Christopher Alexander and Peter Rowe, Article Critique Example

Christopher Alexander exemplifies a constructive process within his designs; he demonstrates the concept of “fit” between the essentials of human needs and built forms.  “Alexander outlines the basis for such a theory of patterns as he searches out the characteristics of physical settings that create a true balance between human use and architectural form (353).”  Christopher Alexander demonstrates that the fundamental idea and most significant factor of the design process is form.  In essence, Christopher Alexander believes in order to receive the best results possible for any design process, the artist must first outline any problems, information, ideas, origins, etc.  Therefore, the artist will have solutions for any problems that he/she may face before they approach.

However, Peter Rowe’s creative theory is extremely different from that of Christopher Alexander.  Peter exemplifies the theory that there are no mistakes, because mistakes convey wasted time for the design process.  Peter Rowe feels that there is no distinctive starting or stopping points within the design process, because the designing process should be a progression of perfection.  “Tackling a problem of this type requires some initial insight, the exercise of some provisional set of rules, inferences, or plausible strategy, in other words, the use of heuristic reasoning (363).”  In heuristic reasoning, architectural design problems don’t exemplify any distinctive solution and several reasoning.  Peter Rowe “argues that initial ideas and concepts generated by the architect early in the design process will have profound effects on the final building solution, and the process itself should be seen as a co-mingling of problem-solving methods (362).”

In essence, in architectural designing, different artists’ demonstrate different techniques.  Christopher Alexander demonstrates a theory of form, which he refers to as “fix” design.  On the other hand, Peter Rowe abides by the theory of heuristic reasoning, where all architectural design problems don’t demonstrate a distinctive solution or origin.  Nevertheless, both architectural artists create unique and innovative designs, regardless of the design theory that is used within the process and development of the project.