Geometry and Proportions in Anne Tyng’s Architecture

Abstract

Anne Tyng spent her long professional life devoted to architecture, mainly in its theoretical aspects linked with geometry and proportions. She is well known as one of Louis Kahn’s most important partners in her professional and private life, however a relevant degree of originality was found in her work, while exploring her architectural design through two unrealized projects. The aim of this paper is to investigate these projects by analysing the original drawings and also searching for possible geometries through three-dimensional virtual reconstructions. In this way, it is possible to detect Tyng’s propensity for complex three-dimensional geometry in her version of the project for Bryn Mawr College’s Erdman Hall (around 1960) made for Kahn’s firm, and the attention given to the relations between geometry, environment and perception in her independent project, the Four-Poster House (around 1975–1988). In both examples, Tyng paid special attention to issues related to proportion which link architecture and human beings, adopting dimensions that could fit different kinds of people.