Quality without a name
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The quality without a name (QWAN) is a phrase used by Christopher Alexander in his book The Timeless Way of Building. In the book, Alexander describes a certain quality which we should seek, but which is unnamed:
| “ | There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of a person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive. | ” |
| “ | This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from a seed. | ” |
He goes on to say:
| “ | The specific patterns 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. The more living patterns there are in a place-a room, a building, or a town-the more it comes to life as an entity, the more it glows, the more it glows, the more it has that self maintaining fire which is the quality without a name. | ” |
Alexander considers, and rejects, several words which might describe this quality:
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- alive
- whole
- comfortable
- free
- exact
- egoless
- eternal
These words are related to the Quality, but Alexander feels they fail to truly capture the Quality without a name. Some feel that "aliveness" and "wholeness" come closest to describing the quality.
Alexander's work has strongly affected a variety of discipines, including architecture, urban planning, and software engineering.
