)
Well, essentially, phenomenology is the description and interpretation of human experience. And as you know, as Alexander says, one crucial aspect of human experience is the physical world in which that experience unfolds.

And one integral aspect of that physical world is the realm of places, buildings, environments. And it’s that aspect that we focus on in the journal. That’s why it’s called Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, because much of the work is phenomenological. It’s descriptive, interpretive work on human experience, but focusing on the environmental and architectural aspects of that theme.

And I have always felt that Christopher Alexander is an implicit phenomenologist. He’s a phenomenologist of placemaking. He’s a phenomenologist of what I would call authentic wholeness. And that’s another one of my topics, and it’s a very important issue in phenomenological work.

How do we look at a phenomenon, whether it’s a whole city or a building or the experience of place, accurately and in a comprehensive way that fairly—the word fairly is very important here—accurately presents the portions of the whole together? And of course, Alexander, throughout his professional history, it’s quite clear that this effort to understand wholeness and to make wholeness is really the central thrust of all of his work. Now I know some folks, well, even Alexander himself, say that his work changed over time, but I think if you go way back to the early work, starting in the late 60s with the pattern language effort, you find this consistent theme of trying to see how we understand how the parts appropriately fit together and how we might make that appropriate fit.

Angus (03:41.866)
That was eloquent, thank you. I know as I try to fit my head around wholeness and architecture and Christopher’s ideas, I fall back on the idea of idealism versus materialism, and that I think matter arises from mind rather than vice versa.

And also the idea of spirit in matter, which is—that idea kind of goes back to Aquinas. It sounds like phenomenology has something of that. There’s an insistence on matter, the built world, and how the intellect and spirit interact with the built world or enliven it. Am I kind of getting near what you’re talking about?

David (04:56.138)
Okay, good.

You see, one of the first reasons I was attracted to phenomenology—and this goes way back to my doctoral work that I did in geography back in the 1970s at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. At that point, there was an effort to draw together psychology and geography in what was called environmental psychology, if you were a psychologist, or behavioral geography if you were a geographer. And that’s my starting point.

But as you say, those conventional traditions, particularly psychology, have never circumvented, they have never been able to bypass this polarity between material and ideal, matter and idea. And one of the best things about phenomenology as a Western philosophy is that it’s probably one of the first philosophies—there are others, for example Whitehead—but the phenomenological perspective is so interesting because it says that the inside is the outside and the outside is the inside. In other words, there is an immersion between people and world, and that immersion has to be accounted for.

And therefore, these conventional polarities—person–world, subject–object, all of these frankly useless dichotomies—we’re able to circumvent them. And this gets us into the notion of lifeworld. Have you run across lifeworld and natural attitude? To me, these are two of the discoveries in the phenomenological work, largely coming out of the founder of phenomenology, who was a German philosopher named Edmund Husserl, who lived in the later part of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

But the lifeworld is the world of taken‑for‑grantedness. The interesting thing about this world of taken‑for‑grantedness is that most of the time we’re not aware of it. In other words, life simply happens. It simply unfolds. And the inner aspect of that is the natural attitude. In other words, the natural attitude is the unquestioned acceptance of the lifeworld.

So one of the things that I think is so valuable from the phenomenological work is that it provides us a language, a method, a picture of how we might go about locating and describing and perhaps even designing for the taken‑for‑grantedness of the lifeworld. This is something I think—you see this in Alexander. You know, he says if the built environment becomes better, then human life becomes better. He recognizes this integral immersion of people and world. He doesn’t really, he never really lays it out directly. I feel so much of Alexander would be so much stronger if he had discovered the phenomenological perspective, but sadly he did not. He came out of mathematics and science. And unfortunately, I think that even in The Nature of Order, that undermines the wonderment of the work because that darn dichotomy is still there. He never was able to get away from it.

Angus
He talks specifically about that dichotomy, I think, in the opening passages of The Luminous Ground, the fourth volume, which you’ve written about. How was his take there—the inside–outside, I think, was the way he put it. And he quoted Whitehead, the bifurcation of nature.

What was he missing, in your view, in his attempt to marry the inner world and outer world in full reality?

David
Well, I don’t think he was missing anything. The problem—and it is a problem in all of Alexander’s work—is the clunkiness of the language. I know he writes beautifully, but even so, the underlying message holds onto this dichotomous aspect. And that’s why I say, golly, I so wish he would have discovered phenomenology because it would have given him an expressive vehicle and a conceptual vehicle to speak so much more accurately about what he was talking about.

