The drive to simplicity

Simplicity and purity - making the essential in life come forward - allowing the inessential to be laid aside

Our modern conception of simplicity has gone wrong. Simplicity as depth has been replaced by a mechanical idea of simplicity as the geometrically banal. And most recently, in reaction to the banal simplicity of cubes and spheres, postmodernism has reintroduced complexity and ornament in a way that is too often merely dross, icing, fruitcake, and trinkets, overlaid on the fabric, shape and substance of our buildings.

In this chapter, I shall try to introduce a new definition that is consistent with the nature of living structure. We shall arrive at a conception of simplicity which shows it as the most pure thing which can arise, truthfully, from a set of given circumstances, in a way that preserves structure, and as the defining quality of a living process.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/17 Simplicity#