It must have been
merely a fashionable, perhaps even a decorative concept that captured
the imagination until something more interesting, or perhaps just
different, appeared and overcame the boredom, to newly distract and
entertain the short-term concentrations of our time and the
persistent yearning for things perpetually bespoke. Mandelbrot's
fractals were promoted wide and far in the 1980's, a little like
Rubik's cube that arrived at the same time. These marvels were first
explained or analysed with compact mathematical formulas, but soon
became attractive because of the visual impacts of the images and
their popular intrigues. The multicoloured fractal wonders astonished
and entertained with their unique repetitions into infinity that were
commonly revealed as mesmerising screensavers. Rubik's cube truly
puzzled and amazed when it could be solved, but usually ended being
discarded in sheer, hopeless frustration, with the cubic object
becoming a pretty, pseudo-intellectual display item to accompany
coffee table books, or just more plastic junk in the play basket,
frequently to be discovered as collections of sundry pieces leaving
one to wonder if this was the angry outcome of failure, or a
deficiency in the engineering.
Rubik's cube
It now seems strange
that such philosophical spatial concepts once neatly articulated by
mathematics, could be best expressed in a simplistic, mundane manner
as a screen saver, or a puzzle game - the equivalent of digital junk;
something for perception or hands to tinker with. Maybe this is the
nature of our time that seems to delight in turning all serious
issues into trivia to be discarded when the fad has fizzed out,
allowing things to go 'forward,' as the cliché
has it, (most used and abused by politicians), to who knows where. Do
movies make us delight in this terrible transformation of meaning
into trash; of substance into frivolity: turning ideas into passing,
entertaining whims in preparation for the next revealing revelation
to divert attention yet again? Does everything have to be converted
into giggling, pretend-happy entertainment to remain of the slightest
interest to us today, always poised to ‘segue’ into more of the same?
Perez in centre.
Perez home, Lerwick
One can use Shetland
as an example, the TV series based on the books of Ann Cleeves. These
programmes have turned Lerwick into a place for visitors to seek out
the various locations that have been used, rather like a 3D ‘Where's Wally’ challenge. One sees the old lodberries of Lerwick now
signposted as the location of the ‘Perez house,’ a place that has
become the pictorial site for selfies. The history of this area other
than its role in the TV series is meaningless; irrelevant.
Where's Wally?
The Magic Eye
3D images in the pattern books of the 1980s come to mind as a similar
short-lived fad. Publications full of these computer-generated
mysteries were once the talk of the town: now one never sees them
except as cheap trash in the op shops. Perhaps like PEZ sweets and
their gadget dispensers, these 3D books will probably resurface at
regular intervals over the years to grab the interest of new
generations in what looks like a calculated cycle of cynical
commercialism. Will fractals resurface?
Fractals are
intriguing both as mathematics and images, and as an idea.
Mandelbrot's thinking about maps and reality, how the measurement of
a coastline on a map became infinitely larger in reality, as more and
more detailed nooks and crannies get identified and itemised, was the
starting point. The idea revealed an infinite repetition of the same
patterned form within the identical, original patterned form, and was
expressed as a concise formula that never became as well-known as
‘E=mC2.’ The
fractal equation is: ‘Zn+1 = Zn2 + C.’ It is almost as concise as
Einstein’s answer, and conceals/reveals a circumstance just as
amazing. The more detail that is revealed only exposes the identical
form again and again, showing that the whole is indeed made up of
identical smaller parts that are themselves likewise, forever and
ever different but the same. Fractals are life; life's diagram;
clouds and trees, and more, are all fractal formations. Fractals hold
the wonder of being in their image and idea. It is a concept that
explains mountains, rivers and grass; growth: so one can ask if the
idea might also be useful in understanding other formings, shapings
and makings. Maybe it can help us understand design?
Architecture has
never been shy with its use of other fields of knowledge to clarify
or complicate its concepts and intents: so why not interrogate
fractals to see what they might explain? This thinking will have to
involve the suppression of the current unfashionable perception of
the fractal that was once the joy of the architectural speaker; the
visual equivalent of words like 'journey,' 'narrative,' 'unpack,' (as
in ‘unpack an idea’), and 'segue,' (a smarty-pants way of saying
that the subject will now be subtly changed). To bring fractals into
a talk once gave it ‘intellectual’ stature, but no longer. Now it
means that one is stuck in the past, that one has not ‘moved
forward.’ It is this perception that has to be put aside to let the
original wonder of the fractal world again shine through, for the
fractal world is indeed astonishing: it is our world, not a
fanciful ‘Blue Poles’ vision. Fractals have something of the
quality that the periodic table has in chemistry; they illustrate the
coherence and structure of the world, its integrity and organisation;
the secret rigour of what seems random and chaotic; ad hoc – see:
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-pattern-for-complexity-and.html?m=0
Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles
The slick exterior forms.
