The Architecture of Being Alive...

Yet each of us knows from experience the feeling which this quality creates in us. It is the time when we are most right, most just, most sad, and most hilarious.

And for this reason, each one of us can also recognize this quality when it occurs in buildings. We can identify the towns and buildings, streets and gardens, flower beds, chairs, tables, tablecloths, wine bottles, garden seats, and kitchen sinks which have this quality- simply by asking whether they are like us when we are free.

We need only ask ourselves which places- which towns, which buildings, which rooms, have made us feel like this- which of them have that breath of sudden passion in them, which whispers to us, and lets us recall those moments when we were ourselves.

And the connection between the two- between this quality in our own lives, and the same quality in our surroundings- is not just an analogy, or similarity. The fact is that each one creates the other.

Christopher Alexander
The Timeless Way of Building