What makes design so very difficult for most people is that they do not use a generative sequence; instead they try to design all at once, in a jumble.

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• These step-by-step processes are very simple, virtually unhampered by concepts or by too much thought about the intricacy of design.claim0.789
  The commonality underlying all the examples of living process.
• A fixed generative sequence, when interacting with a variety of contexts, yields essentially infinite unique designs.claim0.788
  Refutes the charge that generative sequences produce uniform results; the Pasadena examples show organic variety without modular repetition.
• Our present forms of planning, design, construction, and production are deeply flawed because they do not include step-by-step adaptation and cannot in principle do so as they are.claim0.777
  Sweeping indictment of current production systems.
• The great majority of modern buildings are awkward assemblies of unrelated components, lacking the coherence necessary to be living designs.claim0.777
  Aesthetic judgment on modern buildings.
• In modern architecture, neither design nor construction typically works step by step; instead there is a fixed end-state produced without realistic feedback.claim0.776
  Contrast between living process and current architectural practice.
• Successful group consensus on complex design is achieved not by choosing among alternatives but by resolving a long sequence of very small, particular questions one at a time in the right orderclaim0.774
  Alexander's solution to the 'elephant designed by a committee' problem.
• For a given task, the number of all sequences which work is tiny by comparison with the huge number of all possible sequences; less than a trillionth of all 6 × 10^23 possible sequences actually work well enough.claim0.772
  A combinatorial argument that good sequences are astronomically rare, emphasizing the difficulty of discovery.
• There are more bad next steps than good ones in a design process; typically perhaps 90-95 out of 100 possible next steps make the thing worse.claim0.769
  Quantitative intuition to justify radical skepticism toward early ideas.