Elegance Enriches Our Lives

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

Beauty and elegance are often lumped together, but I think elegance is less obvious, more elusive, and truly more enriching.   Today’s advertising tries to convince us to create beauty by overdoing it.    Elegance, on the other hand, may not be so eyesome.  It is likely to appear when something is subtracted or missing.    Remember Sherlock Holmes and the “curious incident of the dog in the night-time”?  When a dog didn’t bark, the mystery elegantly unraveled.     

Closer to home are the inside doorways of our house.  Years ago we bought an old farmhouse in rural western New York.   Past additions had created dingy rooms separated by narrow doorways.  We found more light and space by widening the doorways.  Elegance came from taking something away.        

 In his recent book, In Pursuit of Elegance, Matthew May emphasizes symmetry, simplicity, and participation.  Some years ago, I discovered all three in one design.   The 50-year-old layout of the University at Albany features the blueprints of Edward Durell Stone.  Every building has straight vertical or horizontal off-white lines.  Some say this is ugly, but it is hard to deny the elegance you see in neat, simple symmetry.  The finishing landscapers were inspired by another kind of elegance when they wisely decided not to pave straight walkways everywhere, but instead to watch where the students wandered, and then to make permanent the paths of least resistance.  Human choice encouraged form to follow function.   

What would happen if all stoplights and signs disappeared from a busy four-way street intersection?  Chaos and anger?  Probably not, because trusting people’s discretion and intelligence usually produces elegance.  Author May describes a Dutch village where this worked perfectly without any signs at all.  I have seen proof in the center of our nearby rural town where a four-way intersection features stop signs but no stoplights.  Drivers take courteous turns pulling out so traffic flows efficiently and safely.  People tend to act more self-responsibly when boundaries require a little forethought.  The fewer and simpler the rules -- whether it is to solve problems, play games, or to lead an organization -- the closer we get to elegance.

A master-stroke solution to a complex problem can be very satisfying, and truly elegant.  One day as superintendent of schools, I greeted the teachers of agriculture and technical learning who had come to ask for more storage space.  Equipment and programs were jammed together in the existing high school facility.  The timing was right because we were planning major construction.

 I suggested a barn be built off the back of the high school.  I like to think the teachers’ eyes grew big.  Their plans certainly did, as they involved the students in planning space for many purposes ranging from maple sugaring and an environmental education lab to stalls for animals in the veterinary program.  The barn turned into an elegantly consolidated and unified solution to the problem of disorganized space.

The idea of less becoming more is found in many different worlds besides education.  Robert Frost’s simple poems are undeniably elegant.  Albert Einstein developed formulas that endure because they are both profound and elegant.  In education, the new Common Core potentially reverses criticism that curriculum content is a mile wide, but only an inch deep.     

Ultimately, elegance may work best when it is imperfect.  When perfection is demanded, creative out-of-the-box thinking shrinks.    Elegance shines through when people come together, recognize and struggle with complexity, but then ask,“What can we simplify and eliminate so we will do less, but do it more efficiently and effectively?”