conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book about Clean, Well-Lighted, Late entitled A Clean, Well-Lighted Place?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Late at night, a deaf old man is the sole patron in a cafe.\nNearby, two waiters, one young, the other older, talk about him.\nWhen the old man orders another brandy, the young waiter purposefully overfills his glass.\nThe waiters speculate about the old man\'s recent suicide attempt.\nThe young waiter wants the patron to go home, and complains that he never gets to bed before three o\'clock, while the older waiter is more understanding of the old man\'s plight.\nAgain the old man asks for another brandy, but this time the young man tells him the cafe is closed.\nAfter he leaves, the waiters resume their discussion.\nThe young waiter wants to hurry home to his wife; the older waiter is more thoughtful.\nHe muses on youth, observes that he is now one "of those who like to stay late in the cafe," likening himself to the old man.\nHe mentions the importance to some people of having "a clean, well-lighted place" in which they can spend time.\nAfter the young waiter leaves, the older waiter reflects on the emptiness of his own life and returns to his home and his insomnia.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book? End with the sentence '"'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
  At the core of Alexander's philosophy is the belief that architecture must not be approached as an abstract art form, but as a powerful social instrument—indeed, as the very framework of society. It is the architect's duty, therefore, to create unselfconsciously beautiful structures that bring harmony and order to the world. That not all architects share his ideas about the role of architecture or his definition of beauty—and some intentionally erect disharmonious structures on the landscape—makes Alexander "incredibly angry." "I find that incomprehensible," he says. "I find it irresponsible. I find it nutty."
  Peter Eisenman is an influential New York architect whose ideas about architecture run 180 degrees counter to Alexander's. He designs extremely abstract buildings that have been called "explorations into pure form"—stark, complex structures that are intentionally "incongruent" and "antihumanist" to reflect the charged anxiety of the nuclear age. In 1983, in the course of a public debate at Harvard, Alexander told Eisenman, "People who believe as you do are really fucking up the whole profession of architecture right now, by propagating these beliefs."
  Alexander feels strongly that real, honest-to-god beauty in a building—the kind of architecture that speaks to the soul—is not some slippery value that changes according to personal preference or the ebb and flow of fashion, but is a hard-and-fast thing. "The fact is," Alexander says, "that the difference between a good building and a bad building, between a good town and a bad town, is an objective matter. It is the difference between health and sickness, wholeness and dividedness, self-maintenance and self-destruction."
  Good buildings, Alexander believes, "are alive." They have a "timeless quality, a sleepy awkward grace." When asked to cite examples, Alexander will mention Gothic churches, the old farmhouses of Norway and Colonial New England, the hill villages of the European Alps, the mud huts of Central Africa, the temples of Japan.
  Not coincidentally, architects had little or nothing to do with the creation of the centuries-old structures Alexander admires so much. Those buildings were shaped by masons and carpenters according to a repertoire of details that had been worked out, refined, and passed along over the course of many generations as a way to solve recurring design problems. Alexander calls these repeatedly used solutions "patterns"; a collection of individual patterns large enough to create entire buildings and towns becomes a "pattern language."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: However, these patterns are not just a reflection of one man's architectural taste: Alexander arrived at them after more than eight years of objective experimentation and study, conducted both at Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies and at his Center for Environmental Structure. Thus, each pattern, Alexander argues, may be looked upon as scientific hypothesis: all are tentative and free to evolve with new experience and observation. But he is confident that "many of the patterns here are archetypal—so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seems likely they will be a part of human nature and human action as much in five hundred years as they are today."
  There are those who might refer to Alexander's ideas in a not entirely kind way as being quintessentially Californian. Alexander has in fact lived in Berkeley since 1963, but most of the twenty-six years of his life before that were spent in Europe, and his thinking probably reflects the values of the Old World as much as it reflects the New World ideals of California.
  Born in Vienna in 1936, Alexander was the only child of two classical archaeologists. As a child, he was something of a prodigy in math and science; he won top scholarships first to Oundle, the prestigious, science-oriented British prep school, then to Cambridge University. In 1953, shortly before embarking on his university studies, he happened to see an exhibit of architectural photographs that excited him so much that he decided then and there to become an architect. At the urging of his father, who was "horrified" at that prospect, Alexander studied math as an undergraduate, but after taking his degree, he entered the university's architecture school.
  His experience there was frustrating in the extreme. To Alexander's scientifically inclined mind, in order to carry on any sort of intelligent discourse about architecture one first had to be able to evaluate it in an objective way. He wanted to get right to the nub of "what made things beautiful" but found that nobody seemed interested in exploring matters at that murky depth. So after two years he departed for the United States to continue his dogged pursuit of the essence of architectural beauty at Harvard. His doctoral thesis there is a now well-known work titled "Notes on the Synthesis of Form," an attempt to empirically determine exactly what was going on in a good building design. Pointedly, the examples of good design he chose to illustrate his thesis were not drawn from the creations of the hottest architects of the day—Mies van der Rohe, Charles-Édouard Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, or even Frank Lloyd Wright—but from the traditional structures of preindustrial societies.
