Habraken is essential for understanding and practising contemporary architectural design. He started out his career pointing out the limitations of the then (and often still) prevailing design approach towards housing and large buildings, and proposing methods for systems design meant to allow several levels of control, and changing configurations over time (this was extremely influential, and all relevant contemporary building and systems design is heir to his work directly or indirectly). He then went on to explore and explain the underlying order for architectural/urban configurations, and in this book he explains the orders of 'Form' (which could also be called construction), 'Territory' (boundaries, control) and 'Understanding' (shared patterns, systems and types) that make built environments be what they are, illustrating everything with perfectly selected examples. If you know the examples, the beauty is in the way he makes the underlying orders coherent and understandable. And you will not know a few of the examples, so the book is also beautiful as a pointer for further studies.
3 other smaller books by him that develop details, or follow implications:
- Supports, An Alternative to Mass Housing';
- Variations, The Systematic Design of Supports;
- <---- this is where 'The Structure of the Ordinary' falls chronologically;
- Palladio's Children
all by Habraken, all essential.
