Outlines Christopher Alexander’s view of architecture and construction. The relationship described between designers/builders and the users of buildings is much the same as the relationship between the programmers and the customer.

Time for me to go and reread that one, I think…

This requires, then, that decisions about design can be made, individually, house by house, and that they can even be made while construction is under way. (p. 69)

It requires a system of communication in which the building is not frozen, ahead of time, by drawings, but in which rough plans of the building are translated directly into building, step by step; and for this, the institutional powers of architect and builder – the power of design and the power of construction – must be wedded in a single process. (p. 70)

the kitchen be laid out exactly according to the wishes of the housewife (p. 70)

Further, it requires a form of communication between architect and builder which is simple, cheap, and direct, so that the immense expense of fifty different sets of drawings is not required to design fifty different houses. This direct communication becomes relatively impossible when architect and builder are separate, because the communication must be legally binding – exact – and is therefore immensely expensive to prepare. If architect and builder are one and the same person, the communication can be quick, schematic, because it is only a record for “in-house” use. And it therefore becomes cheap enough to do. (p. 71)

Third, in order for the woman to lay out her kitchen successfully, she must be able to enter the process at various times while the house is being built. It is, generally speaking, not possible to make subtle, exact choices about counter sizes, widths, position of stove, shelves, cabinets, in the abstract – that is, long before the building exists. However, once the shell of the building is there, and the kitchen exists, it is then possible to decide exactly where the details should be by simply standing in the real place and imagining them.

This requires that even at this late date during the process of construction itself, decisions about size, position of shelves, counters, etc., can still be made.

And this requires that the building is still actively open to design decisions, even after its shell is up, and that the builder, who is in the building on a day-to-day basis, has the right to make these decisions with the woman. If the architect is a separate person, again communicating through drawings, the process of choosing each of these kitchens on a direct, person-by-person basis would become impossibly complex and expensive. But if the architect and builder are one and the same, and together have control also over the spending of money, it is extremely simple. The same is true for all the other qualities a good house needs. (pp. 71-72)

I could go on, but I’ll stop here; just read the chapter yourself. You just have to do some obvious substitutions and you get large chunks of XP. Is this book cited in the bibliography of the XP book? I’ll have to check when I get into work, but I have to assume it was a direct influence.

I guess I already was aware that Christopher Alexander had these sorts of ideas, that he wasn’t an influence on software development solely through his invention of design patterns, but I’d never seen it spelled out so clearly before. Which raises the next question: Christopher Alexander and Kent Beck have both done influential work in both design patterns and architect/customer interactions; is this a coincidence? I tend to think the answer is “no”. If you take, say, Singleton on the one hand and the Planning Game on the other hand, it’s hard to see any direct link. But both of their thoughts were much more far-reaching: both of them worked not just with design patterns but with pattern languages, which meld individual design decisions into a richly textured, active, living structure. (Using an expansive notion of living.) And once you have that structure in place, you then have the freedom to make late-binding decisions, which in turn opens up the possibility of designer- (or builder-)customer interactions throughout the entire building process, and even past the end of the building process.

Great stuff. And he’s not at all afraid of the details: there’s theory in this book, to be sure, but it’s made concrete at every step with pictures, with descriptions of small steps, with discussions of experiments that worked, experiments that didn’t work.

Are there many agile construction firms out there? It seems to me like a huge need…

Lots of groups of pictures of one house over the years: additions to the house, changes in the styling of the house, the occasional removal of a previous addition. We don’t have have any plans to add onto our house: we don’t have any plans even to remodel, though I can conceive of how we could, say, improve the kitchen. But looking around the house with addition eyes, I can imagine how we could this house could grow over time: enlarge the den by going out into the back yard, then add a similar addition to the guest room above it, then move out the kitchen next to it, and so forth. Though, to be sure, we couldn’t actually do that: we live in a townhouse complex, and there are rules against that sort of thing.

Even if there weren’t rules, we probably wouldn’t want to expand – there’s only so much space in our backyard, after all, and neighboring buildings are uncomfortably close. But a lot of standalone buildings these days are in developments with CCR’s of their own; I can’t see how that’s a good thing. I wouldn’t necessarily support giving up all housing-related rules, or even all non-safety-related rules, but enforcing a sterile uniformity for the putative reason of improving your neighbors’ property values seems pretty crazy to me. Much better to adapt your house to changing events, instead of being forced to change houses entirely.

There were also good thoughts on the idea that there shouldn’t be this sudden changeover when a building is finished: you only know how it will actually work when people are living in there, so the conversation with the architect/builder/whatever should continue at that point instead of end there. Some random tidbits from the book: drawings from a book on Malaysian house-building, showing various traditional expansion sequences for Malaysian dwellings. Discussion of some Japanese building firms that take responsibility for all of the design and construction, engaging with the resident throughout the whole process, continuing that engagement after the resident moves in. It’s hard to say what the future will bring, and I don’t particularly foresee ever having a house custom-built for us, but if we were to do so, that sounds like a good way to go.

And discussions of older architecture versus newer architecture. In lots of areas, I tend to reflexively support the new against the defenders of the old, but reading this book and Christopher Alexander have rather turned me the other way when it comes to architecture. A lot of screwed up ideas on that score in the last century. (Hmm, maybe my opinions shouldn’t surprise me so much: I’d already been convinced of that when it comes to urban planning.)

Among other things, modern houses apparently aren’t built to last so long. And one symptom of the lack of an ongoing conversation between builders and dwellers is the general lack of ongoing maintenance. Certainly I wish that I knew somebody whom I trusted whom I could talk to about the state of our house, what should be done about it in what order, and who could help arrange for stuff to get done. We’re managing to chip away at this somewhat (and actually the HOA / management company can be very helpful in this regard, for stuff that’s their responsibility to pay for / arrange), but not as quickly as I’d like, and there are definitely some areas where I could use some good, informed, unbiased advice. (E.g. about our floor.)

Of course, part of the issue there is scheduling – it’s the whole “important but not urgent” problem, made worse by the fact that I don’t in fact really know how important and/or urgent it is.

A problem I’ve been dealing with at work recently, too. I think we’re making some progress – my team in particular has been very helpful in informing me that, no, we shouldn’t put off fixing certain bugs, they’re causing problems now. XP and lean seem to have a good approach here: they have useful concrete criteria for telling whether or not something is important, and once they’ve decided it is important, they immediately elevate its urgency. (A defective part just went by – stop the whole assembly line until we can figure out what went wrong!) Not clear how to apply that to home maintenance, though, or even whether it’s a good idea to apply that to home maintenance. I guess there’s probably another way in which lean deals with important-but-not-urgent events – there must be periodic checkup sessions, which then lead to recommendations of fixes that are more urgent to implement. So the analogy here is to periodically give the house a check-up, and then to immediately fix the problems that you find. Assuming that I’m not just making up that last sentence about lean! Even if I am, the application to houses sounds like a good idea.

• There can be well thought-out, stable systems of behavior that are strong enough to exist for quite some time next to American society without being absorbed.
• It’s not necessarily a good idea to spend time thinking about whether you enjoy what you’re doing at a given moment, or whether it’s drudgery.
• If your brain is trying to tell you something, listen.
• Be careful of following a path because it’s what your past experiences and environment have set you up to do.
• Having good aspects in one area does not mean having good aspects in all areas.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m actually quite happy with the way my life is turning out. But it is good to be reminded of these things.