A practice for noticing the life in what you make
Christopher Alexander (1936–2022) spent forty years studying what makes things feel alive — buildings, towns, fabrics, paintings, software. He found fifteen properties that tend to appear wherever life appears. Not rules. Observations.
This is a walk through those fifteen properties. Bring something you're working on to mind — a piece of writing, a design, a codebase, a garden, a plan, a relationship. Hold it lightly.
At each stop, notice what you notice. There are no right answers. The practice is the noticing.
Takes about 10–20 minutes, depending on how long you linger.
Bring something to mind.
A project, a piece, a design. Something you're making or have made. Don't describe it — just hold it. Let it be present while we walk.
in what you're making
Find what's weakest. Strengthen it. Return.
This is Alexander's fundamental differentiating process — and it's how all living structure grows. Not by building on strengths, but by finding what's faint and giving it more life.
Your work is never finished. It's always partially evolved, always becoming. The question is always the same: where is the life thinnest? What latent center wants to exist but doesn't yet?
Strengthen the weakest part. Test that the whole has more life. Then return to the beginning.
Based on the work of Christopher Alexander, especially The Nature of Order (2002–2005). The fifteen properties and the fundamental differentiating process are his. This tool is one interpretation — inevitably incomplete. Read Alexander for the real thing.