So, for example, the plenum, this idea that there’s this greater reality under our reality, which I think is accurate. But unfortunately, it remains a dichotomy. You’ve got our world, the everyday humdrum world, and then you’ve got this realm of the plenum and the fact that there is this underlying organized density to the world, to the cosmos.

And of course, he says that the best thinking, the best designing, brings the plenum together through a centeredness. As you know, he’s very keen on centers. In a way, the whole idea of centers is the central conceptual underpinning of the whole oeuvre. But again, there’s a clunkiness.

You can almost feel him aching to get that concept across. He returns to it so often in The Nature of Order as so central.

Well, I agree, but I don’t think it ever totally gets expressed. And it’s partly because he doesn’t have the conceptual language for it, which I think the phenomenological work would have offered.

Now, this is one reason why—I’m certainly, I do a lot of writing about Alexander, but he’s really not the central key in my work. If I had to identify one key thinker, it would be Henri Bortoft. And I don’t know that you’ve looked at Bortoft’s work, but Henri Bortoft really is the great figure here in terms of understanding the nature of wholeness. And sadly, Alexander never discovered Henri Bortoft’s work, which also would have, I think, given his work a whole new infusion of expression if Chris had discovered Henri’s work.

Angus (12:28.536)
With that background—and thank you, that was a useful and eloquent introduction to phenomenology and its importance to something I care deeply about, and that’s Christopher Alexander’s ideas—maybe we could move now to wholeness: what you’ve written about it, what you think it is, and maybe also, if you care to, he also spoke about the concept of life as an objective quality imbued in the built environment or the world around us. So what do you think he was trying to say about wholeness, and what would your response be as a phenomenologist?

David
In presenting Alexander’s understanding of wholeness, I always start with those four drawings, those self‑drawings that Henri Matisse did. I think they’re presented in, do you know, it’s the first volume of The Nature of Order, I believe.

Angus
Yes, I’ve seen those. And maybe we can get an image link up in the show notes.

David (14:18.762)
Well, it’s wonderful to read his description of why those images, even though literally they’re each different as a drawing, underlying the differences of the four drawings is this underlying quality of character or presence. In other words, you have a definite sense of Matisse as a human being. His presence comes through the drawings.

And of course, it’s that underlying presence which is the heart of Alexander’s understanding of wholeness. And of course, his major question is, how do we facilitate ways to better understand and make that underlying presence? Because it’s real.

Now, this is the problem with so much of the work on wholeness. You know, the premier approach to wholeness today is systems theory. And it’s true, systems theory is holistic in the sense that it tries to look at the whole in terms of its parts and interconnections. But the problem with systems theory is that it’s largely imposed cerebrally. It’s largely the researcher who manhandles the whole and says, well, you’re that, you know.

And you see this, well, you see this especially in the natural sciences. You look at the ecological perspective of environmental wholeness and it’s reductive, piecemeal. And ultimately you feel it’s somehow not in touch with the wonderful realm of the natural world—which it’s not.

Now, I forgot where I was going with this. Okay. Well, Alexander is suggesting there is another way of encountering the whole. And this is a way of encountering through what I call an ensemble of relatedness, or a gathering of relatedness. In other words, the belonging of the parts. And this draws on Martin Heidegger somewhat, which Alexander does not talk about in the least, but I talk about the whole as “belonging‑together” versus “belonging together.”

Now, in the first situation, the together is emphasized, so the belonging is a function of together. In the other expression, belonging‑together, the belonging is emphasized. So, in other words, the togetherness comes about because there’s already a belonging to begin with. And it’s this that Alexander is seeking. It’s so interesting how he has this intuitive sense of the belonging of things.

Now, this is what I call two different approaches to wholeness. So, the first approach, where the togetherness is emphasized, that would be represented by systems theory, for example. It’s what I call analytic relationality, because it’s largely contrived. I don’t know if you’ve read—golly, I’ve forgotten his name—the fellow who does the right‑brain/left‑brain work. Do you know?

Angus
Iain McGilchrist?

David
Iain McGilchrist. It’s a left‑brain vision of wholeness. And certainly Alexander is against that. Though, again, we get into this language issue. A lot of the problem with Alexander is, it sounds like analytic relationality, but it’s not. It’s the other. It’s what I call synergistic relationality, where the together comes about because of the belonging already present.

