2 All urban building viewed as part of nature

There is no need for emphasis on individual creative personality as a source of life in things. The process itself fosters wholeness and life. Each person plays a role in it. The result does not need to be governed by ideas, or by conceptions of what might exist; indeed, conceptual ideas are often harmful. The whole is governed, at each stage, by what is.
The “what is” leads, then, to what might be. The future emerges from the present, without ideology, solely by paying minute attention to the structure present in the underlying situation.

When we act as nature does, we take step by step, a sequence of decisions, allowing the unfolding to occur. In a river meander, or in the phyllotaxis of a plant, this generates the loose kinds of rounded geometries typical in the plant world and in geomorphology. When we act as nature does in buildings, making step-by-step unfolding-like decisions about building form, we receive regular spacing, straight lines, vaults, window opening, and we obtain just the rectilinear order that has been described throughout this book, and is visible in the majority of traditional building types.
The two — rectilinear forms for built structures, and more complex rounded forms for biological structures — both arise from the same process, and interact, in juxtaposition, to create the architecture which respects nature, grows with nature, and arises out of nature. And, in addition, the rectilinear character of these buildings is more soft, woven into nature, not harsh, but in its own way complex and forgiving and receptive, just as nature is.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/Conclusion: The world created and transformed#