Special Topics: Proportions in Architecture

Abstract

The course provides an overview of historical proportion doctrines and practices and their evolution, from the Greek temple and Vitruvius to Le Corbusier or Peter Märkli, and asks whether and how the issues and responses examined can still be relevant today.

Objective

The basic sharpening of analytical skills concerning form and its theory; the acquisition of architectural historical knowledge and the ability to reflect this on contemporary issues and one's own design work.

Content

The design of architectural forms and spaces is rarely arbitrary; rather, in the vast majority of cases it is based on a certain theory of good order, or it contradicts such a theory through sought-after disorder. For the architecture of the modern era, which started from Vitruvius' De architectura libri decem, the only surviving ancient book on architecture, this meant - in addition to harmonious numerical relationships and basic geometric forms - in particular: Column architecture. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century, when modernism was called upon to overcome history, that the well-proportioned column was decisively rejected as the primary factor in architectural order and proportion. "Et Vignole - enfin - est foutu! Merci! Victoire!" (Le Corbusier) But modernism has changed only the external form. What has remained the same is the insight that some kind of order or proportion is needed to give architecture lasting validity, ultimately still beauty. At times, the old systems of proportion were merely re-founded, namely empirically. Topics: The Greek temple, symmetry and eurythmy in Vitruvius, column orders, commensurable and incommensurable proportions, Pythagorean number and music theory, Andrea Palladio, first relativization of the doctrines of proportion in Claude Perrault, experimental psychology (Theodor Fechner), empathy theory (Heinrich Wölfflin), the golden section (Adolf Zeisig), Le Corbusier (Tracés régulateurs and Modulor), J. L. M. Lauweriks, Hendrik Berlage, Ernst Neufert, Colin Rowe, Oswald Mathias Ungers, Peter Märkli etc.

Resources