Sequences of unfolding in architecture

A good artist is keenly aware that the power, fluidity, depth of a new work, depend on the order in which its features are created.

It is often doing things in the right order, which allows the emerging form to become natural and well formed.

In a morphological sense the courtyards were bigger than the dining hall — bigger in their impact on the wholeness. To make the process work smoothly, in such a way that each center could find its proper, well-adapted shape, they had, therefore, to be fixed earlier.

Altogether, in every process aimed at getting life, centers must be created in the right order. If we create centers in random sequence, when we are designing something or when we are building something, the evolving form will likely turn out confusing and chaotic.

Although the tortured view of art, the struggle to go this way and that, gnashing one’s teeth until a form emerges, has become part of our popular mythology of design, it is more true to say, I believe, that the greatest art of the past was most often created without this tortured effort, and came about by a process of differentiation in which the steps were done in such a sequence that profound results emerged.

Living structure comes into being effortlessly, simply as a result of following the sequence.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/11 The sequence of unfolding#