Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology

CHAPTER 7

Architecture with a Capital “A”

Technologies get obsolete within 1 year, applications are replaced in 10 years, but the strong visions would survive more than 100 years.

—HIROSHI ISHII

Throughout this book we have invoked the notion of Architecture with a capital “A”; the idea being that, unlike architecture, which refers to the design and construction of buildings, Architecture refers to the organizational principles of a collection of objects, a concept or a system, which give it a basis for order, structure, change, or growth (Figure 7.1). Architecture, in this sense, is one of the essential qualities of design on Trillions Mountain. For a film on Architecture, see http://trillions.maya.com/Architecture.

Figure 7.1 “What makes a cup a cup?” Even a basic object like a cup has an underlying architecture that defines its “cupness.”

Architecture and Architects

We have occasionally been taken to task by a few of our colleagues in the architecture profession for what they perceive as our usurpation of the term architecture. From their point of view, an architect is a designer of buildings, and so architecture properly refers to the art and science of building design.

We understand their point. Their profession has a long and distinguished history, and we would be the first to say that it represents by far the most mature and methodologically sophisticated of all the ...