The Timeless Way of Building is, first and foremost, Christopher Alexander’s scathing critique of architecture. Not just modern architecture, or architecture as an art form, or even the practise of architects, but the very concept of architects and architecture.

Most of the book is concerned with the manifestation of “the quality without a name”, which for some reason Alexander doesn’t explicitly identify as 常道 until the end of the book. The extent to which a building follows the Dao determines how usable and therefore aesthetically pleasing it is. Only a personal relationship between the designer (and preferably builder) and each component of a room can cause it to follow the Dao. To the extent that its room follows the Dao, a building does, and on up to cities.

Alexander is unabashedly nostalgic for a time when peasants built their own homes. The Dao has been obscured in modern times, because it is difficult to craft each component of a room for its exact circumstances using modular components, and because professional architects have no clue what those circumstances are. As a result how to follow the Dao has been lost from culture. His proposal is that we painstakingly reconstruct it into Patterns (architectural anthropology). The minuscule collection his team have been able to collect so far are in the companion book, A Pattern Language.

One of the biggest impacts this pair of books has had is in software development. (It’s no surprise that it hasn’t had an impact in architecture.) Unfortunately, those introducing software “patterns” completely missed Alexander’s point. Patterns are just another artifact used within the development process, and at least half of them are nothing more than mechanisms to get around limitations in limited-by-design programming languages. If you accept the initial premise that software is like architecture, then following The Timeless Way involves empowering users to develop their own software and phasing out professionals.