Complexity: Design Strategy and World View

When the term “complexity” appears in architectural contexts,

it is clear at once that it has more than one definition, more

than one interpretation, more than one architectural conceptualization.

Perhaps more than other cultural disciplines,

architecture is confronted by complexity on the most diverse

levels. Clearly, it is often a question of models of a further level

of complexity, and hence also of conceiving a different world

picture, rather than of precisely categorizing or analyzing

what already exists.What is required are modes of reading

complexity that – despite or precisely because of their disparities

– lead inexorably to questions concerning their respective

systems of reference: which context generates which concept

of complexity?Which concept of complexity generates which

context?

With essays by Clemens Bellut, Johann Feichter,

Andrea Gleiniger, Klaus Mainzer, Denise Scott Brown,

Kostas Terzidis, Robert Venturi, and Georg Vrachliotis

Andrea Gleiniger, Kunst- und Architekturhistorikerin, ZHdK; Georg Vrachliotis, Architekt und Architekturtheoretiker, ETH Zürich.

In cooperation with the Zurich University of the Arts and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.