Saturday, September 16, 2023

Unmeasurable ideas

'A great building', wrote the architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974), 'must begin with the unmeasureable, go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable'. The same thinking, arguably, may be applied to ideation. That is, ideas that spring, or emerge out of dreams or relatedness. And whether the idea takes centre stage or appears in the margins, first thoughts seem unmeasurable. But, in the development of an idea, measurable means are employed to make the idea visible or comprenhensible, and this in order to express and communicate the idea, visually or verbally. And only as far as the idea is made real, that is, realised, does it become measurable. But not necessarily so because ideas often carry intangible qualities in which case the idea, in the end, must remain unmeasurable. Could it be then that the measureable idea begins where dreams end?

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