3 ms·

How so? Can you elaborate a bit on that?

• hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  It's hard to synthesize, this book revolves around an attempt to model what produces good design and provide a formal method to reach it (note that it's "design" in the broader sense of finding solutions given certain constraints). It provides many insights: - The notion that form (more generally, structure) is not something in itself, but the manifestation of the forces (constraints) acting on it. An example of that is how a water droplet not only has a particular form, but can only have that particular form, because that is a manifestation of the constraints (molecular structure of water) and forces (gravity, surface tension) acting on it. - The notion of problem vs. context, and how you can find a solution by just moving the boundaries; - Definition of good solutions as a function of "fitness"; - Development of the concept of "fitness", as a process of reaching balance between interdependent, positive and negative features; - A critic on the current design process (he calls it the "conscious" process), in which features are proposed/changed indiscriminately, as opposed to forms that arise from feedback loops ("unconscious" process). He gives the comparison between a consciously architected building that fails to meet the requirements vs. an indigenous village in which the buildings already evolved, already meet the criteria given the constraints, and basically don't change anymore between generations While the author's discusses all these from the PoV of architecture, I've found his insights have surprising parallels with other things, from darwinism to machine learning to data structures and algorithms.