Christopher Alexander on Simplicity

“Our modern conception of simplicity has gone wrong. Simplicity as depth has been replaced by a mechanical idea of simplicity as the geometrically banal…

The things we call simple in design – cubes, spheres – appear simple conceptually because they can be represented by simple mathematical schemes. But they are not, in any real sense, the simplest thing which can be created at a given place and time. The simplest thing which can be created, in real terms, is that thing which goes furthest to resolve, complete, hence to elaborate and underpin the structure of the world, its wholeness, which exists at that place. In this sense a volcano, a cobweb, an oak tree are truly more simple … because as nearly as we can judge, they perfectly resolve the forces, processes and conditions at that place, with the greatest economy of means and the greatest economy of form.

… ‘doing the simplest thing,’ only the thing which is required and nothing beyond what is required, is a practical and efficient necessity. When an unfolding process has succeeded – when a living process has succeeded – we may always recognize its results by a visible simplicity in the geometry and character of what is produced …

Any good example of living structure always has a very high density of sustaining relations among its parts. These … occupy a great deal of ‘space’ … there is room for all of them when they are extremely compressed, when their density is great. This kind of compression … can only be attained in a thing when that thing is extremely simple …

The geometry of living structure … is the result of a process in which a complex system becomes at one and the same time both richer and simpler. Each new bit of structure, each new center, adds new differentiations. But each time, as soon as we get the new differentiations, we at once try to boil the garbage away so that the structure is simplified and concentrated. We try to keep it continuously simple, even while we fill it with more and more structure.“

Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 2: The Process of Creating Life