9 Structural qualities created by the fundamental process in all ornament
The ornaments which follow from the fundamental process can take an almost infinite variety of forms, yet — because of the way they arise from the embellishment of latent centers in the whole — will have a certain restricted structure in common. They are, most often, space-filling geometric structures of repeating symmetries.
In traditional architecture, we see these kinds of things in Nigerian panels, Japanese textiles, on medieval stone-carved ornaments, on Islamic plasterwork, on Turkish tiles, on Russian and Norwegian woodcarving.
Of course there is no reason why one should copy any of these particular traditions. Our own ornaments of the 21st century and of the 25th century when it comes, will be whatever they are, appropriate to their time, made with our tools, using our motifs.
But if the fundamental process is followed, it is inevitable that ornaments will have certain things in common and a certain profound quality in common. An empty space will be filled with some kind of space-filling form, and one which leaves positive space between the repeating ornament in two dimensions. We shall see octagons, repeating triangles, repeating squares possibly filled with crosses or diagonals, wavy lines, parallel systems of wavy lines, circles, and so on… all of them spaced, at every level of scale, so that the space between them becomes positive.
All the ornaments which I have shown have squares, triangles, stars, crosses, blossoms, lines, bands, flowers, animals… the elements that arise most naturally from the fifteen transformations. Ornament, when viewed with proper respect, summarizes everything about living structure within its laws. If we understand ornament properly, we understand the principles of living structure, and we understand how to make — in geometry — something which fully embodies living structure, that means the fifteen properties as they arise from the contingencies and accidents of a particular context, and thus enhance the structure of a particular larger configuration in the world. Ornament is not trivial. It is most profound, and covers everything.
#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/18 Ornament as part of all unfolding#