Grid Systems

Grid systems are everywhere. We create them, because we like to structure and organize. As the art historian Hannah Higgins writes in her book The Grid Book: “Humans have a vigorous free spirit and a propensity to control.” We can see this control in the grid systems we have created around us throughout history and at the same time how we have expanded our systems, adapted them and broken them to create new ones. I was very intrigued by this sentence and set out to investigate why we create these systems and how we alter and individualize them. Grid systems are guidelines, a basis on which one can built and expand on—not restricting but the stage for creativity. We bring them to life by using them.