4 Centers and symmetries

When centers are being created, a high proportion of them are locally symmetrical. Living process is, in part, a process of creating local symmetries.

This unfolding, associated with bifurcations and sequences of bifurcations in morphological theory, often consists of a process which establishes local symmetries one by one. But the question is, of course, Which symmetries — and which centers — do the most to extend and preserve the living quality of the evolving structure?

Which new local symmetry that may be introduced into the emerging whole, does the most to intensify the feeling of the whole?
The unfolding of a building form is to be understood as a sequence of local symmetry-creation in which each symmetry is introduced, injected into the emerging whole in a careful way that creates the maximum feeling, creates links to the whole, makes the larger structure more harmonious and more connected, internally, in its feeling.

We are always trying to get the maximum feeling from the thing as we design it. To be making centers, our simplest path is to be making symmetries. Thus we may imagine a process of making a series of symmetries, one at a time, always the most profound symmetry that is consistent with the wholeness that exists, but do it in such a way as to create the greatest feeling possible in the emerging thing.
When done right, this is not only going to create living structure. It will also generate the unconscious, archetypal character that emerges from the directness and lack of sophistication present in the process.

Symmetry production, example 1, dolls

The doll is rudimentary. But what is in the doll is only what is needed to make it have its feeling, and nothing else. There is nothing else there.

Nothing more. A small series of symmetries made by the carver, each act as intensely chosen as possible to project the image of inner feeling which the carver has. It is made just to create, to project that feeling, that intense personal feeling.
And it does work. The rudimentary head and arms, the green dress, and its red spots — these are just the things needed to create a feeling in that piece of wood as it began to unfold. No matter how small and unimportant, it came out with the intensity of a real thing.

Symmetry production, example 2, San Jose

“What I mean to say is that what is present in this building is just exactly what is required… and nothing else.”
He simply meant, I think, that each symmetry was put there because, for some reason, it had to be there. For instance, the seat, it is just what is needed to be a seat, to sit on, to lean back, there is no crudeness to take away from it, no extra detail that is not needed to make you comfortable. The fountain has just what is needed to be a fountain: sparse ornament, but a plain concrete basin, just in the place where the fountain needs to be.

The fact that what was there was only what was necessary — nothing more and nothing less — made him feel grounded, more able to become whole. Of course, because in nature, too, there are just the symmetries which are required and no others.
Is it too much to say that a building which has this quality is like the long grass of a meadow, and therefore has the same power to make us well?

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/20 Summation: The morphology of living architecture#