10 The paradigm of smooth unfolding as a target for every construction technique

One of our greatest tasks for the 21st century — I believe — is to invent high-technology versions of such an unfolding process, so that it is easier to specify buildings cheaply, while giving each one the chance to be adapted uniquely to its conditions. You start with a set of points in the ground, hardly more than that, and everything is generated from these points, but with attention and with adaptation, so that as it unfolds, each building becomes unique, and its adaptation works out naturally.

In general, I believe that the most sophisticated building techniques of the future, will be those where each operation modifies, without backtracking, the product of the previous operations. Such processes can generate well-adapted variety, cheaply and easily. There is no need for complex drawings, because each operation is sufficiently well-defined by the context of the previous operations.

Tower of interpreters — breaking language design into a sequence of small transformations.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/16 Continuous invention of new materials and techniques#