© Sophie Elizabeth Alexander

To write these lines in remembrance of Christopher Alexander, who died on 17 March, we obtained his date of birth from Wikipedia, perhaps the field where his influence is most firmly imprinted on a daily basis. He came into the world in pre-Anschluss Vienna but grew up and studied – majoring in both architecture and mathematics – in England and the US, where he held a professorship at Berkeley for almost 40 years and published, among other books, A City is Not a Tree, an early critique of sprawl; and A Pattern Language, which codifies an effective method of design and organization that has spurred the work of architects and computer programmers alike.