Uniqueness arises naturally from sequence from doing things in the proper order and from the appropriateness of repetition

The organic unfolding of a building tells us when these various decisions must be made. And the consequence of deciding things at the right moment, when correctly done, is that the building and all its parts become unique. The sterile modularity and inappropriate sameness of 20th-century parts came about directly as a result of taking things in the wrong order.

The way that the fundamental process creates living structure is like biological and natural unfolding, but unlike much modern architectural design and construction, in the all-important respect which concerns the size, character, repetition, and non-modularity of component elements.

What emerges from differentiation is not a loose, funky, rounded, kind of organicism. The buildings which the fundamental process creates, in the sphere of building, are still dominated by rectangles or near rectangles — because the rectangle is, after all, the main shape of easily built inhabited space that has positive space on both sides of every wall.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/12 Every part unique#