Twelve Lectures on Architecture: Algorithmic Sustainable Design

Twelve one-hour video lectures are archived online, and can be accessed for free. These lectures apply cutting-edge mathematical techniques to architectural and urban design. The course material is original, and includes innovative topics such as algorithms, fractals, cellular automata, complexity, emergence, information theory, symmetries, scaling, codes, and networks, here introduced into architecture and urbanism for the first time. Students from around the world can now learn the intelligent basis for architecture, and use it to re-establish adaptability and genuine sustainability. 'Twelve Lectures on Architecture' is a profound philosophical work presented as a set of architectural lecture notes. It reads very easily, explaining why certain buildings and places speak to our hearts, thus illuminating many of our old assumptions about taste. It includes an excellent introduction to Christopher Alexander's recent and remarkable work on how biology and architecture intersect in humankind's unconscious perceptions. This book has the importance to change the world because it goes into things that people should have thought about but haven't. "A fantastic manual of architectural algorithms explaining exactly why some designs make us feel at home on this planet and why others offend our neurology." James Howard Kunstler Author and Social Critic, Saratoga Springs, New York "The new book is like a Swiss Army Knife of tools for creating ultimate human habitats. It is in many ways a compression of this work by Alexander. A better introduction you can't get!" Øyvind Holmstad Permaculturalist, Oslo, Norway "Biology and architecture intersect in mankind's unconscious perceptions... in ways that cause traditional architecture to be perceived intuitively by most people as more natural and life-affirming than modern architecture." David Brussat Architecture Critic, Providence, Rhode Island