The form of future buildings — sketches to illustrate the output from a new form-language

Though informal, the building form which results from these steps, performed one at a time, in the order given, has a very definite character. It is visible, strong, a definite being in its own right. Yet is is a character without conscious or deliberate imagery. It arises, only, from unfolding of differentiations and local symmetries.
I give this very simple example, in order to emphasize, again, the vital role of unfolding — the process by which form is created through differentiation — and to see clearly how this comes about, what kinds of elements and local symmetries will typically be generated by unfolding. It must be noted that this statement is highly abstract, highly general, and not oriented to history.

Modern architecture turned the entire architectural process on its head, because it managed to confuse people into thinking that all buildings that have beings in them — living centers — must inevitably be historical, or imitations of history. Nothing could be further from the truth. This one lie, caused, in a sense, the whole sorry upset we now look back on as modernism and post-modernism.

Indeed, the step-by-step evolution of living centers, in a progressive differentiating process, is necessary to the adaptation process. It is not a cultural decision, not an emotional decision, but a biological necessity — an essential part of the adaptation of a complex system. […] And we may say, therefore, that this geometric process of differentiation is the necessary underpinning of any building which is functionally well-adapted to its terrain.

What is it that appears in these sketches? […]
(1) They have an informal character, a rough and ready character, which is typical of highly adapted structures, not typical of technically produced or image-produced structures. It is, very much more, the result of an unfolding process.
(2) The sketches also have a humane character. One feels that they have a kindly relation to human existence, and to the vulnerable side of human nature.
(3) The buildings illustrated in the sketches contain the fifteen properties profusely. This must be there, of course, from the repeated use of the fifteen transformations to obtain structure-preserving unfolding.
I believe one may go further, to say that the sketches shown, for all their apparent naiveté, show precisely the kinds of forms which must in all likelihood follow from any program in which these fifteen transformations are progressively unfolded from a neutral beginning.

Unfolded, modern, one step at a time, moving toward unfolded structure, the process of drawing the sketch itself followed the process of creating one center at a time, in respect to the existing whole. […] We may see, if we look carefully, that these building forms are think with the fifteen properties. Their character, the character of each of them in its entirety, comes from the interplay of these fifteen properties.
But we see not only that the fifteen properties appear in these sketches. It is the fifteen properties consciously used as transformations during the process of drawing, which also generated the form of these buildings. The fifteen transformations are the ground rules of the language in which these forms are written.
The fifteen properties are inevitable results (and ingredients) of structure-preserving unfolding. But here the fifteen properties are not merely generated by structure-preserving transformations gong on while the drawings were made — they also provided a combinatory language of transformations which has the capacity, in human hands, to generate unfolded geometry — the kind of geometry which must follow from a living process.

Is it possible to specify programming as a step-by-step application of few defined transformations to selected parts of a state (the current whole) which generate then the next step of more differentiated state (the transformed whole)?

I am asserting that, as human builders who wish to generate living structure, we must carry these fifteen transformations with us, as elements of a form-language which gives us — in part — the building blocks, the tools of the trade, the raw material, from which unfolded structure can be made. That is the ultimate material, from which living buildings must be made. It is this fact, and this process, which transcends the sterile simplification that has been typical of buildings in our machine age: and it is a forward-looking to an era in which living buildings, are our targets, our aims, the dream of achievement which we carry with us, as part of our art.

In addition, let me say that the accompanying sketches should be taken rather literally. I do not mean them as rough drawings of a more pristine reality. Instead, I mean that their actual roughness, and the visible soft morphological character they have because of this roughness, are of the essence of the fact that they are living. What I am trying to show in the sketches is that if it is to be truly living structure, it must actually be built with this character as I have shown it.

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