“Organized Complexity”
The phrase above is from the last chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I included this quote because I think this describes design, and more specifically, the kind of way an architect or city planner must view buildings and cities. Organized complexity is when many items that seem scattered are functionally related. There are 2 other extremes Jane Jacobs mentions, which are “disorganized complexity” and “simplicity”. Disorganized complexity is when lots of scattered facts are unrelated, and simplicity is when there is a simple cause-and-efffect relationship between 2 items. Organized complexity is good, because it requires thought to sort out, as opposed to automatic conclusions.
Michael Dobkin 