materialicious posted this inspirational obituary of architect laurie baker.  i never heard of him, but i’ll look up his work next time I’m at the CED library.

 Gandhian principles infused his work, as they did his life. “I now think Gandhi was right,” he wrote in 1975, “when he said that all the building materials should be found within five miles of the site”, and “Low-cost techniques should not be considered only for the poor — our aim should be to design only the simplest of buildings for all.”

el‧e‧gant  /ˈɛlɪgənt/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[el-i-guhnt]
–adjective

(of scientific, technical, or mathematical theories, solutions, etc.) gracefully concise and simple; admirably succinct.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)

‘Elegance’ is applied to work that is effortlessly complex. It is analogous to an elegant algorithm that uses a small amount of initiative code to great effect. In a structure elegance may be expressed by a complex surface that retains its continuity and integrity even when punctured.