It serves me right. After warning many a student of the dangers of the circle as a design trope, I realize that the circle has now found its way into several of our recent projects. I still believe my beef with the circle is legit. The circle plays nice with no one, not even its own kin. Fuller’s Dymaxion House refuses to accept additions, twinnings, or groupings without appearing just plain awkward.
But a degenerate circle, this is a thing of beauty–disintegrated, degraded, deformed, opened to the influence of the outside world in one way or another–the idealism of perfect geometry tempered by the specificity of the material world or the necessities of use and inhabitation. And perhaps the simplicity of the circle’s geometry is most appropriate when used to register precisely these forces of the world which refuse to conform to such simplicity or symmetry.
The open circle of the Great Blue Hole, Lighthouse Reef, Belize, an inspiration for Radical Craft’s Soms Atoll proposal.
Water pools complementing the simple geometry of the Tevetron Collider at Fermilab in Batavia, IL.
The radial porosity of the Trajan’s Hollow plaster floor cast, a cross-sectional index of the asymmetries of the original Trajan’s Column.