Introduction

Dorian Taylor is a consulting designer. He’s been influenced by the work of the architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander, who died in March. In this conversation, we discuss Alexander’s influence on the design of built environments and software.

Show notes

• Dorian Taylor
• @doriantaylor on Twitter
• The Making of Making Sense (Dorian’s newsletter)
• At Any Given Moment in a Process (Dorian’s post about Christopher Alexander)
• Fifteen Properties Through an Information-Theoretic Lens  by Dorian Taylor
• Christopher Alexander
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander
• Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
• The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe by Christopher Alexander
• The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander
• The Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander
• A City Is Not a Tree by Christopher Alexander (PDF)
• Patterns in Architecture OOPSLA 1996 keynote lecture by Christopher Alexander (YouTube)
• Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins
• Gall’s Law (jarango.com)
• Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry
• Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry
• Eishin School, designed by Christopher Alexander et al
• Stata Center at MIT, designed by Franky Gehry
• The West Dean Visitor Centre, designed by Christopher Alexander et al
• Vineyard Farmer’s Market, designed by Christopher Alexander et al
• Claude Shannon
• Marvin Minsky
• John McCarthy
• J.C.R. Licklider
• Douglas Englebart
• Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community by Richard Gabriel

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