Projects
Writing
Information
- Introduction
- The Capacity of Form
- Designed Form as Furniture
- The Relational Field of Form
- The Reconciliation of Form and Function
- Complex Form in Harmonization
- Restraint and Richness
Complex Form in Harmonization: Continued - Discerning Proportion
- Reflection on Contemporary Design
2023-2025
- What is Design?
- Problematic Design of Contemporary Era
- The Timeless Good Design
- Reflection on the Role of Design in our Historic Moment
-2023
Complex Form in Harmonization: Continued
Complex form is not simply a matter of visual complication. In this context, complexity comes from the coexistence of different forces within one object: clarity and ambiguity, control and expression, restraint and richness. Rather than treating these qualities as opposites, this essay considers how they may be brought into relation through design. The question is not binary of whether a form should be minimal or ornamental, modern or classical, geometric or expressive, but how these conditions can adjust and strengthen one another.
Restraint appears through geometry, proportion, and formal clarity. It gives form a sense of order while surface or material speak differently. In modern design, this restraint is often expressed through essential lines, simplified volumes, efficient structure, and resisting excessive visual language. However, restraint does not belong only to modernism. Classical architecture also depends on systems of order, particularly through proportion, symmetry, and regulating geometries. Roman architectural orders, for example, demonstrate how proportion can unify structure and expression. In this sense, both classical and modern design contain different forms of discipline: one through historical systems of proportion, the other through reduction and formal necessity.
The value of looking at both traditions is to understand what each can offer as a design logic, rather than to combine them stylistically. Classical form can bring solemnity, rhythm, and a sense of historical weight. Modern form can bring clarity, efficiency, and a sharper definition of space. When these two ways of thinking are brought together, form may gain a more complex presence. A volumetric base can suggest the gravity and stillness of classical architecture, while a reduced outline or essential line can define the object with modern clarity. The result is not a direct quotation of the past, nor a purely modern reduction, but a form that holds both weight and lightness, stillness and precision.
Geometry plays an important role in this process. It can be understood as a grammar of form: a quiet structure that organizes proportion, alignment, rhythm, and internal relation. Like grammar in language, geometry does not always appear directly on the surface, yet it accounts for the ways in which meaning and coherence are formed. What is visible on the surface is only a partial articulation of the spatial logic underneath. In this sense, geometry is not only a method of drawing shape; it is a way of giving form restraint, continuity, and internal order.
Richness enters through another layer of design: materiality, surface, craft, and ornament. Ornamentation has long been a repeated subject in architecture and design, moving between appreciation, critique, and rejection. Traditional architecture often used ornament as a visible language of beauty, symbolism, and cultural expression, while many modernist positions favored unembellished surfaces and the honesty of material and structure. Yet ornamentation has never fully disappeared. In my opinion, it has shifted into different forms. It may appear through the grain of wood, the joint of construction, the rhythm of repetition, the trace of fabrication, or the natural variation of material. In this way, ornament does not need to be applied decoration. It can be embedded in the material and revealed through the making of the object.
This relation between geometry and ornament allows restraint and richness to coexist. Geometry establishes a controlled framework, while materiality gives that framework warmth, tactility, and variation. The restrained form moderates richness from becoming excessive; the richness of material prevents restraint from becoming cold or empty. A form may be simple in outline, but slow in reading. Its surface, grain, proportion, and construction can carry depth without depending on visual excess. This is where complexity begins to emerge: not through adding more elements, but through allowing different design forces to remain in tension.
This attempted mixture is not entirely new. It can be seen in Eliel Saarinen’s work at Cranbrook, where older architectural references coexist with a more modern sense of discipline. His buildings draw from classical, Arts and Crafts, and Art Deco traditions through proportion, masonry, craft, and material detail, yet their overall forms remain restrained and geometric. At the Cranbrook Art Museum and Library, limestone, brick, vertical rhythm, and simplified column-like elements create material richness without overwhelming the clarity of the composition. Ornament is not treated as a separate decorative layer, but is absorbed into structure, proportion, and material presence. Saarinen’s work shows significance of how historical weight and tactile richness can exist within a controlled formal order.
As a designer who learns from Sarrinen, I utilize this relationship as a method for forming objects in my own approach. Geometry provides an underlying order through proportion, volume, and spatial definition. Materiality then interrupts and enriches that order through grain, surface, tactility, and process. Classical references may bring rhythm, weight, and symbolic stillness, while modern restraint keeps the form clear and essential. Ornament is not added after the form is made; it is carried through material, structure, and the way the object reveals its construction.
The coexistence of restraint and richness offers a way to move beyond mere oppositions. A design does not need to choose between classical and modern, geometric and ornamental, minimal and maximal. Instead, it can allow these qualities to adjust one another. Complex form, in this sense, is not the result of complication, but of harmonization. It is a controlled condition in which form remains clear, yet materially and culturally resonant; restrained in outline, yet rich in presence.