A fierce anti-modernist, he championed vernacular structures, becoming a counterculture hero to many, from New Urbanists to software designers to Prince Charles.
Mr. Alexander spent his lifetime cataloging and analyzing the built and the natural environment. He studied mathematics, philosophy, cognitive psychology and architecture, and he used all of these disciplines to argue in favor of the handmade and the homespun.
At the University of Cambridge, though he was a scholarship student, he hired his own aesthetics tutor because he wanted to understand, and quantify, beauty. He helped build a school in an Indian village and low-income housing in Peru. He spent a year in Mexicali, Mexico, creating housing for government workers and their families with their participation, for a cost of about $3,500 a house. He developed a building system that included concrete blocks that could be stacked together like Legos without mortar, enabling families not only to design their houses but also to build them.
“...his signature work, “A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction” (1977). Devotees found it radical; critics dismissed it as nostalgic and regressive. It is still in print and, unusually for an architecture book, continues to sell extraordinarily well.”
