The model, of course, is the supposedly immaculate theory embodied in the immaculate design of the cosmos by the "Divine Architect," as Vasari puts it. The architect´s claim to fame was precisely the totalizing capacity of design. The default pretension of the architect is to capture the grandest scale of order. This idea was faithfully adhered to at the Bauhaus with its so-called laws of design. These laws - the center of the training, the first thing to be learned after one walked through the door - were a series of totalizing claims about form. If design is the bridge between the immaterial world of ideas and the material world of objects, then a theory is required to control that relationship. A set of structural rules maintains the integrity of the bridge. 
www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/5wigley.pdf