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 REVIEWS Beautiful Work, Brutal Battle David Creelman discovers the dramatic stor y of how a tranquil architectural oasis came into being only after a pitched battle between mechanism and beauty The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle between Two World-Systems Christopher Alexander, with Hans Joachim Neis & Maggie Moore Alexander Oxford University Press USA, 2012 ISBN: 9780199898077 Christopher Alexander’s new book, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth, will interest three sorts of reader. The first is anyone who cares about deep ideas in architecture – hardly surprisingly, as Alexander is a brilliantly thoughtful architect. It will also be attractive to anyone with an interest in profound ideas; the battle he refers to is between an organic and a mechanistic view of the world, which plays out in many fields. Finally, it will appeal to anyone looking for a dramatic story. At first the title seems over the top but it is justified by the saga Alexander tells of the construction of Eishin Campus. Eishin is a high-school campus set outside Tokyo, complete with a charming set of buildings and small lake, which Alexander built in 1985. I have visited Eishin, and my main memory is of a lovely and tranquil place. That this charming school was the cause of a battle involving giant Japanese construction firms, boardroom backstabbing and even the Yakuza is astonishing. The reason the construction of Eishin caused such conflict is testament to how important Alexander’s ideas are. He describes his approach to building as System A, which hardly seems radical to the layperson. He believes in sketching out the plans and doing that work as much as possible on-site so that he gets a real feel for the place. Then, as construction proceeds, those sketches come to life and are continually tweaked as the work unfolds. What might have been conceived as a two-metre entrance may work better just a little bit wider. A wall, once in place, might not feel quite right and might need some ornamentation. No problem: the architect is the builder and can readily make the changes. System A is an organic, evolutionary approach, always adjusting the elements so that the whole feels right. That approach hardly sounds like a declaration of war, yet, as Alexander explains in this book, it is utterly at odds with the belief system and processes that most architects use. System B, as Alexander describes it, has an architect draft a detailed plan on paper. This paper is then handed to a builder, who attempts to build it as cheaply as possible in order to maximise profit. Anyone can see that the battle between System A and System B is by no means limited to architecture. There is a frightening gap between how the two systems perceive reality. Can the world be abstracted onto paper such that the blueprint and the actual construction of a building can sit disconnected in two different realms? Or is the world a place where meaningful work must be done step by step, in what Alexander calls “wholeness-enhancing transformations”, where each move is made to make things a little better, a little more beautiful, a little more alive? Readers of neuroscience may be familiar with the work of Iain McGilchrist. In The Master and His Emissary (reviewed in Resurgence 261), McGilchrist talks about the battle between the right brain’s holistic take on the world and the left brain’s abstract approach to modelling reality. While both have value, McGilchrist points out that the left brain is utterly intolerant of the right brain’s worldview. Similarly it was this dramatic intolerance of System B for System A, this utter inability to conceive that Alexander’s approach could work, that was behind the intrigue that dogged the Eishin project. If you are interested in making change in the world, you should read this book. It shows that between a beautiful set of ideas and a beautiful end result lies a brutal battleground of people indoctrinated into different views. Add to that the commercial interests at stake, and you have a very troubling situation that will test anyone’s courage. Yet Alexander and his team did succeed. You can feel the proof of that as you walk around Eishin. So perhaps that’s the final gift of the book. It delivers not just ideas and stories, but also the courage to persist in doing something valuable. A colonnaded street within the Eishin Campus © Center for Environmental Structure David Creelman is a business writer who has followed architect Christopher Alexander’s work for many years. 64 Resurgence & Ecologist November/December 2012
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REVIEWS  © www.bristolpound.org Making Money Pat Conaty discovers how we could take the power away from banks Future Money: Breakdown or Breakthrough? James Rober tson Green Books, 2012 ISBN: 9781900322980 This book describes how the money system fails to serve the wellbeing of most of the world’s people, and motivates both rich and poor to destroy other life on the planet on which our own survival depends. Moreover, the system is now breaking down. A vital reform is to change the way we create money, which is usually created by governments as coins and notes. But it can also of course be created by communities. However, the main creators of money are banks, which create 97% of the UK money supply as debt. James Robertson argues convincingly that this largely unknown fact is the core underlying cause of the global financial crisis and that until money can be put on a debt-free foundation, the problems of boom and bust will continue. Moreover, the prospect of an ecological economy will remain blocked because compounding interest drives the need for growth. Seigniorage is the ancient right of rulers to hold an exclusive monopoly in the issuing of money. The profit margin between the cost of producing coins and bank notes and their monetary value has been a good earner for monarchs and governments and this remains so for the 3% of publicly produced money. But how did the banks displace the government and take over that lucrative monopoly? The historic change began in 1694, when King William III needed funds for his war with Louis XIV of France. Parliament would not let him raise taxes further, so William Paterson set up the Bank of England as a private bank to lend him the money. We have become increasingly indebted nationally since. Banking grew out of the goldsmith trade where initial loans were of precious metals. The IOUs issued by goldsmiths for the safekeeping of precious metals circulated increasingly as the early form of paper money. This innovation was efficient and goldsmiths noted that they could issue more IOUs than commodities held and lend just the paper. This was the origin of fractional reserve banking, the creation of money out of thin air as debt. As with Northern Rock, bank runs periodically reveal the cupboard to be bare, and increasing bankruptcies led to the Bank Charter Act of 1844, which removed from banks the power to produce paper money, transferring this right to the government. Unfortunately, fractional reserve banking was not banned then and the banks simply developed cheque accounts as a new form of promissory note. Thus, passing relatively unnoticed, the bank creation of money as debt has grown inexorably for decades. In the 1920s C.H. Douglas and Frederick Soddy pushed for an end to the power of banks to create debt money. Soddy called for 100% money, whereby banks could only lend from their deposit base – the practice that economists and the public erroneously assume is the case today. Douglas called for Social Credit, a form of Citizen’s Income. In a report for new economics foundation in 2000, Robertson and German economist Joseph Huber revived these forgotten arguments for debt-free money. Robertson’s book makes the case compellingly and spells out the combined financial, social and ecological benefits. UK government debt was £300 billion in 2001. In bailing out the banks, national debt rose to £600 billion in 2008 and is now over £1 trillion. The interest payments alone were £43 billion in 2011, far higher than the national education budget of £33 billion and not far below the £58 billion spent on welfare. Government can readily create money electronically. Quantitative easing has injected £375 billion into the economy, interest-free, since 2009. Robertson’s monetary reform plan calls on government to replace our debt-based money with a Citizen’s Income and remove from the banks their money-creation powers over a three-year transition period. Robertson’s calculations reveal that this democratic nationalisation of the money supply would provide an ongoing annual saving of £75 billion for all citizens and a further oneoff saving of £1,500 billion during the changeover from debt money to interest-free money. Money could become our servant, and debt no longer our master. Pat Conaty is a Fellow of new economics foundation. www.neweconomics.org Issue 275 Resurgence & Ecologist 65

