Simplifying Complexity

摘要

This story of the new Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth College may as well begin with the dictum frequently heard when the late William J. LeMessurier, P.E., Hon.M.ASCE (1926-2007), addressed his class: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" Teaching at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, LeMessurier borrowed this succinct essence of Henry David Thoreau's quest to shun the burdens of metropolitan life as an analogy. He urged his students to return to an understanding of the first principles of design and to rid necessary computations of unnecessary complexities. True in Thoreau's era, LeMessurier's time, and today, turning away from nuances and toward fundamentals serves to underscore the elegance of uncluttering a problem to provide a concise solution.