Horace “Woody” Brock…. read mathematical economics and political philosophy at Princeton (he has five degrees in all) and is the founder and president of Strategic Economic Decisions Inc., a think tank specializing in applying the economics of uncertainty to forecasting and risk assessment…. He believes he has cracked the secret of beautiful design. He even has equations and graphs to prove it.
In truth, it’s satisfyingly simple. Designed objects, Brock writes, can be broken down into “themes” and “transformations.” A theme is a motif, such as an S-curve; a transformation might see that curve appear elsewhere in the design, but stretched, rotated 90 degrees, mirrored, or otherwise reworked.
Aesthetic satisfaction comes from an apprehension of how those themes and transformations relate to each other, or of what Brock calls their “relative complexity.” Basically - and this is the nub of it - “if the theme is simple, then we are most satisfied when its echoes are complex . . . and vice versa.”
He gives the example of a chair in his collection designed by the English Regency architect Henry Holland. The dominant design motif, which can be found in the chair’s arm, is an S-curve. (Mathematically, an S-curve, which twists in space, is complex when compared to a straight line or unidirectional curve.) The back of the chair, writes Brock, sees that S-curve first reversed and then rotated 90 degrees - a simple two-step transformation.
Complex theme, simple transformation: Voila! The chair is beautiful.
Read the whole article from Boston.com.
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