Sergei Eisenstein and his mentor Meyerhold developed an approach to their cinema and theatre productions which they called Organic Unity. This terminology had many strands to its composition, including observing how things occur in nature, but its overall aim was a synthesis between all the elements of a piece of art. In practical terms for a play or a film this meant that the narrative, set, actors, lighting and music all shared a common theme that was driven by the central precept / concept of the work. This unity of elements would engage the audience more directly and naturally in what they were viewing and thus increase its effectiveness.
In architecture you are confronted, like film and theatre, with the combination of numerous different elements and requirements which need to be combined into a final building or master plan. And like these two other disciplines architects take a story / concept as their starting point for their design. This concept can be anything from something unique about the site, an ongoing interest of the designer, a pattern in a piece of fabric, to a piece of art (written, painted etc.). As a designer with many simultaneous concerns, artistic and practical, it can be easy to lose sight of this story in the often lengthy process of developing ideas into building.
The central concept of Organic Unity, developed by Eisenstein and Meyerhold, I believe gives us as Architects a possibility to reflect on our own design process. How do we create buildings? How do we teach and learn how to design? Could there be rules which would allow us to clarify the processes we all undertake when designing?
Before addressing these questions there is another important point to make. As architects a large proportion of our designs don't actually get built (for example those at university or for competitions) and as such our direct tool of expression is not necessarily the solid reality of a building but possibly more significantly the paper and model representations of our ideas. This observation focuses our attention on the Organic Unity of representation and mediation of our work, a necessary and arguably the most significant part of our job. Approaching drawings, models and other mediations from this point of view allows us to reassess their role. Should a plan just communicate the layout of a building in terms of measurements, material and orientation, or should it speak more broadly of the Organic Unity of a design in the way in which it is drawn rendered or notated?
TBC...
