Proportion Science, Philosophy, Architecture

This handbook provides readers with a well-illustrated and readable comparative guide to proportion systems in architecture, setting out the mathematical principles that underlie the main systems and illustrating these with examples of their use in historical and modern buildings. The main body of the text traces the interplay of abstraction and empathy through the history of science, philosophy and architecture from the early Greeks through to the two early twentieth-century architects who made proportion the focus of their work: Le Corbusier and Van der Laan. The book ends with a reflection on the present and future role of proportion in architecture.

The Harmony of the World Made Manifest in Form and Number. Abstraction and Empathy. Unit and Multiplier. The House as Model for the Universe. The Proportions of the Parthenon. Plato: Order Out of Chaos. Aristotle: Change, Continuity and the Unit. Euclid: The Golden Section and the Five Regular solids. Vitruvius. Gothis Proportions. Renaissance Artchitecture. Renaissance Cosmology. The World as a Machine. Turning from the Outer to the Inner World. The Golden Section and the Golden Module. Knowing by Not Knowing. Where Do We Go From Here?

Professional

Padovan, Richard

This handbook provides the student, practising architect or interested layman with a well-illustrated and readable comparative guide to proportion systems in architecture.