The Intricacy of Elegant Architecture

Reading Notes | Intricate or Minimalist Elegance. Picon, A. (2006).

This Substack is by David Perrine. I write about architecture, aesthetics, design theory, and philosophy. I share new posts bi-weekly. If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing.

---

The following are my words about a section of Antoine Picon’s “Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions” Published in 2010 by Birkhäuser. The section I will be going over is only a few paragraphs from the book and is titled “Intricate or Minimalist Elegance”. For those who don’t know, Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he is also Chair of the PhD in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning. Quotations in bold will be quotes from this specific text while quotes not in bold will be other reference sources. If you would like to read the text all the way through, please read the bolded, italic, indented text.

Please Enjoy.

---

Intricate or Minimalist Elegance

“What algorithmic architecture has not yet really challenged is the complexity of the geometry associated with the intensive use of computer software. Presented by Patrik Schumacher as the style of the years to come, a style supposed to integrate the contribution of scripting, “parametricism” appears as an extension of the principles of soft transition between contrasted parts that had been theorized by Greg Lynn in “Folding in Architecture”.

For those unaware, “Folding Architecture” is a vital text that explores how emerging digital technologies impact the production of architectural form. You can find this text mentioned in my contemporary theory reading list which you can visit here.

Reading List | Core Concepts of Contemporary Architectural Discourse

Greg Lynn’s sentiment as it is expressed throughout “Folding Architecture”, is not just about ‘soft transitions between contrasted parts, but about a holistic theory of part to whole relationships. Lynn theorized that advances in digital technology and the implementation of calculus in 3D modeling tools has enabled a ‘new’ kind of part to whole relationship, a part to whole defined by intricacy and the incoherence of detail: