Simplicity and Complexity

What is simplicity? What is complexity? How do they relate? Is it uncouth to begin an essay with a rhetorical question? How about five rhetorical questions? In a world still dominated by ideas of modernist simplicity, complexity plays a much greater role than one might realize. One of the most prominent architects of the mid 2010’s, Bjarke Ingles, has developed a system by which simplicity and complexity can coexist and inform one and other. Bjarke is one of the leading architects in Denmark, founder of BIG, and the only man to ever name a company after himself without it seeming egotistical. His buildings are complex in their construction, hierarchy, division of space, and built geometry, but the ideas behind them are quite simple in their form and derived principles. They can be elaborated by the exploration of the concepts of simplicity and complexity as defined and dictated by Breuer, Gregotti, and Venturi, three men who make the red squiggle appear under their names in Word.

Breuer defines simplicity as a ‘clarity’ (Breuer 181). He writes that clarity is “emphasis on structural laws and practical functions; and in the aesthetic field by simplicity and a renunciation of irrational forms” (Breuer 181). What an irrational form is can have a different meaning to any person. What is perfectly rational to David Lynch is probably not rational to anyone else on the planet. What is important is what it means to Breuer. He expressly defines clarity as an “expression of the purpose of a building and a sincere expression of its structure” (Breuer 182). To exemplify his definition, I introduce the LEGO building. This is the building that BIG designed for the LEGO company. The knowledge of LEGO’s and their eternal war with bare feet is well documented and the knowledge of them is ubiquitous enough that I feel no need to elaborate. The BIG building is designed to mimic the colorful blocks in formography, with the construction apparent by the delineation of walls and windows.

In terms of Breuer’s definition of complexity, he doesn’t seem to have one. He writes a great deal about the clarity behind a New Architecture that is, by this point in history, surely Old Architecture (or possibly Middle Architecture), but if we assume simplicity as the antithesis of complexity, we can divine Breuer’s definition using the converse definition of simplicity and clarity. If simplicity for Breuer is a clarity of idea, form, or function, then it stands to reason that complexity would be obscuration of that idea, form, or function. Breuer stated that New architecture would defer to human ideas over technological or natural ones (Breuer 181). The Tirana theater and masterplan conforms to no idea of human scale, obscures the structure and function of the building for the sake of a folding form that arches above the site as if to create a walkway under the building, but a walkway utterly devoid of humanity, despite the rendering showing people enjoying a place where there is no relation to their scale.

Gregotti exists in a universe where simplicity is considered a wholistic approach to architecture. He defines it as the inability to remove a part from the building. He writes “simplicity is not restoring linear deduction, is not tautology, simplification, a retreat from the complexity of reality, or, least of all, a relinquishing of invention” (Gregotti 83). He defines simplicity as “a process of adhering to essence of use, to mimesis” (Gregotti 83). He perceives simplicity as a balance, comparing it to a car in one sentence. He uses a car as the antithesis of simplicity, two forms disconnected, the body and the mechanisms. The body is what is presented outwardly to the viewer, but the mechanisms that drive the car, or allow it to be driven, are hidden away from the viewer and are not reflected by the body. This gives us a firm link to something tangible and comparable. Consider the Mountain; a BIG apartment complex in Copenhagen, Denmark. It takes the form of an apartment and raises it at an inclination so that every resident can have a balcony oriented to the sun. The idea is actually quite simple. Colors are used to denote the level, the pointillism façade is used to denote the building and the undulating movement of the balconies is used to denote the apartments. It is a wholistic and descriptive approach to design. There is no further distillation of the concept possible. An atom is defined as the smallest thing that a material can be divided into while still maintain its characteristics. The ‘atomic structure’ of the Mountain is sound.

Let’s talk about Robert Venturi and his views on the nature of simplicity and complexity. In his writing, complexity is always paired with the word contradiction. This goes to explain his definition of the term more than anything else. For him, the idea of complexity was the utterly contradictory nature of architectural elements and philosophies that, throughout history, had worked to describe an eternal and uncrackable oxymoron that pervaded human existence. Venturi hints at this contradictory, yet complimentary nature between simplicity and complexity when he begins his statements about the fragments of truth that exist scattered through the inclusive designs he was fond of as opposed to the exclusive designs Mies van der Rohe was fond of (Venturi 17). But in this contradictory nature he states that “equilibrium can be created from opposites,” a reference to Aristotle’s idea of the Golden Mean (Venturi 17). He calls his own design complex and simple, open and closed, the roof is a gable without a gable, a door without an entry, a stair that goes nowhere. This is his idea of the inclusive fragments. His idea of simplicity is described as “the satisfaction the mind derives from inner complexity” (Venturi 18). He references Doric temples and the complicated optical refinements used to create, not simplicity, but the illusion of it. The ultimate contradiction that Venturi was building off from was this: the world is a complex place with many complex laws. It is not simple, yet we perceive it as simple. We perceive ourselves and our perceptions as the ultimate law of reality, but we do not live in reality, but irreality, a world where there is sometimes no one truth (i.e. One person sees a cup and another person sees two faces). The world is not simple, yet that is how we see it. This cognitive dissonance is what creates a preferential simplicity within the complexity of refinement. We prefer the Doric temples because they appear to be simple.

This one is a bit more difficult to exemplify in BIG’s work. The San Pellegrino factory in Italy is probable the most obvious example. Do the arches stand alone or do they create tunnels? Do they create a bridge or denote a staircase? What they are is quite simple. What they mean is very complex. This could be considered an inversion of Venturi’s thesis. It is a complexity of meaning derived from a simplicity of form instead of an internal complexity creating a visual simplicity.

The ideas of simplicity and complexity, simplification and contradiction are linked with the ideas of postmodernism. The unique and imitable aesthetic of postmodernism can be blamed for its downfall, in a way. Dipshit designers nicked the aesthetic, but none of the heart, enjoying the form but not the context in which that form existed, all the while believing that they were creating something true to the form of what they mindlessly imitated. They painted their drab and inefficient buildings in bright yellow in the belief it would make them a better designer like someone painting their face black because they think it’ll make them a better rapper. The flood of derivative and meaningless architecture cheapened the genre and offended people, including the true postmodernist. Denise Scott Brown disapproves of the aesthetic theft. This can be attributed to the conflict that exists in her husband’s writings on his concepts of simplicity and complexity.

He writes complexity as a contradiction, paring the words many times in his writings. In the Mountain, the building emphasizes elevation and height, though the units themselves are quite flat. Furthermore, BIG uses Venturi’s concept of simplification, or the distillation of complex architecture into its basic and queried forms, as a derivative for their own diagrams and complex designs. Their diagrams are usually derived by simple geometry given layers of complexity. A cut here, an extrusion there. The volumetric form of the building takes place by the constraints of the function and site and the inner mechanisms follow.

Citations

Breuer, Marcel. Where Do We Stand. Architecture and Design, 1890-1939: An International Anthology of Original Articles, 1934

Gregotti, Vittorio. Inside Architecture. Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, 1996.

Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Museum of Modern Art, 1977.