Three levels of knowing
Simplicity is the world view of the child or uniformed adult, fully engaged in his experience and happily unaware of what lies beneath the surface of immediate reality.
Complexity characterizes the ordinary adult world view by an awareness of complex systems in nature and society but an inability to discern clarifying patterns and connections.
Informed Simplicity is an enlightened view of reality founded upon an ability to discern or create clarifying patterns within complex mixtures. Pattern recognition is a crucial skill for an architect, who must create a highly ordered building amid many competing and frequently nebulous design considerations.
This is my favorite page (#45) from Matthew Frederick’s 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School. It is simple, casual reading with intelligence and substance. If you want to borrow it let me know.
(Posted previously as an image of words, instead of useable text.)
