Twelve Lectures on Architecture: Algorithmic Sustainable Design [Paperback]

These days architectural Modernism, it seems, is like the weather: everybody complains about it, but nobody does anything about it. From Rem Koolhaas to Peter Eisenman, Patrik Schumacher to James Corner, all the leading starchitects seem to be attacking the old dumb linear methods, the boxy forms -- the clearly unsustainable industrial paradigm.

Except that, funny thing, so many of them are still really doing the same old kinds of things, and merely draping them in ever more extravagant costumes -- as my friend Nikos Salingaros likes to point out. They haven't created a new paradigm, so much as fashioned some colorful new clothes for the old destructive emperor to wear.

Salingaros, a mathematician and urbanist, comes at the problem of cities with a modern mathematician's understanding of complexity. If you want elaborate semiotic games or bizarre, attention-getting new forms, this is not the book for you. But if you want insightful analysis of the actual occurrence in cities of fractals, algorithms, the Fibonacci Series, and much more -- and how we can actually use these insights to make better cities -- then you will find this a fascinating book. If you're like me, you'll find it an important and very hopeful book too.

It would be normal for me to say here that this is one of the great standout books in the science of environmental design -- except that, tellingly, it is the only book of its kind of which I am aware. Other authors employ algorithms, scripts, computational design and the like. (The aforementioned Patrik Schumacher, of Zaha Hadid's office, comes to mind.) But for what? For consumer eye candy; for cities as artistic "fashion statements"; for fabulous nonsensical structures that show no literacy in the real human problems of a city. (And worse, are likely to further damage the lives of real people, and the wellbeing of the planet).

Salingaros, virtually alone at present (with a notable exception of his long-time colleague Christopher Alexander) comes at the question of urban structure from the opposite direction: from that of human beings, and their ascertainable requirements to live well together in actual settlements. He readily identifies universal structural and mathematical patterns that are available and useful for the intelligent and humane designer, and he describes, in easy-to-understand terms, how to apply them. He wants to understand how to design with the participation of users, and the powerful processes of self-organization. He also takes into account the evidence-based design methods that are revealing the powerful role of "biophilia" and other properties of environments that promote well-being -- including some surprisingly familiar ones from the world of traditional design, now seen in the flattering light of complexity science. It's a wonderful tour de force.

Why is Salingaros' work not better known? For all the talk of "paradigm shift", the reigning paradigm of modern design culture is holding firm to power, and for this reason it does not care to make room for truly radical self-criticism. There is a reason that it much prefers the logically incoherent and ineffectual pseudo-criticism of the post-structuralists. You know the narrative -- "architecture is about expressing the angst of our condition, disrupting people from their conventional comfort," blah blah. Salingaros calls this self-serving nonsense for what it is, and offers a real paradigm shift: an architecture and urbanism founded on the actual evidence that we can again make humane, successful, beautiful cities. When will his work become better known? I for one suspect it will be soon.