Essensen av system - A

Min kommentar til artikkelen Kommunane er vertskap for viktige samtaler, skrevet av Halvard Dahle Lægreid, publisert hos Levevei.no:

Den fundamentale feilen med dagens planlegging er at den arbeider under hva Alexander kaller for system B, hvor man forholder seg til virkeligheten ut fra et mekanistisk verdensbilde. Dvs. at planlegging ikke er en morfologisk prosess, morfogenese som utgangspunkt for arkitektur og stedsskaping er forøvrig tema for hans neste bok.

The Eishin Campus i Japan er et av veldig få eksempler på miljøer som er skapt ut fra system A i nyere tid, og tema for Alexanders siste bok. For å gi en pekepinn på hvordan en planleggingsprosess fungerer innen system A, eller et organisk verdensbilde, vil jeg gi et lite utdrag fra boka:

The essence of site layout in system-A, and in the way which it fundamentally differs from making a plan in a planning office, lies in the fact that one physically draws the site plan out from configurations that may be seen because they are discernible in the land. Thus the site plan is not an abstractly conceived, or designed, or invented figure, but a figure pulled out from the features of the land itself. This activity comes from the root nature of system-A. It is based on the use of feeling that allows you, and shows you how to judge the wholeness of a configuration. It is a feeling-based estimation of the degree of wholeness in a piece of land, and whether large or small in scale, it is a dynamic, ever-changing process, constantly monitored by feelings and sensitivity to details which seek harmonious results.

In system-A, it is always the wholeness of the place that matters. To intensify the wholeness of any place - whether it consists of existing buildings in a town, or of virgin land that is largely unbuilt - proposed construction and buildings must be decided, and that means "felt" and thought through on the site itself. It is really not possible to do it in any other way, since the relationships which exist between the buildings and the world around them are complex and subtle.

On a drawing or a plan, one simply does not see enough. The drawn plan does not give enough information. So trying to make decisions by drawing on a plan is doomed to failure. To produce a plan that has reality, and to bring the actual place itself to life, decisions are made gradually, on the site itself, under circumstances where one visualizes the situation as the whole it really is. Step by step, this brings buildings positions to life in the mind's eye - and so, in imagination, one conceives the buildings literally, in their full size and volumes as they are really going to be. - Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth. A Struggle Between Two World-Systems, side 163-164