And ultimately, that’s the authentic wholeness. It’s grounded in genuine belonging, so the parts all have a place in a real way. Does that make sense?

Angus (18:09.142)
It does. Yes, I’m hanging on your every word, thank you. So we have this concept of wholeness. One thing that Christopher was insistent on and very good at was operationalizing his philosophy to make better buildings. And I continue to be impressed, after years of engagement with his work, that he was a general contractor and built things.

And I’ve been to his buildings and I’ve seen better space coming about through his ideas. Is there anything you would change about his fundamental process, say, for building or making? Or what does phenomenology have to say about making better buildings? What’s your response to his efforts to make buildings more beautiful?

David
Well, that’s another one of the extraordinary contributions that Alexander makes. I would phrase it that what he’s done, in many different ways, is to work through what a phenomenology of genuine making would be. That’s how I would phrase it.

So, as you know, that begins really with the pattern language phase. And over time, Alexander realizes that you can write a wonderful pattern language for the project, and yet the project comes out mediocre or even bad. And I think the first place where he sees that is with that Modesto Health Clinic that he and his Center for Environmental Structure had designed. And he’s quite disappointed with the building.

You know, he says it just has no sense of elegance at all. So it’s really at that moment—and I think that’s, do you know when that is? It’s in the late 1970s, I think. You know who covers this very nicely is Stephen Grabow in his biography of Alexander. That’s a wonderful book, The Search for a New Paradigm. And sadly, that book doesn’t get much attention. Of course, it was published way back in 1983, but it still remains one of the finest overviews of these phases in Alexander’s professional career.

So anyway, the first effort at making is the pattern language. And Alexander begins to realize that that isn’t sufficient. It may be useful, certainly for envisioning. I still think it’s a wonderful method for programming, because you see how the smaller parts fit in relation to the larger parts. And that’s where so much architecture is absolutely bad, in that way—that the architect gets caught up in the pieces and forgets the whole.

And the pattern language is so good because it does say, okay, you’ve got to hold on to the largest pattern because all the parts fit in relation to that. And you have a continuing vision of the parts‑and‑whole relationship. So that’s a great contribution, the pattern language. And I know later in his work, Alexander—well, he doesn’t poo‑poo the pattern language, but he does say some, they’re not unkind things, but you know, he says, “It didn’t work.” Well, it didn’t work, okay, but it’s still remarkable.

Angus
When I was writing about him, I interviewed Christopher on three occasions for articles I was writing for American Surveyor magazine. In the second interview—the first interview was focused on A Pattern Language, 20‑some years ago, 30 years ago—he was very kind in speaking about it, but as he reviewed my article by email, he more or less disavowed it. It was a super‑successful project, the largest‑selling book on architecture in the world, but he was disappointed that it didn’t change the world in the way that he’d hoped. So I think that…

David (22:47.374)
Let me go on. So pattern language was the first effort to understand and make wholeness. Now, there is earlier work, but that earlier work I don’t think is relevant. You know, in the 50s and 60s, that stuff…

Angus (23:04.443)
Sure. Yeah, well, there was Notes on the Synthesis of Form, which I find almost unreadable, frankly.

David
Yeah. So the work on wholeness begins with A Pattern Language. Now, as we’ve already said, as you just said, he realizes that that doesn’t work. And the next step, which is somewhat unclear—to me the next great work is The Production of Houses. And that book is so, really, miraculous.

You know, okay, only five of the houses for the low‑income Mexican families were built. He was supposed to construct 30, but the project was axed after five. But what he created in that project I think is remarkable. It’s such a wonderful possibility for mass housing in less developed regions of the world.

And I say that because the striking thing about The Production of Houses is that he began to think in terms of building processes, as you were saying. And that book is wonderful because he lays out the step‑by‑step construction processes that the families can do themselves. You know, it’s like a cookbook and anybody can follow it.

So that really is a remarkable contribution. And again, it doesn’t get very much attention in the literature, but it’s another, to me, miraculous development because the houses were actually constructed by the five families. Now, the houses had problems, but even so, ultimately all of Alexander’s work is experimental, and this is one of the first real‑world experiments.

Then—so that book was published in ’85. Then in ’87, of course, you have A New Theory of Urban Design, which is another intriguing effort, largely theoretical, but it does involve an urban design studio with his graduate students redeveloping this acreage in San Francisco. And the final design, I don’t think is that effective. But what is interesting there is that he begins to think through the idea of process and the idea of what the parts are.

