Simplicity & complexity (4)

I am approaching an idea of simple in my architectural works. I want to understand simplicity not as a rigid minimalism ideal, in which a formula toward spareness is almost religiously pursued, but to see it as a composition of forms, materials, and textures that is fundamentally “quite.” Maya Lin

“Too many color make one achromatopsia; too many tones make one asonia.” Chinese ancient wisdom reveals the truth of perception. If you want to show people something, you should eliminate all other unnecessary elements so they won’t get distracted. This is the essence of minimalism.

Nowadays, people live in a built environment, both the buildings and the landscapes, that always has been over designed. For instance, the street medium that I can see from my window is planted like a botanic garden even though there is no access to it. When designers want to make the landscape rich, they actually make them chaos; while they want to make something pure, they make it boring. Nothing is really meaningful and memorable.

What is the key of making landscape intricate yet pure, simple yet rich? Or how to integrate simplicity and complexity in the design?


Ann Hamilton's 'Corpus'

An art installation in Mass MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) helped me to understand more about the integration of simplicity and complexity. In a large span previously old factory gallery space, about thirty special devices were installed on the ceiling. Each one held a thick layer of white paper and released them sheet by sheet every couple second. No, wait a minute; I am not sure whether every device had the same interval. It was a fantastic experience walking through the extensive space and watching the slowly falling white paper dancing in the air. It reminded me some memorable landscape like the cherry bloom in Washington D.C. in the early spring, and a maple woods in west Massachusetts in the late fall.

I am not sure whether the artist was inspired by some landscape like that, but the work does give visitors a unique experience that only nature can offer: it is simple, pure, clear, touching, quite, meditative, yet rich, intricate, diverse, unpredictable, dynamic and powerful. Thirty identical simple devices were given life and spirit just because the artist added the most important composition, time, in this work. “Visual complexity in a designed outdoor space results when a particular order combines a variety of sensory impressions with some sort of coherence”, “the optimal degree of complexity for providing the most pleasant experience lies somewhere between two extremes.” Yes, the significance of this work is mostly due to the successful integration of two extreme, simplicity, which is because of the strict order of physical elements, and complexity, which is because of the randomness of individual movement schedule. Without the strict order, on the assumption that the paper color or size is various, visitor’s attention will be distracted from the timing element and dispersed into different aspects of the installation; while, without the randomness of individual movement schedule, the installation will be monotone and boring.