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Architectural Theory Review

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Geometry And Architecture

Stephen Frith
a a

Guest Editor

Available online: 06 Aug 2010

To cite this article: Stephen Frith (2010): Geometry And Architecture, Architectural Theory Review, 15:2, 107-109 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2010.495401

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GUEST EDITORIAL

GEOMETRY AND ARCHITECTURE

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Architecture depends on geometry, yet it is an art of seduction that would never upset the senses by means of reason.1 In the beginning of Book 6 of his Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius tells us a story: When Aristippus, the Socratic philosopher, had been washed up on the shore of Rhodes after a shipwreck, and noticed that geometric diagrams had been drawn there, he is said to have exclaimed to his comrades: Let us hope for the best; I see human footprints! (VI.praef.1)2 Architecture mediated by geometry has for centuries been a major vehicle for the embodiment of order. Karsten Harries in an essay meditates on Cartesian space innitely extended, eliciting a response of freedom in the writings of Giordano Bruno, later giving rise to Kants rst antinomy: The world has a beginning in time, and is also limited as regards space opposing the contrary, The world has no beginning, and no limits in space; it is innite in regards both time and space. Harries argues that his antinomy haunts every attempt to construct space, every architecture,3 and that underlying our inhabitation of the world is a
ISSN 1326-4826 print/ISSN 1755-0475 online 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13264826.2010.495401

geometric construction, and asks Must we not domesticate space if we are to feel at home in it?4 Architectures role in this making the universe palatable can be seen to be dependent on a human will, but this perception is challenged by a geometry which generates architectural form, a capacity now easily available in software used commonly by architectural students. For some it carries with it a stigma, but also promises a thrill much like riding a bike with no hands. This collection of essays on the uses of geometry in architecture arose from a response to the increasing uses of generative geometry in the production of architectural designs in Australasian architecture schools. It was the subject of a symposium attached to the annual meeting of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia (AASA) in Canberra in 2008. Several of the papers rst made their appearance at this meeting, and others have been offered that assist the placing of this generative phenomena in an historical context. The keynote address for the AASA symposium was by Stephen Hyde, Professor of Mathematics at the Australian National University, who introduces his work on generative

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geometries in mathematics. Michael Ostwald explores the uses of fractal geometries, at one point referring to them when misappropriated as a monster. The ambiguities of Albertis veil is explored by Brendan Murray, followed by the editors paper on Pascal and the relation between geometry and the rhetorical traditions. Philip Goad writes of the uses of polygonal geometry in twentieth century modernism, and Mitchell Whitelaw writes on recent architectural uses of space lling, with reference to his own artistic practice. Jane Burry examines the relation between architectural representation and its production, making a distinction between sensual and perceptual interpretation of architectural making. The special issue section concludes with reections of the potential of generative geometries in student work at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) by Anthony Burke and Ben Hewitt. The uses of geometry in architecture tend to be instrumental, dovetailing with the process of building as a species of order. The modulation and arrangement of plans and the surfaces of elevations go hand in hand with this ction, but also depend upon geometrical play. This is an ancient habit, but one that has mutated since the eighteenth century in a period of increasing standardisation. The transformation of the historical uses of geometry in the rise of industrial civilisation is evident in a comparison of the construction of two Gothic church towers, one from the nineteenth century and the other from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. The rst is by Edmund Blacket at St Stephens, Newtown in Sydney. It was built in Camperdown Cemetery in 1871-72, and is a testimony to the architectural poetry that Blacket achieved in his work. The geometry of the tower transforms from a square at its base to the point at its apex. The lower square

section is mediated throughout by an octagonal stair abutment, which takes the eye and stops at a large traceried vented opening whose geometry is dominated by the triangle of an applied gable. This masks the transformation of the geometry from the square to the octagon of the spire. The triangulation signies the most important place of transformation in the building. At this point, the stair resolves in its crenellations, a timid defence against some dark art. The coursing of the stone changes from the standardised one foot courses of the main wall that came from the stone-yard, to a foot and one half coursing for the remainder of the tower assisting the scaling of the spire and its reading from the ground. While Blacket is reliant on contemporary standardised measures from stone suppliers, his architecture celebrates this moment of transformation of stone and geometry by locating the churchs bells at this point, a nuanced collaboration of sound, geometry and architecture that was in part an outcome of his own studies of medieval exemplars. The second tower is from Chartres Cathedral outside of Paris, introduced to many students of architecture in Sydney in the 1970s by Dr John James. The geometry generates the form of the tower, even down to the details such as the angle and placing of the windows. The use of geometry in that culture had a sacral purpose, as if geometry carried the mind of an immanent god throughout matter. In this late medieval context, geometry and numbers became a speculation on the generative relation between geometry and the eternal creation of the world, informed by traditions deriving from ancient texts such as Platos Timaeus, as well as biblical sources, that taught that God ordered all things in measure and number and weight.5 The church fathers were the

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GUEST EDITORIAL

other source of this afrmation, especially Augustine, who wrote The soul truly becomes better . . . when it turns away from the carnal senses and is re-formed by the divine numbers of wisdom. For thus it is said in Holy Scripture: I have made the circuit in order to know and contemplate and seek wisdom and number.6 John James own practice of architecture in the 1960s and 70s reected his extensive reNotes
1. Guarino Guarini, Architettura civile, Turin, 1737 (reprint, Milan: Il Polilo, 1968), p. 10. 2. Vitruvius, Ten Books, translated by Ingrid Rowland with commentary by T. N. Howe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 75.

searches on geometry in the cathedrals of the Paris Basin, especially at Chartres.7 Teaching in Sydney schools of architecture with Peter Kollar of the University of New South Wales, and Adrian Snodgrass at the University of Sydney, their inspirational teaching regarding architecture and geometry at that time has in several respects led to this collection of papers.

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STEPHEN FRITH Guest Editor

3. Karsten Harries, Space as Construct, an Antinomy, in Peter MacKeith (ed.), Archipelago, essays on architecture , for Juhani Pallasmaa, Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2006, pp. 8283. 4. Harries, Space as Construct, an Antinomy, p. 84.

5. Wisdom of Solomon 11:20. 6. St. Augustine, De Musica, VIiv.7. 7. John James, The Contractors of Chartres, Wyong: Mandorla Publications and London: Croom Helm, 1978.

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