Organizing Principles

The success of a work of art hinges, more than anything else, on the strength of its composition. Here the term "composition” is used to mean "a whole comprised of parts.” A strong composition is one in which all its parts work to strengthen the whole. This is as true of a piece of music as it is of a painting or the design of a small house.

The last chapter described subtractive design as the means to distilling a house to its essential components. This chapter will focus primarily on how the remaining parts are to be organized into a comprehensive whole. Seven principles: simplicity, honesty, proportion, scale, alignment, hierarchy and procession will be presented as essential considerations to meeting this end.