Twenty-Six Design Concepts, Illustrated

grid At every scale of architectural design, the grid's importance cannot be overstated. Often described as the 'central phenomenon' of architecture, laying out a grid provides order to the unstructured, and thus an accessible field of operations for the design. Much of the grid's functionality comes from its adaptability; every grid is, in theory, infinitely expansive, and thus can provide a sense of organizational uniformity at any scale. Because of this adaptability, grids can be seen in almost any aspect of art or architecture.

Entire city plans can follow a grid, as with New York's streets or Savannah's green squares, but so can individual house plans, column arrangements, or window arrangements.