  After Harvard, Alexander went to India for a year to take a firsthand look at preindustrial architecture and the forces that shape it. He built his first building there, a small school, and then in 1963 returned to the United States to take a teaching position with the architecture school at the University of California at Berkeley, a job he still holds today.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He built his first building there, a small school, and then in 1963 returned to the United States to take a teaching position with the architecture school at the University of California at Berkeley, a job he still holds today. Thus, each pattern, Alexander argues, may be looked upon as scientific hypothesis: all are tentative and free to evolve with new experience and observation. But he is confident that "many of the patterns here are archetypal—so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seems likely they will be a part of human nature and human action as much in five hundred years as they are today."
  There are those who might refer to Alexander's ideas in a not entirely kind way as being quintessentially Californian. Alexander has in fact lived in Berkeley since 1963, but most of the twenty-six years of his life before that were spent in Europe, and his thinking probably reflects the values of the Old World as much as it reflects the New World ideals of California.
  Born in Vienna in 1936, Alexander was the only child of two classical archaeologists. As a child, he was something of a prodigy in math and science; he won top scholarships first to Oundle, the prestigious, science-oriented British prep school, then to Cambridge University. In 1953, shortly before embarking on his university studies, he happened to see an exhibit of architectural photographs that excited him so much that he decided then and there to become an architect. At the urging of his father, who was "horrified" at that prospect, Alexander studied math as an undergraduate, but after taking his degree, he entered the university's architecture school.
  His experience there was frustrating in the extreme. To Alexander's scientifically inclined mind, in order to carry on any sort of intelligent discourse about architecture one first had to be able to evaluate it in an objective way. He wanted to get right to the nub of "what made things beautiful" but found that nobody seemed interested in exploring matters at that murky depth. So after two years he departed for the United States to continue his dogged pursuit of the essence of architectural beauty at Harvard. His doctoral thesis there is a now well-known work titled "Notes on the Synthesis of Form," an attempt to empirically determine exactly what was going on in a good building design. Pointedly, the examples of good design he chose to illustrate his thesis were not drawn from the creations of the hottest architects of the day—Mies van der Rohe, Charles-Édouard Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, or even Frank Lloyd Wright—but from the traditional structures of preindustrial societies.
  After Harvard, Alexander went to India for a year to take a firsthand look at preindustrial architecture and the forces that shape it.However, these patterns are not just a reflection of one man's architectural taste: Alexander arrived at them after more than eight years of objective experimentation and study, conducted both at Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies and at his Center for Environmental Structure.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last two paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Cosmetic imperfections aside, the trellis is a handsome structure—a fact that Erganian acknowledges. And Alexander went on to design the rest of the shopping plaza. Concerned that any loose ends that might develop on this much larger project could prove prohibitively expensive, however, Erganian showed Alexander's preliminary plans to a contractor he had worked with before, to corroborate Alexander's estimates—only to find that it was impossible for a conventional contractor even to submit a bid from the sketchy plans that are part of Alexander's unorthodox design methods. When Alexander wanted to begin construction before his plans were complete enough to receive the building department's final approval, Erganian says, he began to "put the skids on" as a client. Alexander has yet to finish the plans and secure a building permit, according to Erganian; Alexander says he is unwilling to go on until he has a building contract for the project from the developer. As things stand now, it seems doubtful that the shopping center—plans for which have cost Erganian, all told, close to $50,000—will ever be built, although Alexander says he is still hoping to reestablish their relationship.
  Alexander insists that if Erganian had only been able to suspend his doubts, the project would have turned out beautifully. That has indeed been the case with Alexander's most impressive accomplishment to date, the Eishin Gakuen campus. The first thirty buildings of the $10 million project were completed within 10 percent of budget and on a very tight schedule, and show impeccable workmanship (thanks, in no small part, to the skill of Japanese craftspeople). But successful though it was, this project, too, had its rocky moments. Apparently Alexander's methods were so confounding and threatening to standard practices that midway through the job, one of the Japanese construction companies involved in the project offered the client $80,000 in cash if he would fire Alexander. The manager of the school, Hisae Hosoi, turned down the money, kept Alexander on, and reports that the faculty and students are currently "very happy every day" with their new campus.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Cosmetic imperfections aside, the trellis is a handsome structure—a fact that Erganian acknowledges. And Alexander went on to design the rest of the shopping plaza. Concerned that any loose ends that might develop on this much larger project could prove prohibitively expensive, however, Erganian showed Alexander's preliminary plans to a contractor he had worked with before, to corroborate Alexander's estimates—only to find that it was impossible for a conventional contractor even to submit a bid from the sketchy plans that are part of Alexander's unorthodox design methods. When Alexander wanted to begin construction before his plans were complete enough to receive the building department's final approval, Erganian says, he began to "put the skids on" as a client. Alexander has yet to finish the plans and secure a building permit, according to Erganian; Alexander says he is unwilling to go on until he has a building contract for the project from the developer. As things stand now, it seems doubtful that the shopping center—plans for which have cost Erganian, all told, close to $50,000—will ever be built, although Alexander says he is still hoping to reestablish their relationship.
  Alexander insists that if Erganian had only been able to suspend his doubts, the project would have turned out beautifully. That has indeed been the case with Alexander's most impressive accomplishment to date, the Eishin Gakuen campus. The first thirty buildings of the $10 million project were completed within 10 percent of budget and on a very tight schedule, and show impeccable workmanship (thanks, in no small part, to the skill of Japanese craftspeople). But successful though it was, this project, too, had its rocky moments. Apparently Alexander's methods were so confounding and threatening to standard practices that midway through the job, one of the Japanese construction companies involved in the project offered the client $80,000 in cash if he would fire Alexander.