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Title Proportional systems in the history of architecture : a critical reconsideration / edited by Matthew A. Cohen and Maarten Delbeke
Published [Leiden, Netherlands] : Leiden University Press, [2018]
[Chicago, Illinois] : Distributed in North America by the University of Chicago Press

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Description 1 online resource (565 pages) : illustrations
Contents Part I. Introduction. Two kinds of proportion / Matthew A. Cohen -- part II. Thinking and seeing proportion. 2 Canons of proportion and the laws of nature : observations on a permanent and unresolved conflict / Mario Curti -- The composto ordinato of Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana : proportion or anthropomorphy? / Caroline van Eck -- Subjective proportions : 18th-century interpretations of Paestum's "disproportion" / Sigrid de Jong -- Were early modern architects Neoplatonists? The Case of François Blondel / Anthony Gerbino -- Plotting Gothic : a paradox / Stephen Murray -- To build proportions in time, or tie knots in space? A reassessment of the Renaissance turn in architectural proportions / Marvin Trachtenberg -- part III. Designing with proportion. 1, 2, 3, 6 : Early Gothic architecture and perfect numbers / Elizabeth den Hartog -- Proportion and building material or theory versus practice in the determination of the module / Lex Bosman -- Approaches to architectural proportion and the "poor old Parthenon" / Mark Wilson Jones -- Scamozzi's orders and proportions : an end to illusions or a visionary harbinger? / Franco Barbieri -- Early modern Netherlandish artists on proportion in architecture or "de questien der Simmetrien met redene der Geometrien" / Krista De Jonge -- Proportional design systems in 17th-century Holland / Konrad Ottenheym -- The matrix regained : reflections on the use of the grid in the architectural theories of Nicolaus Goldmann and Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand / Jeroen Goudeau -- Dynamic unfolding and the conventions of procedure : geometric proportioning strategies in Gothic architectural design / Robert Bork -- part IV. New approaches to well-known sources. Divining proportions in the information age / Andrew Tallon -- Decoding the Pantheon columns / Gerd Grasshoff and Christian Berndt -- Leonardo da Vinci : the proportions of the drawings of sacred buildings in Ms. B, Institut de France / Francesco P. Di Teodoro -- Philibert de L'Orme's divine proportions and the composition of the Premier tome de l'architecture / Sara Galletti -- An old problem? Claude Perrault's views on beauty and proportion in architecture and French aesthetic theory / Maarten Delbeke -- part V. Twentieth-century perspectives. Le Corbusier's Modulor and the debate on proportion in France / Jean-Louis Cohen -- Between looking and making : unravelling Dom Hans van der Laan's plastic number / Caroline Voet -- Rudolph Wittkower versus Le Corbusier : a matter of proportion / Francesco Benelli -- Proportional systems in the history of architecture : a conversation with James S. Ackerman / conducted and edited by Matthew A. Cohen -- part VI. Conclusion. Ten principles for the study of proportional systems in the history of architecture / Matthew A. Cohen
Summary Prior to the advent of modern structural engineering, architects and builders used proportional systems to imbue their works with a general condition of order that was integral to notions of beauty and structural stability. These mostly invisible intellectual frameworks ranged from simple grids and symbolic numbers, to sly manipulations of geometry and numbers that required privileged knowledge and arithmetical calculations to access. Since the origins of architectural history, proportional systems have served as objects of belief and modes of iconographical communication. Whether they are capable of fulfilling more tangible functions remains a matter of debate today, but as the contributors to this volume show, these ancient and diverse belief systems continue to infiltrate architectural thinking in subtle and sometimes surprising ways today
Notes "This volume first took shape as the Special Collection Objects of Belief: Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture in the journal Architectural Histories, from 2014-2016 (journal.eahn.org). That collection was derived from papers presented at the conference 'Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture, ' held in Leiden in March 2011"--Acknowledgements
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on January 25, 2019)
Subject Architecture -- Composition, proportion, etc.
Architecture -- Philosophy
Architecture -- History.
ARCHITECTURE / History / General
Architecture
Architecture -- Composition, proportion, etc.
Architecture -- Philosophy
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Cohen, Matthew A., 1962- editor.
Delbeke, Maarten, editor.
ISBN 9400602871
9789400602878