10 – 2011

Order – Disorder

“Architecturer c’est mettre en ordre.” Le Corbusier‘s dictum not only establishes a relationship between modern architecture and classical orders of columns, but above all proclaims that the architect, with a higher morality, introduces order into the chaos of the world. If today one takes a quick look at a building site, one’s own desk or the development of a city then order and the complete lack of it appear to balance each other out – and, even viewed over a longer period of time, the contest seems undecided. Given this discovery today Le Corbusier’s claim appears quixotic. In particular the technical sciences, which Le Corbusier demonstratively invoked, show that the complexity of the world cannot be mastered simply by tidying things up. When conceiving a building, in order to take into account all eventualities, it is better to view design as an evolutionary process that has no pre-defined goal and thus cannot follow any previously known order. In other words, for every task in architecture in the course of the process a certain relationship must be found between order and its opposite. The current issue considers this search by examining an imaginary system of coordinates between the poles individual and society as well as building and work in terms of the critical relationship between order and disorder.