ANNOUNCING

THE CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STRUCTURE

EUROPE

urban planning, land management, architecture,

design, construction, process management, and craft

with Foundations in

ecology, sustainable development, biology, social science, and complexity theory

a a a

Sister organisation to the Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, California, founded

by Christopher Alexander in 1967.  We are currently performing project-based research

into generative coding, positive space, pedestrian braids, new applications of pattern

languages, and related topics.   We were founded by Dr. Christopher Alexander, a pioneer

of the genesis of form in architecture, computer science and other fields. 

We welcome your interest, support or collaboration in this work.  Read our Prospectus here.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

The human and natural environment around the globe is in a growing crisis.  Most

efforts toward "sustainable" design and construction are well-meaning, but follow

the old twentieth-century technological model - precisely the one that created the

current crisis.  We now understand that truly adaptive systems will require  a different

kind of "morphogenesis" - more like the beautiful old cities of our history, but using

modern technology in a modern context to do so.  We need a new understanding

of living human environments, to match our new understanding of life.

What modern lessons can we learn from the "organic" structures of nature, and of our own history?

"People used to say that just as the 20th century had been the century of physics, the 21st

century  would be the century of biology...  We would gradually move into a world whose

prevailing paradigm was one of complexity, and whose techniques sought the co-adapted

harmony of hundreds or thousands of variables.  This would, inevitably, involve new

technique, new vision, new models of thought, and new models of action.  I believe that

such a transformation is starting to occur... To be well, we must set our sights on such a future."

- Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order

CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STRUCTURE EUROPE

MEADOW LODGE, BINSTED near ARUNDEL

WEST SUSSEX UK   BN18 0LQ

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE: Martin CentRe

6 chaucer road, CB2 2EB

TELEPHONES  07734-066-148  01243-551-435  Cambridge 01223 -331-700

"The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day."

- Henry David Thoreau