Fifteen Fundamental Properties (2022)

>Presumably a building serves purposes other than being seen. Though these were posed by an architect, "residents", "occupants", "users" etc are never mentioned -- only "spectators".

This is just an artifact of compressing 1500+ pages (iirc) into the length a blog post. Alexander was (RIP) one of the most fanatically human-focused designers of his field. His visual description of strong centers and spectators was usually hyper-literal; users look at the building while they use it, so its look should facilitate its use. In the large this means the form of the building should help direct the user's attention towards what they're using it for, meaning anything from shaping a courtyard to keep occupants flowing smoothly and prevent disorientation to positioning furniture and light sources and windows to keep the user unimpeded, mentally centered, and comfortable (He even leaned in to an early version of iterative design, encouraging constructing models, and then doing the real construction in phases with the architect on-site, to reassess and dial in things like room size and window positioning)[0]. In the small it means designing features and ornamentation of the construction to avoid either the extremes of cold flatness or excess-born noise, meaning elements should be on the one hand artistic and interesting to look at, but at the same time subtle and undemanding while they're in the periphery of whatever you're actually doing in the building.

Alexander seems to have started his work on A Pattern Language, whose subtitle is "Towns, Buildings, Construction", out of exasperation with what he saw as a fashion of buildings designed to look good in the magazine perspective drawing instead of feeling good to the user , and city plans designed to geometrically impress from the scale of the district blueprint instead of the person on the street. Language of "the spectator" is in reference to his attempt to shift this perspective back to where it belonged.

[0]I believe this was during TNoO, but even in A Pattern Language and its companions The Oregon Experiment and The Timeless Way of Building he encouraged using techniques and materials that would enable a great deal of post-construction rennovation, and for organizations to devote as much money to enhancing old projects as to building new ones.

I couldn't answer since I have no idea what you are talking about.

"The Nature of Order" is the four-volume book Christopher Alexander introduced his analysis tool of the fifteen fundamental properties of order in. It's named in the first paragraph of this blog post.

Right but the question I was responding to was if the whole thing was Design Astrology. This question alone is open to interpretation let alone The fifteen fundamental properties which is the topic of the blog post.

I tried to answer the question the best I could best on my design education which does include Christopher Alexander. I answered based on the context of the question and the level of that the questioner seemed to approach the topic.

I would think a well reasoned critique of my answer would include my errors and how they misled the questioner.

I still think my answer is fine despite not having read the original 4 volume source of the 15 properties that the blog post referenced.

If you would like to explain how this language is not Design Astrology I'm sure it would be more interesting than harping on other answers.

I see that you like long answers and that is fine. Some people like short answers that get to the point.

I guess I was trying to keep the conversation at the same scale:)