Abstract

Architecture is a complex subject in itself, as it shapes the built environment where people live, answering to human needs, expressing the manifold levels of values which define society in its culture, economy, and politics. During the twentieth century, a number of design theories, both in Europe and in the USA, linked Architecture and Complexity drawing inspiration from Systemics, Information theories, and Cybernetics. Thus, being closely connected to industrial production, the main goal was to reduce uncertainty in the design process, promoting optimization. In the industrial design process, a sequence of requirements defines the exact level of fitness-for-purpose of a product. Such ideas proved to be unsuitable for many architectural design purposes: “functional optimization” can be applied to an object, a device, and a machine; it seems to be useless, and even dangerous, when applied to an evolutionary entity as the built environment seems to be.This chapter endeavours to trace an outline of this difficult relationship.