Possibility of a form language for all future time

I suggest that in any building process governed by construction, it will be the fifteen structure-preserving transformations which may most easily become the formal tools with which people can create well-adapted forms, allow coherent geometry to emerge, and manage, effectively, to assist in the creation of living form by adaptation and unfolding.
It is examples like these that encourage my belief that these fifteen transformations can provide us with a natural “alphabet“ of living process. They are the most natural elementary transformations for a form-language that is able to generate living structure in the world.
It seems possible to me, that the conception of a universal form language, made from the fifteen transformations, applied, repeated, cycling and recycling in different concrete forms, recursively, so that every part and every part of every part, will ultimately be formed in its geometry — could take root in out time, and in the future. It would be simple and elegant. And it would preserve and generate the elements of style which are necessary to a living world.

An example of a very crude form language, which nevertheless showed considerable power, is to be found in the documents from the last formal class I gave at the University of California, before I became Emeritus. The class was explicitly based on the idea of searching for an appropriate form-language for modern times.
I wanted to find a way of teaching students how to approach the art of building, in a way that made sense, and which gave insight into a new style, and a new way of thinking about the form and substance and appearance of buildings, in the context of a modern city.
Here are the eleven principles I sketched out for the students as the working form-language for study and experiment:
Principle 1: The Fundamental Principle: Every building must help to heal the world.
Principle 2: Materials. Materials reflect nearby buildings and materials.
Principle 3: Positive space. The building form comes after creation of positive space on all sides, thus connecting the building to all nearby buildings by positively formed outdoor space in each direction.
Principle 4: Normal walls. Walls are normal walls, heavy and thick, with openings in them, that are distinct from the walls, so that each part of wall is felt as a whole, and the windows are felt as whole.
Principle 5: Good windows: Windows are solid and have nice shapes within the wall. That means (a) window sits in a substantial wall, (b) bottom of window is good (c) top of window is good shape (d) window has real depth in the wall.
Principle 6: Structure is real. The structure works, and is taken seriously, as the essence of the building. We have not yet had enough discussion to know what this means.
Principle 7: Ornament. There is some sense in which the whole buildings and exterior space made is beautiful as an ornament. And actual ornament plays at least some visible role in the exterior and interior construction of the building.
Principle 8: Form is of the place. Geometrically, it is “of the place” and gathers together, morphologically, the buildings forms, and land character of the surrounding few blocks.
Principle 9: Simplicity. The building, inside and out, is made as simple as possible: this does not mean that it is minimal. It means that what is done (shape, and substance of each part) always helps the unity of the whole to be cemented. Things are chosen, like the smile of the buddha, to help connect one thing to another, until the whole it is so perfect that it is indivisible.
Principle 10: Beings. Each project is a being.
Principle 11: Every project must be conceived, and worked out on a large-scale cardboard model of the city block where it is to be built, and where one was able to see the overall space created by existing buildings, and was then able to relate the new project to this space while it was designed, and test it until it became harmonious.

The students found these principles difficult to wrestle with. This is a comment more on the stranglehold of modernistic thought, than on the ability of the students. Even something as obvious as the second principle (determining the materials on the basis of materials in nearby buildings), was at first anathema to them. They wanted to make their mark as designers, and they fought tooth and nail for several weeks, against a principle which would reduce their license to be arbitrary, hence, as they thought, would prevent them from “making their mark”. Only after a few weeks of seeing models, discussion and so on, did the obvious and straightforward simplicity of this principle, and its obvious importance for healing urban form, make itself felt. Afterwards, in review, most of the students agreed that it was this step and the third step, positive space, which had the most powerful effect on what they did, on the beauty of the results, and on changing the framework of their thinking. All eleven principles are, of course, embodiments of the fifteen transformations.

The form language which appeared in the works of several modern painters, most notably Matisse, Vlamnick, Bonnard, Derain, Nolde, Ensor, also provide schemata with which one can think, or decipher, or elaborate, a building in a natural way, something that goes the same way as the small sketches or the unfolded, built stair. These painters described and generated — above all — a new geometry of form and color which can be part of nature. It may also, with study, turn out to be a significant part of our growing effort to determine a generic form language for our time and for all future time.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/16 Form language and style#