It is said—perhaps closer to myth than reality—that when Mies van der Rohe interviewed a candidate to join his studio, he would subject them to a peculiar test. He would lead them to a drafting table, provide them with the necessary instruments—rulers, compasses, squares, triangles, pencils, erasers, and so on—and ask them to arrange these elements within the confined field of the drawing board.
Order is a polysemic term that explains how things are placed, the rules they establish, and their compositions. It refers to how series or taxonomies are constructed; it can be a mandate that must be obeyed; it also alludes to a religious order, or it may even refer to the classical language of construction.