The aesthetic changes inside: see -
The concern with the
'Hadid' approach to design - the making of the big, dramatic,
carefully-styled image, dramatising its singular gesture - has always
lingered; see -
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2015/09/zahas-architectural-car-design-strategy.html
The critique is not fashionable as the strategy appears to have
become a basic beginning in architecture today; it is the epiphany of
things newly 'modern.' What is the term one should use: ‘hyper
modern’? We have passed ‘post,’ and even ‘post-post’
modernism. One feels very alone with this critique as the world sees
' Hadid' as a genius hero, a great success: an icon to be idolised,
even after death. The reference to 'Hadid' is awkwardly complex. One
should perhaps speak politely of 'the late Zaha Hadid,' but the firm
keeps its name and keeps pushing the brand – see:
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/05/fabulous-photography.html
The new apartment block under construction in New York in 2017,
unashamedly had the 'Hadid' name plastered all over it. The
promotional material carries her photograph and her signature, as if
the building was a signed artwork by herself. It appeared that there
was some premium, some special prestige that could still be dragged
out with such a proposition. The western world is not as subtle or as
careful with the dead - their names and images - as the traditional
cultures are. Here I am thinking of the Australian aboriginal. When
the media is intending to refer to their dead, to play their recorded
sounds or images, warnings are issued in order to avoid offence to
those who care. Such sensitivity seemed meaningless in New York when
profits, prestige and promotions were involved; when more 'Hadid'
might mean more sales and more money.
Hadid's New York apartment building
Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.
Gehry's 'crumpled brown paper bag' building, Sydney, Australia.
Can fractals help us
understand the problems with the 'Hadid' gestural problem that
concentrates on the primary identity and its unique, visual impact,
caring little for its making and its parts? One might start by noting
the lack of coherent depth in the recent designs of Hadid, and of
Gehry. The simplest reference to illustrate this idea of a lack of
'depth,' is the Bilbao Guggenheim. The wonderful French Ovation DVD
series Architecture, points out that the Bilbao Guggenheim can
have its top one third cut off with no impact on the functions of the
building beyond external appearance and its waterproofing. The point
is that the building is only skin deep, that it lacks any coherent
depth in function, form, idea, expression, and intent beyond vision: that it is
all shroud with very little supporting substance - yet it is seen as
a great work: ‘iconic,’ the ambition of every place seeking to be
transformed by tourism. Arles seems to have joined the queue: see -
https://www.archdaily.com/964109/luma-arles-gehry-partnershttps
and
https://www.archdaily.com/964060/frank-gehrys-dynamic-reflective-tower-opens-to-the-public-for-the-first-time/60d988d7f91c81d2c50000c6-frank-gehrys-dynamic-reflective-tower-opens-to-the-public-for-the-first-time-photo
The concept of coherence, of 'inner necessity' as Kandinsky called
it, (in On the Spiritual in Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, 1946 (Munich, 1911): see -
https://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/obriene/art206/onspiritualinart00kand.pdf),
suggests some reverberant richness in a design, something of
substance, some quality in the finer parts that can be seen to be
gathered together to make the whole what it is – something fractal.
Gehry's Luma Arles tower.
In the 'Gehry-type'
work, the whole is an outer skin, a shroud shaped for its own
indulgence, positioned over whatever is needed to hold it. Gehry once
boasted about being inspired by a crumpled paper bag. Is there a
sense of cheating here, or does the cliché
of ‘form following function’ still manage to control our outdated
expectations, mangle them with an intolerance? Here fractals come to
mind, the notion of the infinite, and details being intimately
related, necessarily intertwined. To use another cliché
that might help us
understand, Mies explained the situation as God being in the
details, a catchphrase that suggests that details hold an overall
importance and significance for the whole. The question is: should
design have some integrity; some inner necessity? Is it essential for
design to have the rich coherence we see in nature, in fractals, or
can design be anything one wants, like car design – see:
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2015/09/zahas-architectural-car-design-strategy.html
and
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-car-and-boat-contrasting-design.html
where images are created by theatrical illusions that blackout
unwanted essentials and add sundry bits and pieces as decoration to
give a preferred, fashionable, stylish identity in any mix of
materials to form a shroud over the engineered parts - just as
Hadid’s NY building ignores the columns? Even Novel’s suave dome
at the Abu Dahbi Louvre relies on crude, heavily-plated, internal
engineering for the framing support of its slick outer skins.
