Agile anthropology and Alexander's architecture: an essay in three voices
Abstract
During its formative decades the software community looked twice to the theories of Christopher Alexander for inspiration, both times failing to completely master the architect's most useful insights. Now a third opportunity presents itself with Alexander's recent publication, The Nature of Order. Serious apprenticeship, however, imposes a prerequisite of sober self-reflection and evaluation. What, really, is the nature of the developer's tasks? Under what philosophical umbrella has the software community matured until now? Do other philosophical traditions offer alternative and perhaps more pertinent epistemologies? What voices, besides Alexander's, might contribute to the community's evolution? We address these questions along with theory building, ethnography, weak links, design heuristics, agility, and complex systems, all of which combine with Alexander's new theories to suggest different ways of doing what we do, better.
References
[1]
Alexander, Christopher. Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Cambridge: Harvard Paperback, 1964. {The book version of Alexander's Ph.D. thesis. Certainly the most formalistic of his writings. A major theme is understanding the nature of the architect's task and how to make it manageable.}
[2]
Alexander, Christopher, Murray Silverstein, Shlomo Angle. Sarah Ishikawa, Denny Abrams. The Oregon Experiment, New York: OUP, 1975. {A detailed account of working with the University of Oregon to develop a planning process of piecemeal growth and involvement of the end-users.}
[3]
Alexander, Christopher, Sarah Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, with M. Jacobson, I. Fiksdahl-King, S. Angel. A Pattern Language, New York: OUP, 1977. {A compilation of 253 building patterns and reflections on connectivity. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health interested in exploring the relationship between the built environment and well-being.}
[4]
Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building, New York: OUP, 1979. {An essay attempting to get beyond fashion, period architecture and specific traditions to reach a deeper common ground in good buildings.}
[5]
Alexander, Christopher. The Nature of Order, Berkeley, California: CES, 2003-2005. {A dense weaving of reflections on the natural, man-made, and spiritual worlds. Volume One focuses on a static look at the fifteen geometric properties. Volume Two on process. Volume Three gives blow by blow accounts of specific buildings. Volume Four reaches for a new cosmology.}
[6]
Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What happens after they're built? New York: Penguin Books, 1994. {A longitudinal study of buildings as they change over time to suit new needs and owners.}
[7]
Bronowksi, Jacob. "Architecture as Science, Architecture as Art." in The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature, and Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1978. {One of Bronowski's lectures showing art and science to be but two aspects of the same human endeavor to create.}
[8]
Brooks, Frederick P. "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering," Computer, Vol.20, No.4 (April 1987). {A key background article for this piece arguing for conceptual constructs in software development.}
[9]
Csermely, P. Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks, New York: Springer, 2006. {Basic text on weak links in all domains.}
[10]
Gabriel, Richard. Patterns of Software, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996. {A collection of essays, several of which offer interesting discussions of how to apply Alexander's work to programming. Our quotes on page 11 are from the essay, "The Bead Game, Rugs, and Beauty."}
[11]
Geertz, Clifford. Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture, New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1973. {A collection of essays, the first of which defines thick description as an ethnographic method.}
[12]
Granovetter, Mark "The Strength of Weak Ties," American Journal of Sociology, 78, 6. (May 1973). {An article which discussed the significance of secondary ties in social relationships.}
[13]
Hakim, Besim. Arabic-Islamic Cities, London: Kegan Paul International, 1986. {A historian's research on the building codes that gave birth to a multitude of urban pearls around the Mediterranean basin.}
[14]
Hall, Edward. Beyond Culture, Port Moody, Canada: Anchor Books, 1976. {An early collection of now classic essays in anthropology.}
[15]
Heidegger, Martin. "Building Dwelling Thinking", in Basic Writings, San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1993. {A phenomenological look at the art of dwelling and how it must be the guide to building.}
[16]
Keil-Slawik, Reinhard. "Artifacts in Software Development," in Software Development and Reality Construction, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992. {An examination of how collective documents are created and shared.}
[17]
Levy, Steven. The Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge, http://homepages.nyu.edu/~ap70/levyss.htm. {A history of the evolution of VisiCalc and how spreadsheets influence our take on accounting.}
[18]
Naur, Peter. "Programming as Theory Building," Microprocessing and Microprogramming, 15, (1985). {A key background article for this paper arguing for conceptual constructs in software development.}
[19]
Rostal, Pam. "Thoughts on Weak Links and Alexandrine Life in Scrum," Nashville, Tenn: PLoP'08. {An article making the connection between weak links and Alexander's properties as useful indicators of complex stable systems.}
[20]
Quillien, Jenny. Delight's Muse: on Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order, Ames, Iowa: Culicidae Press, 2008. {Beginner's cliff notes on the major themes of The Nature of Order.}
[21]
Salingaros, Nikos. The Structure of Pattern Language, http://sphere.math.utsa.edu/sphere/salingar/urbanstructure.html.
[22]
Salingaros, Nikos, Bruce West. "The Universal Law of Sizes," Environment and Planning, Vol. 26, 1999. {Salingaros, an ardent fan of Alexander's work, develops many themes from his own perspective as a mathematician. We used articles where the structure of pattern languages and levels of scale are investigated.}
[23]
Sole, R., Ferrer Cancho, R., Montoya, J., and Valverde, S. "Selection, tinkering and emergence in complex networks," Complexity, 8, (January 2003). {An article that allows the interested reader to compare Alexander's concepts with similar concepts - but couched in different vocabulary - found in discussions of complex systems.}
[24]
Whitehead, Alfred North. Modes of Thought, New York, N.Y: Free Press edition, 1968. {A collection of basic essays.}
Index Terms
- Agile anthropology and Alexander's architecture: an essay in three voices
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Publication History
Published: 25 October 2009
Published in SIGPLAN Volume 44, Issue 10
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