Christopher Alexander's 15 New Rules For Great Buildings

Jessie Scanlon provides an abridged version of Christopher Alexander's "The Nature of Order.""Written over the course of three decades, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (Center for Environmental Structure) is polemical, ambitious, and contrarian. "I didn't set out to write a book about the universe," he says. "I just wanted to heal architecture." The four-volume set outlines the properties that Alexander believes underlie beauty in art, nature, and great buildings. Because his ideas fill 2,150 pages, here's the abridged version."