Nouvel's Louvre, Abu Dhabi
Hadid's car design
The whole nature of
design is called into question. Paul Jacques Grillo once asked the
question: What is design? in his book of that title published
in 1960 – (Paul Theobald, 1 January 1960). Like fractals, this book
is now 'old and unfashionable,’ perhaps unknown; but like Howard
Robertson's The Principles of Architectural Composition, (The
Architectural Press, London, 1924), the book should be given some
attention rather than being shoved aside by the forward thrust of
progress as old fashioned, mental drudgery; ‘just booooring.’ How
can we know where we might be going if we have no idea where we have
come from, and no interest in knowing? Grillo saw design as having
roots, references, and an inner integrity. As with the Henry Dreyfuss
book showing dimensions of the human body and the facts of the
various things the body gets involved with in design and life – The
Measure of Man: Human Factors in Design (Whitney Library of
Design, 1 January 1960) - Grillo's concepts had substance and
structure; a relevance to life and its lived experience – a ‘right
fit’ that enriched. Design was seen as being inclusive of these
matters of fact and ideas, and held relevance only insofar as these
were appropriately accommodated: see -
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5615461479894853407/6352015519661415439
The idea was that design was like nature, learning from it and
working with it. ‘Design’ did not impose itself on the work for
its own aggrandisement, but grew out of a complex set of needs –
inner necessity, and all of its subtle complexities.
The process, the
concept, could be called ‘fractal design,’ where small beginnings
and elusive intentions are encompassed in relationships that embody
broader matters that further branch out into the context of life and
living in this world to give architecture, and all design, its primal
identity. Starting with the first reading of a building - the 'Hadid'
image - one engages with the work in an ever more intimate manner.
One gets closer to the parts; identifies its pieces; reads the door;
touches the building; enters it; discovers the inner reading of
place; moves on; sees the elements; touches them; etc., etc., all in
a truly fractal way, but not only physically: the experience is
emotional too – relationships are revealed. One senses place, space
and people in all of their complexity - their fractal
interconnectedness. If design is to be 'anything at all’ -
‘whatever’ - then its experience becomes a chaos of bespoke
bespokeness, an ever-new newness that constantly reveals special and
surprising differences again and again, to excite, distract, and
amaze. Is this spinning difference, a lack of deference, a preferred
outcome for the living experience of design? This notion seems to
stimulate a perpetual discontent, always seeking only to impress,
gyrating the body and mind out of gentle contentment. In order to
gain some idea about the quality of life and living, others have
offered opinions. One is the biblical Paul who suggested to the
people of Corinth that 'in whatsoever state you find yourself, be
content.' We would be arrogant to dismiss such an opinion because of
its source. If contentment is to be an ambition in life and living,
then how might design promote this? Grillo’s first two unnumbered
pages filled with italic text tried to articulate these matters in
their strange disconnectedness. Some things are difficult to put into
rational words.
One comes back to a
fractal understanding of life where the largest of pieces
accommodates the finest and most subtle of experiences, and all such
functions in between, in its every part; where expression finds its
relevance in the richness of a careful and caring interconnectedness
rather than any perpetual, random cleverness, promoting some
personal, bespoke outcome that constantly declares the genius of ME
with stark differences and surprises; amazements. One is always
reluctant to define rules for actions and outcomes, but we do need to
decide what we expect from design and life. If we want some
supportive physical and emotional fit, then we do need to start to
understand the responsibility that is embodied in the design act, and
all of its fractal implications. To continue with the 'Hadid'
approach will only push us into a more and more chaotic world of
self-indulgence that breeds a constant, competitive dissatisfaction.
