An operational basis: How each center, as it is formed, may be chosen to help increase the life of the whole

The snow block helps to form an emerging, imperfectly defined idea of a half-spherical building, which is seen in the builder’s mind, and is a target of his actions — imprecise, yet clear enough to steer the cutting and shaping of the individual blocks toward this larger whole. Each block starts as an undifferentiated block, without much existence as a center, then becomes a living center as it is shaped, pushed, trimmed, to take its position in the whole.

“The life of the whole” is not hard to see. It is perhaps only hard to force oneself to make the smaller centers contribute to that life.
But, one might argue that a person does not have a sufficiently clear vision of the (as yet unknown) whole to be able to make a small act contribute. […] But knowing what to do does not mean knowing what the target is. It means, having the ability to go towards an unformulated whole, because the life and wholeness of the system is visible, “feelable” as a process, even in the absence of a concrete model of the desired end-state.
The key fact, and the essence of all living process, is that experiments can be devised to help us to determine what the wholeness needs, where it is going, what is most structure-preserving to the present whole, what contributes to the life of the whole. […] This is an experimental task that can be successfully performed by identifying latent centers, then strengthening them.

Everything that happens in the sequence of events when we design a building, from the first vague ideas to the complete elaboration of the details, can be understood as a progressive unfolding of stronger and stronger centers.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/10 Always making centers#