Shape

366 III Using It to Design
to the plan
Descriptions combine too copiously in too many series. You can ask for something
that’s meaningful according to my description rules—at least it’s ‘‘grammatical’’—that
you can’t get calculating with villa plans. It seems to me that sometimes imagination
works in this way, too, when words promise more than I can do with shapes. Only
perhaps this is just my imagination. And even if it’s not, it doesn’t make up for anything
words miss. What I can say never trumps what I can see and do. But let’s go on.
The single two-step series
from step 8 9 10
N 9 7 5
already gives the Villa Barbaro, and also these four plans
But notice that the plan for the Villa Barbaro is the only one that’s defined uniquely—
two rules are applied: first, one to produce a three-by-one rectangle, and then another
to produce the cross. Each of the plans above, however, is defined in two ways—again
rules apply nondeterministically. In three plans, large rectangular rooms come in pairs.
Horizontally, the rectangles can be formed either one before the other, and vertically,
from the top or the bottom. And in the remaining plan, the two symmetrical rectangles
can come before or after the large rectangle at the base. Next, suppose N ¼ 9 and
the grid of walls is five by three to start—as in the Villa Foscari. Then, there are fortythree
possibilities, of which these eight are a nice sample