Pioneer Works is a social sculpture that works the same way. It is a cohesive physical community but informal and pluralistic. It is not siloed along disciplinary lines like a university. On the contrary, artists, scientists and writers are jammed together, encouraged to borrow one another’s methodologies in pursuit of a project that is both individual and common — finding the hidden order of things.
Yellin’s community seeks to be an interdisciplinary Jane Jacobs ballet: hundreds of bodies in different fields going about their own business interminglingly. I wouldn’t want it to replace the university (the danger of dilettantism is real), but the creative pyrotechnics are inspiring