Nikos Salingaros

Salingaros published substantive research on algebras, mathematical physics, electromagnetic fields, and thermonuclear fusion before turning his attention to architecture and urbanism. Salingaros still teaches mathematics, and is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is also on the Architecture faculties of universities in Italy, Mexico, and The Netherlands.

• Name — Nikos Salingaros • Born — 1952 • Birthplace — Perth, Australia • Workplaces — University of Texas at San Antonio • Education — Stony Brook University • Thesis Title — Certain algebraic structures and their applications to physics • Thesis Url — https: search.library.stonybrook.edu/permalink/01SUNY_STB/1m9tbf5/alma990003950130204856 • Thesis Year — 1978

Born to Greek parents, Salingaros is the only child of the popular composer Stelios Salingaros; he is also the nephew of the operatic baritone Spyros Salingaros.

Salingaros began working in the arts as a painter, but soon switched to the sciences. He obtained a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Miami, Florida. He took his Master's in 1974 and Doctorate in 1978 at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1982, he started a long-term collaboration with Christopher Alexander, becoming one of the editors of The Nature of Order, Alexander's four-volume masterwork on aesthetics and the geometric processes of nature.

Salingaros joined the Mathematics faculty of the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1983, where he remains today. In the 1990s, Salingaros began to publish his own research on architectural and urban form. In 1997 he was recipient of the first award ever by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for research on architectural topics. In 2003, he was elected to the Committee of Honor, International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU), and to the INTBAU College of Traditional Practitioners.

Salingaros has had a significant theoretical influence on several major figures in architecture. Christopher Alexander, author of the seminal treatises A Pattern Language and Notes on the Synthesis of Form, describes Salingaros' influence: "In my view, the second person who began to explore the deep connection between science and architecture was Nikos Salingaros, one of the four Katarxis editors. He had been working with me helping me edit material in The Nature of Order, for years, and at some point—in the mid-nineties I think—began writing papers looking at architectural problems in a scientific way. Then by the second half of the nineties he began making important contributions to the building of this bridge, and to scientific explorations in architecture which constituted a bridge." Charles III, an influential critic of contemporary architecture, expressed Salingaros' influence in his own preface to Salingaros' A Theory of Architecture: "Surely no voice is more thought-provoking than that of this intriguing, perhaps historically important, new thinker?"

The End of Tall Buildings (2001), co-authored with James Kunstler, argued that the age of skyscrapers is at an end, and that 9/11 marks the beginning of the end of modernist typologies dominating urban form. While the world has not stopped building skyscrapers, this became one of the most cited and controversial essays on the topic. Referring to this essay, Benjamin Forgey of The Washington Post said: "What many are feeling today goes right to the marrow: the fear of being a target. And who today can deny that tall buildings such as the World Trade Center towers make ideal targets?"

Salingaros contributed to the New Athens Charter of 2003, which is meant to replace the original 1933 Athens Charter written principally by the highly influential modernist architect-planner Le Corbusier. That blueprint segregated urban functions and contributed to generating post-war urban typologies such as monoculture and sprawl. Through this and other writings Salingaros sought to retrofit suburbia, and reconnect US and European cities at the human scale. This work can be seen as allied with the New Urbanism movement to replace sprawling development with compact, walkable cities and towns. Salingaros is involved in forming a community that applies analogous techniques of File sharing and Open-source software from computer science to urbanism. This movement, based upon Peer-to-peer principles, is aptly called P2P Urbanism, and combines user participation in design and the use of Design Patterns from Christopher Alexander with other methods found useful in handling complex software. A description, definition, and recent articles are published on the website of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives.

Salingaros has never written a true software paper, yet two of his papers are quoted by the CS community. Both these papers were later included as chapters in the book Principles of Urban Structure. The Structure of Pattern Languages (2000) argues that patterns (a concept central to the design pattern movement in CS and introduced by Alexander) encapsulate information about recurring design solutions and human activities. Techniques for linking observed patterns validate a Pattern language, and dismiss stylistic rules and antipatterns as arbitrary. E. Todd, E. Kemp and C. Phillips commented: "Salingaros shows that a loose collection of patterns is not a system, because it lacks connections, implying that the quality and nature of the connections between patterns is what determines whether a collection is a language or not. He identifies two forms of connectivity when discussing pattern languages: external connectivity and internal connectivity. These two forms of connection are central to validating a pattern language. Salingaros implies that the richness of connections between levels and within levels in a pattern language is a factor in determining a language’s internal validity." The Information Architecture of Cities (co-authored with L. Andrew Coward, 2004) Ref. describes cities as systems of informational architecture, in which high-level functionality separates the system into communicating modules. Information exchange in urban systems includes visual input from the environment, personal contact, telecommunications, and the movement of people. Journeys by residents through a city accomplish a primary information exchange (the interaction that is the intent of the journey). But ideally, journeys have secondary, serendipitous information exchange. For example, a pedestrian on the way to work visits shops, sees advertisements, buys a newspaper, encounters a friend and has a quick word. The virtue of cities is this dense, fractal, multilayered information exchange. It is closely related to the generation of economic wealth and culture within cities. In "The Information Architecture of Cities" Salingaros also defined the useful notion of "fractal loading", later picked up by Richard Veryard, Phil Jones, and others in Computer Science.

Salingaros introduced a model of Complexity by using an analogy with thermodynamic quantities in physics, later developed in collaboration with the Computer Scientist Allen Klinger. This work adopted the notion of Herbert A. Simon that what is important is the organization of complexity, and it proposed a simple means to measure it. Christopher Alexander discussed Salingaros' model in Book 1 of The Nature of Order: "I believe it is important to show this result simply to underline the fact that living structure is, in principle, susceptible to mathematical treatment, and may therefore be regarded as a part of physics."

Salingaros has been included in "50 VISIONARIES who are changing your world", published in the November–December 2008 edition of Utne Reader. This is the first follow-up of the 2001 Utne Reader book "(65) VISIONARIES: people and ideas to change your life", which included Jane Jacobs, Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Muhammad Yunus, Fritjof Capra, Edward Goldsmith, and William McDonough.

Nikos Salingaros is recorded with the occupation architectural theoretician. Recorded with the occupation university teacher. Recorded as architect, mathematician, physicist, teacher and architectural theoretician. Established in Library of Congress under n85828837. Career and activity. Salingaros worked in mathematics, architecture, urbanism and philosophy of dialogue. He was employed by University of Texas at San Antonio.