The following excerpt is from the Unicistwiki Entry titled “Unicist Business Architecture”.
The origin of Architecture
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (1st Century B.C.) discovered and described the ontology of architecture giving birth to the functional architectural approach. The ontological structure of architecture is defined by utility (utilitas), beauty (venustas) and solidity (firmitas). According to Vitruvius, architecture is an imitation of nature. This information is included in his multi-volume work “De Architectura” and allows dealing with the nature of the construction processes in all activities where a “system” is being built.
Ontology of business architecture
The purpose of functional architecture is to generate value (utility) with an aesthetical solution that completes the needs of the users and provides a solid construction that provides both flexibility and rigidity to be stable. An architect is, following the functional definition, an individual who is able to integrate both the constructive aspects of a building and the functionality of its use. Unicist business architecture is a structural functionalist approach to businesses – considered as adaptive systems – that is homologous to the ontology of functional architecture.
A structural functionalist approach
Unicist business architecture is a structural functionalist approach to business design because, on the one hand, it deals with the ontological structure of a business and, on the other hand, it designs the functionality of the business processes. Both architectural approaches require accurate diagnoses of the objectives and possibilities to take advantage of the characteristics of the environment. Functional architects and unicist business architects need to be doers and natural learners in order to be able to design maximal strategies to adapt to the environment and minimum strategies to finish the “buildings”.
The unified field of Business Architecture
Unicist business architecture includes the fundamental diagnosis of the unified field of a business defined by its ontologies, the description of the business model, the development of the strategy to be used, the definition of the work processes and the business objects to be included in these processes. This is an introduction to provide the unified field that defines the business architecture to all those who want to manage it. The unified field of Business Architecture can be described as follows: The term “hyperreality building” is used to define the emulation of a reality which requires building a model that represents the architectural structure of a unified field. The final purpose is to design a business model which requires being able to manage the unified field of a business and develop a strategy to achieve the results that are required. Business architecture implies modeling a business considering it as a unified field with the environment. But the abstraction of the unified field has to be put down to earth defining the model including their operational business processes.
Synthesis
Unicist business architecture deals with the design of businesses considered as adaptive systems. It implies dealing with the complexity of adaptive systems and transforms them into simple solutions. It requires apprehending their unified field in order to make the operational solutions believable. No one can use the simplification of a complex unified field without having apprehended it first.