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 REVIEWS

Beautiful Work, Brutal Battle David Creelman discovers the dramatic stor y of how a tranquil architectural oasis came into being only after a pitched battle between mechanism and beauty

The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle between Two World-Systems Christopher Alexander, with Hans Joachim Neis & Maggie Moore Alexander Oxford University Press USA, 2012 ISBN: 9780199898077

Christopher Alexander’s new book, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth, will interest three sorts of reader. The first is anyone who cares about deep ideas in architecture – hardly surprisingly, as Alexander is a brilliantly thoughtful architect. It will also be attractive to anyone with an interest in profound ideas; the battle he refers to is between an organic and a mechanistic view of the world, which plays out in many fields. Finally, it will appeal to anyone looking for a dramatic story. At first the title seems over the top but it is justified by the saga Alexander tells of the construction of Eishin Campus.

Eishin is a high-school campus set outside Tokyo, complete with a charming set of buildings and small lake, which Alexander built in 1985. I have visited Eishin, and my main memory is of a lovely and tranquil place. That this charming school was the cause of a battle involving giant Japanese construction firms, boardroom backstabbing and even the Yakuza is astonishing.

The reason the construction of Eishin caused such conflict is testament to how important Alexander’s ideas are. He describes his approach to building as System A, which hardly seems radical to the layperson. He believes in sketching out the plans and doing that work as much as possible on-site so that he gets a real feel for the place. Then, as construction proceeds, those sketches come to life and are continually tweaked as the work unfolds. What might have been conceived as a two-metre entrance may work better just a little bit wider. A wall, once in place, might not feel quite right and might need some ornamentation. No problem: the architect is the builder and can readily make the changes. System A is an organic, evolutionary approach, always adjusting the elements so that the whole feels right.

That approach hardly sounds like a declaration of war, yet, as Alexander explains in this book, it is utterly at odds with the belief system and processes that most architects use. System B, as Alexander describes it, has an architect draft a detailed plan on paper. This paper is then handed to a builder, who attempts to build it as cheaply as possible in order to maximise profit.

Anyone can see that the battle between System A and System B is by no means limited to architecture. There is a frightening gap between how the two systems perceive reality. Can the world be abstracted onto paper such that the blueprint and the actual construction of a building can sit disconnected in two different realms? Or is the world a place where meaningful work must be done step by step, in what Alexander calls “wholeness-enhancing transformations”, where each move is made to make things a little better, a little more beautiful, a little more alive?

Readers of neuroscience may be familiar with the work of Iain McGilchrist. In The Master and His Emissary (reviewed in Resurgence 261), McGilchrist talks about the battle between the right brain’s holistic take on the world and the left brain’s abstract approach to modelling reality. While both have value, McGilchrist points out that the left brain is utterly intolerant of the right brain’s worldview. Similarly it was this dramatic intolerance of System B for System A, this utter inability to conceive that Alexander’s approach could work, that was behind the intrigue that dogged the Eishin project.

If you are interested in making change in the world, you should read this book. It shows that between a beautiful set of ideas and a beautiful end result lies a brutal battleground of people indoctrinated into different views. Add to that the commercial interests at stake, and you have a very troubling situation that will test anyone’s courage. Yet Alexander and his team did succeed. You can feel the proof of that as you walk around Eishin. So perhaps that’s the final gift of the book. It delivers not just ideas and stories, but also the courage to persist in doing something valuable.

A colonnaded street within the Eishin Campus

© Center for Environmental Structure

David Creelman is a business writer who has followed architect Christopher Alexander’s work for many years.

64 Resurgence & Ecologist

November/December 2012

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