And this, of course, is where the notion of centers—it’s interesting—the first time that centers really is developed in his work is in A New Theory of Urban Design in 1987. But of course, after that will come the, what is it called, the rug book. What’s that called? An Art for the 21st Century? Is that what it’s called? Whatever, I’ve forgotten.

Angus
I know what you’re talking about.

David (26:27.916)
And of course, so much of the fifteen geometrical qualities which become so significant in The Nature of Order, they come out of the rug study, as you probably know. And particularly the notion of centers.

This whole issue of whether he ever was able to develop a workable process whereby the understanding of the wholeness for the design problem could actually be actualized in building—there are successes. The Mexicali project is one. I think probably the finest example is the Asian school, the Japanese high school/college. Yeah, that book, what is it called, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth? It’s got a dreadful title. I don’t know why he called it that. You don’t need this drama. Of course, that whole book is filled with drama.

But beside that, I think, first of all, that book is important because it’s the most thoroughly written pattern language we have, and it’s a wonderful pattern language for that campus. And secondly, as you know, much—not all—of the campus, but most of it, was built. And some of those buildings, I think, are extraordinary. You know, the gymnasium, the great hall, the layout of the campus in terms of the inner precinct, which is the buildings, and then the outer precinct, which is largely nature—really quite extraordinary, and I think probably the most powerful demonstration of how these ideas can be actualized design‑wise.

Angus (28:11.328)
He had a patron who believed in him, which—what a great miracle to have happen relatively late in life for him. Yeah, beautiful campus. I interrupted—where were you going with this?

David (28:25.634)
Well, no, you go on. I think I’ve gotten as far as I wanted to go there.

Angus
I wanted to—I don’t want to skip over or make light of what he called the fundamental process. And I think in the first book or maybe the second book, he talked about, for example, I believe that one of the shortcomings he saw in the pattern language approach to building is that too often builders naively viewed it as a way to create a blueprint or a plan—a cookbook—where instead he was attempting to describe a process.

And I think maybe he didn’t realize that in A Pattern Language, and that’s what he was trying to formalize in The Nature of Order. In the first book, the great example, as he says, is: consider DNA. It’s extraordinarily complex and detailed, and in building a human, the process isn’t to make a human that follows the plan of the DNA sequence. Rather, DNA presents a series of choices—build an embryo this size or that size.

And that by following the sequence of decisions, one arrives at incredibly ordered beauty and complexity, somewhat like making origami was one of his analogies. People make very complex origami, and it’s not because they’re following a plan, it’s because they’re told: make this fold, then do a crimp, and then fold. I’m not being very clear, but what he called the fundamental process, which focused on centers—to me, he’s trying to get that across with greater force than he ever did in A Pattern Language. Patterns, process—what he was trying to do was “first do that, first do this, then do this, then do this.” And if you pay attention at every step of the process, you will have beauty in the built environment—a beautiful home, a beautiful bench, a beautiful mug.

So—and you’re talking about that—but in the evolution of his thought, do you think it ends up at a fundamental process, or do you think that’s a stepping stone along the way to making more beautiful buildings?

David (31:39.256)
This, to me, points toward another unique aspect of Alexander’s work: that on one hand, he’s offered a range of ways for envisioning the fabrication, the design, the made thing. And of course, the tool there is pattern language. And do remember that in The Nature of Order, pattern language is still there. He says it’s integral, but it’s just one portion of the process.

But I think he still believes that pattern language offers one way of envisioning the result, or programming, as the architects would say. And I think that’s true. So, for example, if you look at the Asian school project, it’s so interesting how the principal—who, as you say, is his patron—as well as most of the teachers at that school, at least according to Alexander in the book, they said, “Wow, we can already see the campus through writing the pattern language for it.”

And so there’s this vision. He’s very keen on vision. Vision first appears in A New Theory of Urban Design. Have you studied that at all?

Angus
I haven’t.

David
Well, anyway, it is so interesting. In that book, when the students in the studio, the urban design studio, are envisioning what this undeveloped site in San Francisco should be, this one female student, she has this vision of an entry gate on the north side of the site. And as Alexander says, everybody in the studio suddenly realized that that entry gate was like a telescope into what the project would eventually be. And much of that happened. I mean, it didn’t happen that beautifully, but it did happen.

