The Power of Three (it’s a magic number...)

March 2, 2020 Mark Gerwing

Threeness

With apologies to Schoolhouse Rock and De La Soul, what exactly is it about the number three, at least in the world of architecture and design, that makes it so ubiquitous and appealing? I’m not going to dive into the Holy Trinity or discourse about mind, body and soul, but it is so often true that a grouping of three is so often more compatible, more satisfying than two or four.

This is certainly true when it comes to the composition of facades, where three windows, three columns, or three dormers allow for a complexity and variety that is so often more pleasing than a simple binary often presents.

And the power of three is very prevalent when you see architects and designers laying light fixtures and many other object-like patterns. It may be that ability to define pattern that makes arrangements of three so appealing. Two is a pair, and at least in the Western tradition, that so often implies a simple binary. Three, however, is the lowest number that has a kind of pattern or rhythm - it is both brief and complex in a way no other number can be.

Of course there are many practical reasons why groupings of three appear. As I have so often said to my clients, light switches in banks of three are navigable - the left, the right, and the one in the middle - easy to remember which one turns on the hall light. Just the addition of one more switch, a bank of four, very often leads to labeling because it seems we just simply can’t remember as well which switch to flip on (at least on the first try).

So why three?

I could posit a lot of answers, and I’m sure that I have a very clear, functional and sensible reason for designing in groups of threes for any given project or task. However, I suspect that there is something else going on here, some ineffable but compelling urge that keeps surfacing that is Threeness. Maybe it has something to do with triangles and stability, possibly not. Maybe it is just that Schoolhouse Rock song bouncing around in my head.