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1. Fractals
NS For the past few years, I have been applying the analytic thinking of a scientist to find basic laws for architecture and urbanism, following the lead of my friend, the brilliant architectural theorist Christopher Alexander. The results derived so far show that a building, or city, is subject to the same organizational laws as a biological organism and a complex computer program. The New Architecture depends upon scientific rules rather than stylistic dictates. Using these rules, we can create new buildings that duplicate the intensely positive, nourishing feelings of the greatest historical buildings, without copying neither their form nor their style. Great buildings of the past, and the vernacular (folk) architectures from all around the world, have essential mathematical similarities. One of them is a fractal structure: there is some observable structure at every level of magnification, and the different levels of scale are very tightly linked by the design. In contradistinction, modernist buildings have no fractal qualities; i.e., not only are there very few scales, but different scales are not linked in any way. Indeed, one can see an unwritten design rule in the avoidance of organized fractal scales. The interest in fractal objects was originally motivated by the study of complex dynamical systems at the beginning of VP this century; in the work of the French mathematicians Henri Poincar, Pierre Fatou, and Gaston Julia. But it was not until the 1970's and early 1980's, with the rapid development of techniques in computer graphics, that Benot Mandelbrot and other mathematicians began to observe and study these fascinating structures, which are full of involuted spaces and surfaces, and in which different self-similar scales are found. This type of structure exists in abundance in nature. From the distribution of foliage on a tree, to the complex neural network of our nervous system; all of these can be better described with the help of Fractal Geometry. In the human body, the fractal design of its components like the circulatory system, nervous system, the bronchi, and the folds of the brain allow our organism, in a limited space, to greatly extend its contact surfaces in order to carry out the innumerable and complex functions of interchange that make life possible. This optimal structure must surely be motivated by evolutionary reasons. NS We also see this type of structure in traditional buildings. All the folk architecture built by people around the world tends to have fractal properties. I believe that our mind is "hard-wired" to construct things in a certain way, so inevitably we build fractal structures. Most great creations of humankind go far beyond strictly necessary structure; we feel a need to generate certain types of forms and geometrical interrelationships. Only when influenced by some style do we depart from what comes naturally to us. Cities -- at least the most pleasant ones -- are fractal. Everything, from the paths and streets, to the shape of faades and the placing of trees, is fractal in the great cities such as Paris, Venice, and London. This has been measured mathematically by people like Michael Batty and Pierre Frankhauser. up 2. Complexity and fractal boundaries

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Ecology and the Fractal Mind in the New Architecture: a Conversation

Suggested reading

The Dictionary of Urbanism

Ecology and the Fractal Mind in the New Architecture: a Conversation

1. Fractals 2. C omplexity and fractal boundaries 3. C reative freedom 4. Universality 5. Jungian archetypes 6. Ecology 7. The fractal mind 8. Our vanishing heritage 9. The collective mind Bibliography Nikos A. Salingaros, 1999 - Disclaimer

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