Abstract
Are architectural proportions metric, numeric, geometric or golden? Which ones among the many in a building are the markers that should be considered reference points for the proportioning of its parts? A golden or divine magnifying glass that distorts rather than clarifies has been applied to everything in the name of aesthetic and mystical impulses. A proportion called the Golden Mean has long been the only explanation for a successive melange of proportions in all the visual arts. This Golden Mean (also called the Divine Proportion) has been found repeatedly in the pictures of growth patterns embodied in natural events or in the pictures of human products. Since the last century it has so fascinated mathematicians and artists that is proposed by many as the absolute aesthetic value. Here the falsity behind many of the claims for the use of the Golden Mean is revealed.
An account of the discovery of the role of the Golden Ratio in the gambler’s world of probability, and its consequence to us all
(Subtitle of a web page entitled “Golden Ratio selling a gambling method based on the Divine Proportion”)
First published as: Marco Frascari and Livio Volpi Ghirardini “Contra Divinam Proportionem”, pp. 65–74 in Nexus II: Architecture and Mathematics, ed. Kim Williams, Fucecchio (Florence): Edizioni dell’Erba, 1998.
Marco Frascari (1945–2013).
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- 1.
For a specific discussion of the Golden Mean and architecture, see Ostwald (2001).
- 2.
The evil architect Squaronthehypotenus from the Asterix comic book The Mansions of the Gods based his design for a typical condominium in a Roman holiday resort in the upper Gallia on the plan of Alberti ’s San Sebastiano in Mantua; the design is based on the ratio 5:3; see Goscinny and Uderzo (1972: 26). For a correct and recent measured drawings of the plan, see Calzona and Volpi Ghirardini (1994 : Dis. 2).
References
Alberti, Leon Battista. 1755. The Ten Books of Architecture. Reprinted 1986 New York: Dover Publications Inc.
Calzona, A. and L. Volpi Ghirardini. 1994. Il San Sebastiano di Leon Battista Alberti. Florence: Olschki.
Goscinny, Réne and Albert Uderzo. 1972. Asterix e il regno degli dei. Milan: A. Mondadori.
Ostwald, Michael J., 2001. Under Siege: The Golden Mean. Nexus Network Journal 2: 75–83.
Volpi Ghirardini, L. 2014. The Numerable Architecture of Leon Battista Alberti. Pp. 645–661 in Kim Williams and Michael J. Ostwald eds. Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future: Volume I Antiquity to the 1500s. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
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Frascari, M., Volpi Ghirardini, L.G. (2015). Contra Divinam Proportionem. In: Williams, K., Ostwald, M. (eds) Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00137-1_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00137-1_41
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