Shape

2 Introduction: Tell Me All About It
it’s probably the same for design. Neither what parts shapes have nor what’s exposition
and what’s autobiography can be settled permanently. Making up your mind is a process
that’s always open-ended—what counts can be seen in many ways. It all adds up
as I change my point of view and what I say about what I see.
Making sense of shapes concerns me most, and this motivates my answers.
Shapes are things like these
that I can draw on a page with points, lines, and planes. They’re the first three kinds of
basic elements of dimensions zero, one, and two. Shapes made up of basic elements
have parts that can be seen in many ways. That’s what rules are for—to make sense of
shapes and to change what I see. Showing how rules work is something I do a lot—it’s
all about seeing and doing. Then, there are also shapes made up of solids. These are
another kind of basic element of dimension three. They extend beyond this page or
any other surface. Solids go together to make the shapes of everyday experience—the
shapes of things that are easy to hold and bump into—for example, the shape of this
book at different times. And there are other shapes that extend farther than this page—
shapes that include points, lines, and planes that are located in space.
After I introduce shapes in the following section, I use them in the story I tell
about design. Both of my answers converge around similar ideas. If you want, you can
try them in reverse order. I’ve already said this is easy to do. I like to read books by sampling
them haphazardly. Usually, I read many at once, shuffling through them in this
random fashion until I’ve finished everything. It’s the same looking at shapes—you do
it one way now and another way later. With shapes, there’s always something new to
see.
Answer Number One—What Do You See Now?
I’m obsessed with shapes. They’re almost everywhere I look, and once they’re in view I
can’t take my eyes off of them. I always wonder what I’m going to see next. Nothing
looks the same for very long, but this needn’t be as strange and confusing as it sounds.
I know what to do with the ambiguity. Shapes change—I can see them in alternative
ways anytime I choose—and I can use the novelty to design. It’s an inexhaustible
source of creative ideas.
The crux of what fascinates me is evident whenever I draw lines with pencil and
paper. Suppose I draw the following shape