A Theory of Architecture
Four of the twelve chapters were originally written in collaboration with co-authors Michael Mehaffy, Terry Mikiten, Debora Tejada, and Hing-Sing Yu.
Writers who have spearheaded this general effort by writing popular science with serious implications include Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and Edward Osborne Wilson.
He proposes mathematical laws of scaling, argues for an essential role for fractals in architecture, and describes rules for coherence among subdivisions that can help produce a more pleasing design.
The book introduces many innovative science-based ways of approaching design, and opposes abstract or formal methods based on imageability.
He criticizes present-day architectural education for continuing to rely uncritically on models that he argues lead automatically to non-adaptivity and unsustainability.
Salingaros explores ways to clarify and formalize the understanding of aesthetic forms in the built environment, using mathematics, thermodynamics, Darwinism, complexity theory and cognitive sciences.
It helps them correct some of the misconceptions inherited in architectural education … Knowledge is usually presented to students in a retrospective way where abstract and symbolic generalizations used to describe research results do not convey the feel of the behavior of the phenomena they describe; the late Donald Schön emphasized this view in 1988 … Rather than giving students ready-made interpretations about the work of star architects, this book offers a deeper insight into the understanding of the true essence of architecture..."[6] Individual chapters have been translated into several languages.
Christopher Alexander and Salingaros claim to move past the limited philosophical tools of phenomenology to derive evidence-based results.
[13] In parallel with intellectual advances in other fields driven by the revolution in scientific research at the end of the last millennium, authors such as Salingaros, Alexander, and others seek to build theoretical knowledge in architecture from experimental findings.
The book discusses how the mind perceives and conceives architectural form, and postulates that fractal and other organizational mechanisms play a key role in perception.
[18] Most modern evolutionary biologists accept the idea that evolution is dependent on the geometry of the natural environment and thus must be consistent with biological structure and morphology.
The phrase "geometrical fundamentalism" in this book was coined by Michael Mehaffy and Salingaros as a provocative way of expressing the dominance of abstract, monolithic forms of Modern architecture.
The author claims that when looked at from the point of view of meme encapsulation and selection, many architectural phenomena that were difficult to explain become easier to understand.
