Positive Space
Introduction
Christopher Alexander (Vienna, Federal State of Austria, October 4, 1936 - Binsted, Sussex, England, March 17, 2022[1]) was a British-American architect and university professor of Austrian origin, recognized for his outstanding designs of buildings in California, Japan and Mexico. Starting from the premise that users of architectural spaces know more than architects about the type of buildings they need, he created and validated (along with Sarah Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein) the term pattern language, a structured method that makes architecture available to people who are not professionally specialized in the subject, and which he popularized in his book A Pattern Language. He lived in England, where he was a contractor and licensed architect. In addition, he was professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.[2].
Biography
He grew up in England. He studied at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a master's degree in Mathematics (1956) and a degree in Architecture (1958). He later moved to the United States where he earned a doctorate in architecture (1963) at Harvard University (the first PhD degree awarded for architecture at the University). He had Serge Chermayeff as a teacher, with whom he later collaborated on some of his works.
During the same time, he worked at MIT (on transportation theory and computer science) and at Harvard on cognition and cognitive studies. In 1963 he became a professor of architecture at the University of Berkeley, where he held various positions until 2001: from 1965 to 1966 he held the position of research professor in the humanities; Since 1967 he founded and directed the Center for Environmental Structure, and since 1970 he was a professor of architecture.
He was recognized as the father of the pattern language movement in computer science. Additionally, in 1996 he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his contributions to architecture.