In order to understand a sentence fully, one must understand its parts and the way they work. A complete sentence, in its most simple form, is a substantive with a verb in agreement. Additions to this sentence may include other substantives and verbs, but most additions are modifiers, either adjectival or adverbial. These modifiers should enhance the substantive and its verb, elevating their existence within the sentence. However, modifiers may also detract from the substantive and verb. This occurs when the substantive and verb become lost among the additions.

A simple, easily understood complete sentence, i.e. a sentence containing only a substantive with a verb in agreement, becomes with the addition of too many modifiers that are not really necessary a foudryant expression that is difficult, although not impossible to diagram for the purpose of grasping the relationships between words that are, in their present state, convoluded by the addition of modifiers within and without clauses, to decipher. In other words, too many modifiers make a sentence difficult to understand.

While the simple complete sentence is concise by its very nature, a concise sentence may contain much more than a substantive with verb. A concise sentence contains the essential and whatever else, if anything, to elevate the essential. Modifiers are not bad per se, but modifiers must remain just that: modifiers. They must be chosen carefully and remain secondary to the essential (provided that their primacy is not the intent). Modifiers and their use within a sentence are distinguishing factors between carefully crafted prose or poetry and misleading verbosity. The beauty of the concise sentence is its ability to express the most while using the least. The same can be true for architecture.

For this thesis I looked to the substantive for establishing a connection between a project and the existing architecture of its site.

[Vita modified March 5, 2012. GMc]