So the idea of envisioning, of programming, of setting out the picture of what the design should be—it remains integral to the process. But as you say, what Alexander gives much more attention to in The Nature of Order is, first of all, the importance of the geometrical, the geometric properties—is that what he calls them, or is it functional properties? What does he say?—functional properties, of which there are fifteen.

And then, of course, this idea, and you were talking about this too, this step‑by‑step process whereby you do what the situation asks you to do. And, of course, I mean that’s one of the weakest aspects of this approach, because you can so readily go wrong. One of the best examples of this—it’s sort of funny. I don’t think he meant it to be funny—but is the postscript in The Production of Houses, where he and Howard Davis are trying to decide the color of the eaves of the houses.

And Howard Davis gets so angry because Chris says, “It’s going to be a little more blue,” and he keeps adding blue to the white. And Howard just can’t—he says, you know, “What does it matter? We’ve got to get this done.” And Chris says, “No, we’ve got to have the exact right shade.” So eventually Chris wins.

Angus
And personally, I see both sides of that argument.

David (35:46.178)
Well, I mean, this is an awkward part of the process. It can readily fall into subjective opinion. And I know Chris is much against that, but that’s a big danger of this whole business. It’s very tricky.

Angus
I would say almost his entire corpus of writing and work, there’s this—he’ll attempt to describe the decision‑making process and it sounds impossible. It sounds like something only he can do in his head, and that there’s no basis for group decision‑making. It must be, it must have been terribly frustrating for his closest students and his clients. Obviously he can make a beautiful house. Conveying that…

David
Well, and as you probably know—yeah, I mean, it is well known that he was very difficult to work with, and a lot of his students left him in anger. Ron Witte, for example, is a good example. I mean, Ron is a wonderful architect, but whoa, he just will not—his work is Alexandrian, but he won’t ever explicitly acknowledge that in his writings. The same with Max Jacobson and Murray Silverstein, you know.

And you know where you really see this—have you ever seen that film, what is it called, Places for the Soul, I think it’s called? It’s worth watching. I think it’s on Tubi now. It’s really quite fine because the filmmaker is actually filming Alexander working with—who was his engineer? Gary Black, wasn’t it?

Angus
Yeah, Gary Black.

David (37:30.574)
And he and Gary Black are doing the trusses in the shelter, the homeless shelter in San Jose. And you can begin to—well, he has a squabble with the fellow who’s in charge of the homeless shelter. That fellow, you can tell, he’s not very happy having worked with Chris. Whereas the other part of the film is on the Asian school, and you meet the Japanese principal, and you can see how enamored he is of Chris, and he will do anything for Chris. So it was a much easier experience for Chris, even though it was a much larger scale effort.

So, that processual aspect—I don’t know. I think theoretically it’s correct. I think theoretically one has to work in that way. I think, as Alexander says, traditionally craftspeople especially would work in that way. So, for example, the Turkish carpets that he loves so much.

He says that they were made as a homage to God because he believes all the weavers were Sufis. Now, I don’t think that’s been verified, and there’s much argument about Chris’s interpretation of those rugs, but…

Angus
He said something similar, talking about the construction of Chartres, that all the workers must have had the idea of making gifts for God, which is very profound, and it’s a staggeringly beautiful building. But it’s like he’s trying to reach back through time to capture the mindset of the makers. And who knows?

David (39:49.506)
Well, and looking at the Asian campus, it was a successful process. It can happen, but there are so many obstacles. And one of the biggest is what you’re suggesting—differences among the participants. That becomes a very hard matter to reconcile, and much of the time, in many of the projects, that was never reconciled. In the Production of Houses, it wasn’t.

What else? Well, of course, what’s it called, the Mary Rose Museum? You see, that fell apart because Prince Charles got angry at him and fired him.

Angus
Although I’ve got to say, his plans are so much… that would have been a better building than what got built.

David
You’re right. And it’s so sad that that didn’t get built. But, you know, as I understand it, Prince Charles axed it because he got so angry at Alexander. Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s the rumor you hear about that one. But it’s still, as you say, it’s a wonderful design.

Again, you have this book, you have the record of that project. I think ultimately this is the most valuable material we have from Alexander—the books—because they all are guides in various ways to this possibility.

Angus
I think it’s an opportunity to segue into what we might close on. For those of us living post‑Alexander, who hope that the world becomes a more beautiful place as a result of his ideas—I mean, I believe that there’s enough good stuff in The Nature of Order that civilization could be saved if it was applied.

