283and Poverty’ (1933). A form of residence that acts on this
maxim takes place in reduced spaces within which we en-
counter no traces that would be capable of cementing our
habits and restricting ourselves and others, and in which ‘it
is difficult to leave traces’ that might cement our habits and
restrict ourselves and others. The ideal of this simplicity is
to make it possible to begin from the beginning at any time
without being predetermined by a history.
But in other contexts, reductive form can promote a re-
ceptivity to nuance at a heightening of differentiated percep-
tion, for example the concentration on proportions, surface
qualities, or chromatic gradations, spatial qualities, which are
not obscured by superfluous details. In particular, however,
a simple setting – as a background – accords respect to that
which transpires before it. When simplicity, however, is un-
successful but merely simplistic, we encounter the danger of
banality and clumsiness. In such cases, inadequacies are all
the more strikingly evident.
Simplicity as the quality of a situation is not identical
with simplicity of form: the practice of simplicity can mean,
for example, wiping the slate clean – clearing off a table – to
make a fresh start. More important than the simple, perhaps
even empty room, as an architectural precondition for such a
new beginning, is the availability of numerous cabinets and
drawers where objects can be stored in an orderly fashion,
allowing a truly clean sweep. Rooms devoid of unnecessary
clutter create a context for rituals of concentration and re-
stricted attention. Both the engendering and the perception
of simplicity presupposes an intellectually demanding pro-
cess, which establishes and maintains a simple > order in the
face of the challenges and contradictory demands of a chaotic
world. Oswald Mathias Ungers went so far as to base the
ideal of simplicity in the abstract grasping and thinking of
space, emerging only through a reduction to ‘archaic clarity
and simplicity’: ‘The architect builds so that he has something
to think with.’ But the philosopher Spinoza already remarked