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Life by Architecture
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KATARXIS

Life by Architecture

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Funeral Home, Crematorium, Memorial Garden and Colombarium
by Sandy Vitzthum, Vermont

You all know "Death By Architecture", an excellent website with the most competent information on architectural competitions worldwide... However, this gloomy connotation! Katarxis cannot but associate architecture with life, life being the highest level of complexity of nature, the sacred paradigm of all creation... Even funeral monuments are about life and about memory which is, as Leon Krier wrote, an essential condition of life! They commemorate not death but life, -they maintain the living memory of our ancestors, our relatives, our heroes in the beautiful monuments of a durable presence.

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Global Village Tasis, American School in Lugano
Charrette Drawing by David Mayernik

This page is reserved to a series of allied, affiliated or simply enthousiastic websites contributing by their theoretical or practical support to an architecture and an urbanism in which life can blossom, in which also the "good life" has found its "Polis"...

" The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked in inner conflict. "

Christopher Alexander

" The Timeless Way of Building " (Oxford University Press)

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The Close, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
by Dover, Kohl&Partners with Duany&Plater-Zyberk

" They are alive. They have that sleepy, awkward grace which comes from perfect ease.
And the Alhambra, some tiny gothic church, an old New England house, an Alpine hill village, an ancient Zen temple, a seat by a mountain stream, a courtyard filled with blue and yellow tiles among the earth. What is it they have in common? They are beautiful, ordered, harmonious - yes, all these things. But especially, and what strikes to the heart, they live. "

Christopher Alexander

" The Timeless Way of Building " (Oxford University Press)

HarperNorth Courtyard

Harper Courtyards, West Hollywood, California
by Moule & Polizoides, Architects and Urbanists

If you like to know more about the architects, urbanists or authors published in Katarxis, you can get all authorized information and contact references at the following address:

XXIst Century Traditional Architects & Urbanists

" Here some good news: the 20th century is over,
we don't need to be Modern anymore! "

James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere" and "Home from Nowhere", offers a stimulating site with the sharpest insights in suburbia and its apories and the most inspiring visions of its urban, cultural and moral reconstruction.
Please click below to visit James Howard Kunstler's website:

James Howard Kunstler

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Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
Dover, Kohl & Partners with Duany & Plater-Zyberk

" Mathematical chaos is the study of hidden patterns in systems that are only apparently chaotic. There is no change in the fundamental aim of mathematics -which is to discover patterns -in going from Newtonian to chaotic models. "

Nikos Salingaros

" Architecture, Patterns and Mathematics "

Since ancient times architecture was indissociably linked to the understanding of nature's harmonic relationships and their articulation in elegant and clear mathematical models.
The quest for an updated knowledge on nature and the universe was considered as an essential foundation of theory and practice.
In this perspective Nikos Salingaros, a mathematician at the University of Texas in San Antonio, has been an unfatiguable defender of a scientific theory for an architecture and urbanism based on timeless principles, on universal laws as well as on durable qualities and popular acceptance.
To visit Nikos Salingaros rich archives of scientifical articles on architecture and urbanism, please click on the link below:

Nikos Salingaros: Architecture, Patterns and Urbanism

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Detail, Tasis, American School in Lugano
by David Mayernik

" The people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done it for centuries, by using languages which I call pattern languages. A pattern language gives each person who uses it, the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences. "

Christopher Alexander

" The Timeless Way of Building ", Oxford University Press

Cristopher Alexander's website patternlanguage.com offers a rich variety of resources and tools for both professionals and laymen who believe architecture to be necessarily imbedded in timeless principles of beauty, comfort and solidity.

It presents both profound theoritical and practical support for a contemporary building crafts rooted in popular wisdom, common sense and scientific evidence.
Please click on the link below to visit Christopher Alexander's website:

www.patternlanguage.com

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House in Portugal, Detail
Jose Cornelio da Silva and Jose Franqueira Baganha

" There are general laws and nature broods on these laws to create diversity. Harmony provides the pattern and chaos gives the freedom. "

Trinh Xuan Thuan

" Le Chaos et l'Harmonie ", Editions Fayard (1998)

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Resources for Urban Planning

" PLANetizen is a public-interest information exchange for the urban planning and development community. We provide a daily, one-stop resource for urban planning news, job opportunities, commentary and events. "

Please click on the link below to visit PLANetizen:

PLANetizen, your Digital Source for Planning

" CYBURBIA provides a comprehensive directory of Internet resources relevant to planning, architecture, and the built environment. "

Please click on the link below to visit CYBURBIA:

CYBURBIA, the Urban Planning Portal

PLANUM, European Journal of Planning, produced by a partnership of leading journals from eight European countries and promoting knowledge, information and suitable policies in urban development and environment preservation.

Please click on the link below to visit PLANUM:

Planum, European Journal of Planning

RUDI, Resource for Urban Design Information

Please click on the link below to visit RUDI:

Resource for Urban Design Information

The Town Paper, the newsletter for traditional neighborhoods. Keeps you updated with the newest from new traditional townbuilding.Order now the Council Report, "presenting fresh voices and new viewpoints on the design of new urban towns and neighborhoods.."

Please click the link below to visit the Townpaper:

The Town Paper

Contact the Town Paper to order the Council Report:

info@tndtownpaper.com

CARFREE CITIES is a very informative and passionate site about how to reclaim city streets for human activities rather than for automobile congestion..Numerous links and resources about urban planning and alternatives for sustainable urban traffic.

Please click on the link below to visit CARFREE CITIES:

Carfree Cities

" Village At believes the best way to create villages and cities that are safe, walkable, healthy, prosperous, and charming, is to examine and learn from existing places that have these same qualities. "

Please click on the link below to visit Village At:

Village At

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Pergola by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841)

Cultural Resources of Special Interest

" The Friends of Schinkel is a non-profit, non-governmental, non-religious, academic organization dedicated to the study of the 19th century German neo-classicist designer, architect, and urbanist Karl Friedrich Schinkel. "

This site could be like others which deal with important historical architects and buildings. -It is not!
This site is a genuine resource of richly linked information on classical architecture and urbanism, articulated through the outstanding and emblematic figure of Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

Please click on the link below to visit the Friends of Schinkel:

Friends Of Schinkel

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Euclides resolving a geometrical figure

" Scientia reddit opus pulchrum "

Nexus Network Journal, an excellent research resource on the relationship between architecture and mathematics,a relationship which has been a fundamental preoccupation of the homo sapiens since the origins of architecture and city-building..

Please click on the link below to visit Nexus:

Nexus Network Journal

Revista de Estudios Arquitectonicos, "Revista de difusion de contenidos inteletuales del Arte y Arquitectura tradicional", discusses philosophical, symbolical and intellectual foundations of traditional architecture, with a particular focus on its hermetic and esoteric traditions, sacred geometries and symbolical forms.

Please click on the link below to visit Revista de Estudios Arquitectonicos:

Revista de Estudios Arquitectonicos