Organizing chaos through plural form.

The two form systems singular form and plural form both deals with organizing form elements from chaos, but builds on totally different types of form logic. Singular form sets one standard that all other forms must relate to. Plural form is about making all forms relate to each other (through the discipline of Visual Structure).

Just like with music, complex and multi-layered form systems in architecture are more appealing to some people than others. The question of form is not a discussion about modernism or traditionalism, masculinity or femininity, rationalism or intuition etc. It is a question of how each individual like to organize their own thoughts and world wiew.

Nidaros domkirke before restoration

Unfortunately, restoration works often has removed later additions in favour of singular form.

Palazzo Contarini della Scala or Dal Bovolo before restoration

Architectural drawing of proposed Field Museum building, no challenge for the viewer at all.

Dynamic relations between facade elements can only be achieved trough variation. In the next example, the dynamic expression is created by the different facades together, even though each individual facade is based on symmetry.



La Grande Place, the old houses, Brussels, Belgium.

Organizing chaos through plural form by Sølve N.T. Lauvås is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.