What’s his legacy? What’s left, or what do you hope continues? And how do you think it could continue? I mean, The Nature of Order—the people who love it, love it and are ferocious in their defense, but not many people have that. Not many people are initiated into that way of thinking. So what’s the way forward, or what would you like to see in terms of adoption of Alexandrian ideas?

David (42:36.3)
I think his work will live. I think it’s for the future. Just as I think much of the phenomenological work is for the future, just as I think Henri Bortoft’s work on authentic wholeness is for the future. But I think particularly young people have become quite discouraged by the Western world currently.

If you look at the dominant philosophical traditions in academics, for example deconstruction, post‑structuralism, critical theory—all of this work says that there are no truths, that everything is relative. And I think people are beginning to realize that all of that work is probably bogus. There’s so much bogusness in academia today.

And of course, it’s in the design professions too. Look at the state of contemporary architecture. The major aim is to create these—what would be the word? I don’t want to say hideous—but these buildings that seem impossible. And some of them are very beautiful, but…

Angus
I think ugly is the right word.

David (44:05.996)
They’re not real buildings in that sense. I think there will be a movement back. And of course, a lot of this is going to happen because of climate change, of the water dilemma, of people realizing that we have to get back to locality and we have to start recreating localities that are largely self‑sufficient.

And that moves me back into my work on place phenomenology and the whole question of how we make authentic places today. So I’m not discouraged. I think Alexander has provided us a remarkable body of work and it will live in the books. I think probably A Pattern Language will remain the memorable text in spite of the fact that Alexander called it into question later on.

The Nature of Order, much more difficult. You know, one thing I find about The Nature of Order is that he should have had a better editor. I mean, you know, Jenny Quillien was one of his editors, and I’ve always said this to Jenny: why didn’t you make him cut out three‑quarters of the text? Because there’s so much excess verbal baggage in that book. It’s unnecessary. You could chop chapters from that book and it would still make the message.

Angus
I interviewed Jenny twice. Those are great episodes.

David (45:43.326)
Yeah, and Jenny—you know, I love Jenny, I respect Jenny. She’s done a lot of articles for me for the newsletter. But of course—and she said to me, “Well, you don’t know Chris; he’s stubborn. And what he wants, he wants, and he won’t listen to change.” So there you go.

Angus (46:47.382)
I will push back just a little bit on that. I read The Nature of Order obsessively—three times through, underlining, taking notes, basically writing papers in response in my head and on paper. And to me, ultimately, it was worth it. And I came to appreciate what you’re—I know what you’re talking about and there is a lot of what seems like excess, but I came to think of it as magisterial.

He was stating and restating and restating, and ended up with a sort of grand, grandly expressed grand vision. And it worked for me. But it’s kind of like years of my life were devoted toward reading and understanding The Nature of Order and trying to operationalize it, and it turned into this podcast partly, and many articles and columns in American Surveyor magazine.

I could see how it could be shortened, but in a way I wouldn’t want it to be, because I enjoyed the journey of reading those tremendous books. But—I know what you’re talking about.

David
Well, and you see, this brings up another worry I have about The Nature of Order. As you know, Alexander would not allow Oxford University Press to publish the book because they only were willing to produce 5,000 copies first run, and Alexander wanted 10,000 copies. So as a result, he printed it himself. And this is a big problem at this point, because what happens when the copies run out?

With Oxford University Press, they would have reprinted. But who’s going to do this now? Maggie? I don’t think they have the money for this. So I do worry about whether that text might eventually be lost.

Angus
I didn’t know that, and I’ve been wondering myself. And I know there’s a big aftermarket. For example, if you get on Reddit, the Christopher Alexander subreddit, there’s basically people saying, “I’ve got a copy,” and they’re— I didn’t know what you just said. That’s news to me and I’m sorry to hear it, because there should be 100,000 copies of The Nature of Order out in the world.

David
Well, perhaps some publisher will take it on, but that would require quite a bit of work on the folks in charge now, particularly Maggie, and I don’t know. You know, they have created the archive in Berkeley. I don’t know too much about that. I understand—have you looked at it? I guess a lot of it is online now. Have you looked?

Angus (49:17.463)
I haven’t, no.

David
And of course, that’s one good possibility, because maybe eventually, since they hold the copyright, they’ll be able to put all of The Nature of Order digitally online. I don’t think it is now, is it? I haven’t looked, but I don’t think so. There might be pirate copies available, but perhaps that will be the solution to this issue of reprinting.

