WHAT IS AN UNFOLDING?

It is helpful to compare such unfoldings with similar phenomena in plant morphogenesis and embryology. Both in the angiosperm shown below, and in the embryo shown beneath it, you can picture each unfolding as a limited and brief process which in the first one gradually shapes the seed, and in the second, takes the blur that is the beginning of a hand in the embryo, to the next stage of development where the hand gets its first outline fingers.

Diagram of a typical angiosperm (flowering plant) unfolding

Photographs of a human embryo unfolding

Two photographs, three days apart, of a mouse foot unfolding

Originally, the patterns in A Pattern Language were thought of as unfoldings. The languages of traditional society did work like that -- by unfolding building designs. Pattern languages were intended to be similar. However, as my colleagues and I worked on the pattern language throughout the sixties and early seventies, the functional content of the patterns, though humane and sensible, was at that time profoundly inconsistent with the modern way of looking at architecture that was then fashionable: in short, modern architecture, for all its talk about functionalism, was not focused on function at all. Indeed modern architecture was studiously avoiding it. In order to make the (then) radical nature of the true functionalism of the pattern language as persuasive as possible, and in order to communicate with people who had lost sight of real function, we spent more and more of our energy writing functional background, to make it clear that these functional things and their spatial correlates raised in the patterns really were true.

As a result, the crucial and central importance of unfolding as the main attribute of patterns became less visible, was obscured, and even our own work on that aspect had temporarily to slow down.

So, it is not surprising that the unfoldings presented here do, in terms of functional content and their overall network relations to one another, resemble the patterns in a pattern language. But the inner content of the unfoldings is different, and it goes back to the intention that originally inspired the pattern language in the first place.

A pattern describes a static configuration that should be made present in a neighborhood, and gives no information, really, about how to make this pattern appear within an ongoing process of design or construction. As a result the design process, which dominates the result of any neighborhood and architectural planning, has little power to be profoundly affected by the pattern.

An unfolding is primarily dynamic. It describes "how to get there from here", how and when a particular emerging morphology is to be injected into an emerging design, and what actions must be taken to make the appearance succeed geometrically. Thus an unfolding is a hugely different thing from a pattern, and a most important step forward.

In addition, the unfolding (as the very word itself suggests) unfolds the currently existing whole -- eg. a building in its environment, a neighborhood in a city. It is focused on the whole at all times, and shows how this whole unfolds, to give birth to new form and new differentiations. This explicit reference to the whole and its unfolding, provides us with a new conception of architecture as that which is being born from the pre-existing whole, and continuing it, thus always helping to give continuity to the city and the earth.

The concept of an unfolding provides an entirely different vision of the nature of architecture and planning, one which is, in principle, at last capable of helping living structure to come into being.

And the newness comes forth from unfolding. This means, literally, that what comes forth, is always, and continuously, coming from what is there already. In fact, it depends on what is there already to suggest its form.

You know how flake pastry is made. You roll it, and then fold it; roll it and then fold it. What comes out is always the same and always different. That is what this fountain of plenty does.

Each unfolding is like the apple-size electron. It reaches out, and it is part of the greater whole. It is not a fragment, like a matchbox. It embraces a considerable part of the world beyond itself. It embraces reality, and is reality.

When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty.

The solution is then given as follows:

Locate each room so that it has outdoor space outside it on at least two sides, and then place windows in these outdoor walls so that natural light falls into every room from more than one direction.

This pattern gives us powerful insight about one of the conditions that makes a room pleasant. But it is still abstract, and it is up to us to make use of it, by holding it up as a target of some design process.

What does it mean to say that it is "abstract"? It focuses attention on the end state that is desired: but it does not tell us how to get there. Indeed, producing this pattern in a building, is quite difficult, because it will only come about by some decisions having to do with the volume of the building, by making sure that the building has, at least in some degree, wings of light which are narrow and not too thick, and placing of rooms on the corners of these wings. There is no one moment in the unfolding of the design, in your mind, or on paper, when you can undertake all these acts together -- so it is difficult to visualize the action as a real process. It does not fit, in a commonsense way, into the real time when you are making these decisions.

So, you understand what is desired, but you do not have a concrete, and practical picture of how to get there.

First, this unfolding is plainly dynamic, it tells us to do something. It does not merely give us something as a target. This reflects the dynamic quality of every unfolding. But it also mobilizes our emotional energy and emotional engagement, in an entirely different way. If we imagine standing in the place, and are then (in our minds) made comfortable by the sun shining in on us, by the beauty of the light, at the same time coming from another direction, this tells us in a new way -- in an entirely new way -- the emotional impact which this unfolding has, and ought to have on our actions, and on our results.

The final result of this engagement is that the room, its exterior, its interior, its windows, the relative placement of the windows as they stand around us -- all these are mobilized, and the whole, THE WHOLE, is now being transformed and modified in a profound kind act of awakening.

The pattern gives us very useful information. But the unfolding ignites a new sensation that is much deeper than mere information, and that has a much deeper effect on the building which is being formed, and on the mentality and feeling of those who are doing it.

Unfoldings, which are dynamic in nature embrace feeling, and show us the world unfolding and becoming, through the advent of feeling.

I believe these unfoldings, for this reason, come finally, very much closer to the framework of engagement with people which first set me on this architectural path, almost fifty years ago. I believe that at last, I may have found a way -- the simplest of all -- of engaging people's feelings -- all people's feelings -- in the process of building, in such a way as to undo the results of mechanical, and mechanical-mental oppression -- which we have all suffered, through nobody's fault, during this last age of the two hundred years from 1800 to 2000.