ABSTRACT

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.

chapter 2|18 pages

ABSTRACTION AND EMPATHY

chapter 3|20 pages

UNIT AND MULTIPLIER

chapter 4|22 pages

THE HOUSE AS MODEL FOR THE UNIVERSE

chapter 5|21 pages

THE PROPORTIONS OF THE PARTHENON

chapter 6|17 pages

PLATO: ORDER OUT OF CHAOS

chapter 9|17 pages

VITRUVIUS

chapter 10|34 pages

GOTHIC PROPORTIONS

chapter 11|39 pages

HUMANISM AND ARCHITECTURE

chapter 12|15 pages

RENAISSANCE COSMOLOGY

chapter 13|17 pages

THE WORLD AS A MACHINE

chapter 4|26 pages

teen FROM THE OUTER TO THE INNER WORLD

chapter 15|35 pages

THE GOLDEN SECTION AND THE GOLDEN MODULE