The Oregon Experiment (Hardcover)

After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are not publishing a major statement in the form of three works which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building, and planning, which will, we hope, replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, and The Oregon Experiment.

At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation fo the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people.

This book is the master plan for the University of Oregon, and is now being implemented at that university; but it shows at the same time how any community the size of a university or small town might go about designing its own future environment-with all members of the community participating personally. It is a concrete example at the Center's theories in practice, showing in simple detail, with numerous illustrations, how to implement six guiding principles: organic order, participation, piecemeal growth, patterns, diagnosis, and coordination.

在經過十年的沉默之後，Christopher Alexander和他在環境結構中心的同事們將以三部作品的形式發表一份重要聲明，他們的話是：“為建築、建造和規劃開創一種全新的方法，我們希望這將完全取代現有的觀念和實踐。”這三本書分別是《建造的永恆方式》、《模式語言》和《俄勒岡實驗》。

這些書的核心思想是人們應該為自己設計自己的房屋、街道和社區。這個想法可能是激進的（它意味著對建築專業的激進轉變），但它只是從這樣一個觀察得出的結論：世界上大多數美妙的地方不是由建築師創造的，而是由人們創造的。

這本書是俄勒岡大學的總體規劃，現在正在該大學實施；但它同時展示了任何一個大學或小鎮大小的社區如何設計自己的未來環境-讓社區的所有成員都參與其中。這是環境結構中心理論在實踐中的具體例子，通過大量插圖詳細展示了如何實施六個指導原則：有機秩序、參與、逐步增長、模式、診斷和協調。