Abstract
The role of geometry and arithmetic in ancient building is common knowledge, but it has seldom been proved by measured drawing. This chapter looks for the remote origins of design criteria and ancient canons, and their application in representative antique and medieval architecture. Architectural design had to reflect the universal cosmic Order and Harmony and the ancient and medieval architect-designer had to rely on the same intangible instruments, i.e. the geometry and the arithmetic’s, created by the Divine Geometer. The geometry of forms and the numbers of quantities and dimensions served as a mayor instrument for developing coherent modulation in the design and the structure of the building and his environment. They also served as a symbol and an allegorical sign to convey intangible messages from the commissioner. Metric analysis reveals this evident design practices and their probable semantic content. This is illustrated in the analysis of six cases: the Cheops pyramid at Memphis, the Pantheon at Rome, the Charlemagne’s Palace Chapel at Aachen, the Our Lady’s Cathedral at Chartres, the S. Francis Basilica at Assisi and the Castel del Monte at Andria. This historic examples should inspire modern creative design and modern sustainable construction.
Highlights
The study of architectural history is and always has been one of the fundamentals in each architect’s education; up to the 1920’s circa the design classes were embedded by the replica of the Greek temple orders and the imitations taken from ancient reference books such as Vitruvius, Palladio, Viollet-le-duc and many other
The chapel of the imperial palace of Charlemagne is another example of the impact of the geometry and the arithmetic in the dialog between the building and his observer
For the first time applied on this scale in the northern-of-the-Alps countries, similar innovative design which includes a lot of Christian and imperial symbolisms and allegories
Summary
The study of architectural history is and always has been one of the fundamentals in each architect’s education; up to the 1920’s circa the design classes were embedded by the replica of the Greek temple orders and the imitations taken from ancient reference books such as Vitruvius, Palladio, Viollet-le-duc and many other. Recent experiences on the reconversion of existing fabric or the recuperation of ancient abandoned structures, mostly for evident economic reasons, have proved abundantly that reconversion or recuperation is much easier and less invasive with ancient well-modulated traditional buildings as it is the case with some contemporary building or probably shall be with one of the super eye-catching designed ones, created by great archistars as e.g. the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum or the Baku Heydar Aliyer Center Those superlatives are strong signs of digital design and technical knowledge, but their quality remains onesided, limited to never seen forms and materials. Ancestral origins of numbers and geometries in West-European architectural design
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