Book 2 of The Nature of Order

The second volume of The Nature of Order, dealing with the process of creating life.

Extracted from this book

Claims (11)

A bad beginning of volume and space can never be set right later.
The initial disposition of volume and space is decisive for the life of the project.
Each building enlivens and intensifies the land.
The land—its valleys, ridges, trees, paths—are improved, made more solid, given a more living structure by a well-placed building.
Each new building will be a good neighbor.
When built according to the fundamental process, each building fits into its context and makes the larger area more profound.
In the Emoto building, the building hugs the streets and creates positive space in the streets and in the courtyard.
This result was achieved by following the fundamental process, step by step.
IT IS THE LAND WHICH MATTERS. The purpose of the buildings is to bring life to the land.
The building volumes are merely tools; the land and its space, as activated, are what really matter.
Projects with living structure will often tend to have an informal formal character of volume and space.
This morphological quality is visible in the Berryessa house plan and is typical of class-one structures.
The deep feeling can never be made essentially different later.
Once the initial volume and site design is done, its essential feeling is fixed; later work can only deepen it.
The effect of the fundamental process is that the site and volume become intertwined, since centers in the mass and centers in the space are developing together.
This intertwining is the result of structure-preserving transformations.
The land itself, and our love for it, is enough to give the actual building volumes their shape.
If the volumes genuinely help the land, they become more graceful, serious, and differentiated.
The relationship of the new volume to the existing structure is almost like a molecular lock-and-key relationship.
The fit is highly complex, very specific, and definite, analogous to protein-ligand binding.
The work on site and volume design is the most vital single step in the emergence of a new building.
This step establishes the essential feeling and structure-preserving character.

Hypotheses (2)

If the feeling is genuine and does arise out of the site itself, then it must be thought of as an absolute which later stages of design and construction must only strengthen, deepen.
A conditional rule for the unfolding process.
If the volume is congruent with the wholeness which existed previously in the city or on the land, a profound feeling can often come from its congruence.
The predicted outcome of a good site-design process.

Neighborhood — ranked by edge-count

Chapters (1)

chapter

Chapter 5: How Living Process Generates
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Chapter 5 of Volume 3 of The Nature of Order, discussing how living process generates positive space and volume on the land through structure-preserving transformations.