Selected Bibliography Architecture - Form Space and Order | Page 352

7
Principles
“. . . Nothing but confusion can result when order is considered a quality
that can equally well be accepted or abandoned, something that can be
forgone and replaced by something else. Order must be understood as
indispensable to the functioning of any organized system, whether its
function be physical or mental. Just as neither an engine nor an orchestra
nor a sports team can perform without the integrated cooperation of all
its parts, so a work of art or architecture cannot fulfill its function and
transmit its message unless it presents an ordered pattern. Order is
possible at any level of complexity: in statues as simple as those on Easter
Island or as intricate as those by Bernini, in a farmhouse and in a Borromini
church. But if there is not order, there is no way of telling what the work is
trying to say.”
Rudolf Arnheim
The Dynamics of Architectural Form
1977

337