What is it that will allow this sequence to be improved morphogenetically?

To become morphogenetic, the sequence must be reconstituted as a series of steps which emphasize the action of the fifteen structure-preserving transformations.

Thus, in the case of the tile work, the sequence must not only redefine the way the work is contracted, organized, and paid for. To become morphogenetic, the sequence must also contain specific aspects of the fifteen transformations which are relevant to tilework, relevant to position, color, design of tiles, and to the design as a whole, applicable to the installation of tilework in a building.

A morphogenetic sequence will tend to increase both the architect’s and the tile-setter’s capacity to produce living structure. This is built into the instructions themselves: and will then achieve more life through the action of the transformations that appear in the sequence.

Accompanying these kinds of changes, other innovations will also appear in the sequence; technical innovations that make tiles better, cheaper, more colorful, easier to cut, easier to lay. In all likelihood, future manufacturing techniques will allow greater individual control of the tiles before fabrication, by the architect himself, so that the architect or artist, using the most modern technology, is more and more fully in control of the design of individual tiles and or their arrangement.

And thus turns a rigid (dead) process, which didn’t allow any flexibility, into a living one, which provides opportunities to adapt according to the conditions of the surrounding context.

What makes a “finished” object have life then? It is full of life, when it is full of self, full of our-self, when it connects to us, when it adapts to us, as we enjoy it.

Gradually, this one small, snippable tile-laying sequence will get better, will become morphologically more profound, better at carrying the essential content of living structure. Very gradually then, but in a finite and realistic way, we see how one sequence in the “pool” of sequences available on Earth can be improving. There is a chance that it can, within a reasonably short space of time, come closer and closer to being able to contribute limited areas of living structure in the built world.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/20 The spread of living processes throughout society#