But of course, all the other books are published by Oxford and they’re all, I think, in print. So that’s a wonderful thing. Though they never did softcovers, you know, interestingly. There’s not even a softcover of A Pattern Language, and I’ve never understood why, but there isn’t.

Angus
And that will be why A Pattern Language remains in the public mind and continues, perhaps despite the relative greatness of The Nature of Order, simply for publishing reasons. And that’s a bit sad.

David
Yes, could be.

Angus (50:27.83)
David, as we draw to a close here, what should people know about you and the work you’ve done at your journal, which was certainly interesting to me? Is there a website people could go to to learn more about phenomenology and your take?

David (50:49.857)
Well, the first point I would make is that I am interested in Alexander because of my broader interest in the phenomenology of place and wholeness. And there is a wonderful literature on this topic. Very interestingly, the first phenomenology of place was written back in 1976 by a geographer named Ted Relph, Edward Relph, called Place and Placelessness.

And for your listeners, I recommend that book. It’s a wonderful introduction to place studies, and it’s an accessible introduction to what a phenomenological perspective can offer the design fields, the environmental fields. Curiously, lately, quite a number of philosophers have become interested in place.

And there are two books that I would recommend. First of all, I would recommend Edward Casey’s work, a book called Getting Back Into Place, which was first written in 1993 and is now in a second edition published in 2009. So that’s called Getting Back Into Place, a wonderful work.

And also another philosopher doing phenomenology, a fellow named Jeff Malpas—he’s Australian—and he wrote a book in 1999 called Place and Experience, which has recently been reprinted. So those two books are fine, but they’re much more difficult because they’re written by philosophers, so they take quite a lot of effort and energy to follow. So that’s why I would recommend Relph’s work first.

I have written a fair amount. Way back in 1979, I wrote a book called The Geography of the Lifeworld, which has become a kind of cult classic in the environment–behavior literature. And recently I did a book called Life Takes Place, which is a study of what places processually. I was interested in locating interconnected processes whereby places become stronger, become weaker, stay the same.

And that has a substantial section on Christopher Alexander as well as other architectural thinkers working through this business of how we design environments which strengthen human well‑being. I didn’t bring any of the links to the newsletter. I think you do have them? If you don’t, I can send them to you. And I can send you a link for the webpage that I have on Academia.edu where most of my writings are uploaded.

Angus (52:46.775)
Congratulations.

David (53:10.12)
Thank you.

Angus
That’d be great.

David, thank you so much. This has been an exhilarating intellectual adventure of an episode and I appreciate it. I’m definitely not an academic, but I’m a fan, and I appreciate a strongly academic take.

David
And you’re a knowledgeable fan. I really respect the effort you’ve made. And you’re doing a great contribution by keeping his work alive through these podcasts. So thank you very much.

Angus (54:25.102)
Thanks for listening to this 26th episode of Everything is Somewhere. For me, this was a real treat. Long‑time listeners—and we have a few by now—will know that I have a certain reverence for the late architect Christopher Alexander. And at first I was a little peeved that David was pointing out some flaws in my intellectual hero’s philosophy. But then I relaxed because I was having fun. I was learning new things, and I hope you were too.

And the gossipy backstage look at Christopher’s life and work was exhilarating. So, thank you, David, for a great interview, and thank you for putting the cookies on a lower shelf so that a non‑academic admirer of Christopher Alexander’s work—and now yours—could understand almost everything.

There were an extraordinary number of books and videos and thinkers recommended by David in this episode, and that is reflected in a rather long set of show notes included with this episode.

But I’ll highlight two recommendations here in the outro. The first is the documentary mentioned, which is titled Places for the Soul, and is not available on YouTube or Amazon, but can be found on Tubi. Just Google “Christopher Alexander documentary Places for the Soul” and you’ll find it.

The second recommendation I’ll highlight is the online archive of Christopher Alexander’s work that David mentioned, which can be found by Googling “Christopher Alexander Archive,” and there is a link in the show notes, of course. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t know about this website. It’s beautiful and functional, and neither is common for a website involving architects. The timeline of Christopher’s work and writing is useful and interesting, and there is a great deal of digitized articles and whole books. Please check it out.

###

As always, I welcome feedback. You can send me feedback directly at angusstocking at gmail.com or anonymously at amerisurv.com slash 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.