Design needs roots and integrity if it is to accommodate and support
life, its fractal complexity. Perhaps simple honesty is the most
comprehensive word as Louis Sullivan suggests in his Kindergarten
Chats. We can come to know more about design in Christopher
Alexander’s The Nature of Order
too;
but why
are these publications
ignored? One might explain that Sullivan’s text is ‘ancient,’
over 100 years old; but Alexander’s writings are more recent, with
The Nature of Order being published 2002 – 2005. Why have A Pattern Language (1977) and the
associated publications# been allowed to become old fashioned - the
forgotten past; as if they were the collected writings of an
irrelevant ‘outsider’ when they seek to articulate the wonder and
mystery of beauty in our ordinary world: its enriching coherence?
We have many serious
issues to address. The constant strain now defined as a ‘mental
health’ problem has become commonplace in our lives as contentment
is challenged by a strained promotion of each self, seeking to outdo
the other with blinding envy. One sees this selfish hype of the
advertising of ‘brands’; it is a greedy preference for potential
boasting that has now included COVID vaccines: “I got the Pfizer!”
How can a fractal, cooperative existence become a reality both in our
lives and in our works, to make each good as a resonant whole?
Currently we seem to have the rich reality of our fractal world
disrupted by the personal ambitions of the many MEs, each seeking to
be the unique highlight of every other life. The recipe is simply
outrageous difference, (e.g. the selling of an invisible work of art:
“Beat that!”), the quality we see in the Hadid and Gehry works
that gets promoted as the bespoke works of genius. Even the social
critic Banksy can turn an ordinary oil painting into a multi-million
dollar ‘art work’ by adding sundry extras or a slogan: see -
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/banksy-sells-washington-mount-rainier-b1875778.html The gesture may be intended to cynically heighten the awareness of
the folly, but this strategy itself now has become a matter of
desirability for the hungry collectors seeking the extremities of
difference, like NFTs. All criticism is squashed by the public
fervour, even when one gets promotions and reviews that scream out an
irrational exaggeration, never even worrying about naming the wrong
location: see the ‘Burleigh’ Granny Flat –
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/04/wheres-granny-flat.html
One recalls the period of tulip mania: 1636-1637. Critiques are
displaced by an excitable preference for ‘movie-like’ truth:
make-believe that tries to make others believe in the extremities of
fantasy.
The question
remains: is our current architecture purely just ‘make-believe’ -
making individuals believe in the brilliance of form and narrative?
Here photography plays its tricky role of deceit: see -
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/11/architectural-seeing
To try to understand what integrity really means, we need to look
again at nature and rediscover its fractal coherence – its inner
necessity that stimulates the poet: When I consider Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have
ordained. (Psalm 8:3 KJV); I will lift up mine eyes unto the
hills, from whence cometh my help. (Psalm 121:1 KJV). Louis
Sullivan’s astonishing 1918 text might be titled Kindergarten
Chats and other Writings, but it is not just for children. In
stead of ‘moving forward,’ we should be stepping back slowly to
try to understand the richness of things past, those matters that
held and revealed meaning for others, that can still hold and reveal
meaning for us. The myth of progress needs to be abolished in favour
of an inclusiveness that is rich and vital, content in its quiet,
knowing stillness – its depth.
To note Paul once
again, when he spoke of wholeness; how we: May be able to comprehend with
all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.
(Ephesians 3;18 KJV). We know architectural space as breadth,
length, and height; we need to rediscover its depth.
#
Alexander's
published works include:
Community and
Privacy, with Serge Chermayeff (1963)
Notes on the
Synthesis of Form (1964)
A City is Not a
Tree (1965)
The Atoms of
Environmental Structure (1967)
A Pattern
Language which Generates Multi-service Centers, with Ishikawa and
Silverstein (1968)
Houses
Generated by Patterns (1969)
The Grass Roots
Housing Process (1973)
The Center for
Environmental Structure Series, made up of
The Orego
Experiment (1975)
A pattern
Language, with Ishikawa and Silverstein (1977)
The Timeless
Way of Building (1979)
The Linz Cafe
(1981)
The Production
of Houses, with Davis, Martinez, and Corner (1985)
A New Theory
of Urban Design, with Neis, Anninou, and King (1987)
Foreshadowing
of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish
Carpets (1993)
The Mary Rose
Museum, with Black and Tsutsui (1995)
The Nature of
Order Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life (2002)
The Nature of
Order Book 2: The Process of Creating Life (2002)
The Nature of
Order Book 3: A Vision of a Living World (2005)
The Nature of
Order Book 4: The Luminous Ground (2004)
The Battle for
the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle between Two
World-Systems, with HansJoachim Neis and Maggie More Alexander
(2012)
(Wikipedia)
