Golden section

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Golden Section

Zeising and Le Corbusier

For a long time the Golden Section does not occur in architectural theory. It first appears in the nineteenth century, through Zeising and Fechner, and then rises to a certain fashion in the third and fourth decade of the twentieth century, where Neufert and Le Corbusier get to know it.. In the time of the beginning of Historicism and of the great scientific discoveries and theories, Adolf Zeising (1810-76) began his researches on proportions in nature and art. In the book "Neue Lehre von den Proportionen des menschlichen Korpers" (1854) Zeising formulates the law of proportionality as the following:

"The division of the whole on the unequal parts looked proportional when the ratio of parts of the whole between themselves is the same that the ratio of them to the whole, i.e. that, the ratio, which gives the golden section".

Attempting to prove that all Universe is subjected to this law Zeising tries to find it both in the organic and in the inorganic world. To confirm this he gives diverse data about ratios of mutual distances between themselves of celestial heavenly bodies (corresponding to the golden section), also he finds the same ratio in the constitution of human body, in the configuration of minerals, in plants, in the sound chords of music, and in the architectural monuments.Having extensively discussed actual theories Zeising develops his own aesthetics, born from a romantic, idealistic tradition. In this theory the Golden Section plays an important role as the perfect balance between absolute unity and absolute variety. Zeising is convinced that in the Golden Section "is contained the fundamental principle of all formation striving to beauty and totality in the realm of nature and in the field of the pictorial arts, and that it from the very first beginning was the highest aim and ideal of all figurations and formal relations, whether cosmic or individualizing, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical, which had found its most perfect realization however only in the human figure"

Passing to a significance of the law of proportionality in architecture Zeisung shows that the architecture in the field of arts takes the same place as well as the organic world in the nature inspiring the inert matter on the basis of world's laws. Systematization, symmetry and proportionality thus are its indispensable attributes; it follows from here that the problem on the proportionality laws stands considerably more acute in architecture, than in sculpture or in painting.

The Sacrament of the Last Supper by Salvador Dali (1904-1989) is painted inside a golden rectangle. Golden proportions were used for positioning the figures. Part of an enormous dodecahedron floats above the table. The polyhedron consists of 12 regular pentagons and has fundamental golden connections.

In the twentieth century the Golden Section attracted two architects : Ernst Neufert and Le Corbusier. More efficacious for architecture probably was Neufert's decision to embrace the Golden Section in his famous Bauentwurfslehre from 1936, coming out to this day in endless editions and translations. He propagates the Golden Ratio as this architectural principle of proportion, that together with his own normed measures leads to a "spiritual permeation" and a renewal of architectural formation by "an inner law"in the spirit of Antique, Gothic, Renaissance, and Classicism of Palladio and Schinkel. In fact Neufert does not really join Zeising's human "golden" proportions and his own anthropometric normed measures, because he chooses distances very pragmatically by looking at interior architecture

On the other hand we see planning in proportions caused by aesthetic reasons in the other great system of the 20th century, Le Corbusier's (1887-1965) Modulor. He works up to this later treatise with different proportional systems in his early years - employment at Behrens and study of Lauweriks's designs - in the manifesto Vers une architecture. Written in a prophetic tone like all of his books, it already presents the Golden Section as natural rhythm, inborn to every human organism . However Le Corbusier does not yet recommend concrete proportions, but only to use tracés regulateurs, measure-rulers, to control the geometrical organisation of design, always façades in his examples.

Le Corbusier developed a scale of proportions which he called Le Modulor, based on a human body whose height is divided in golden section commencing at the navel.The Modulor in Le Corbusier's story combines square and Golden Section, but as a result it does not offer anything else than a modular system. From a blue series of numbers (Golden Section of the total height) and a red series (height of the navel) results a sequence of measures from 27 cm to 226 cm (and then much more) in steps of 27 and 16.

Le Corbusier's use of the Golden Section begins by 1927 at the Villa Stein in Garches, whose rectangular proportion in ground plan and elevation, as also the inner structure of the ground plan, approximately show the Golden Section . Le Corbusier himself calls his Unité d'Habitation in Marseille (1945-52) a demonstration of his Modulor system. Indeed the real measures considerably differ from the theory: real length 140 m, instead of Modulor 139,01 m; width 24 m, Modulor 25,07 m; height 56 m, Modulor 53,10 m . To address these differences, attempts have been made to trace back the building's dimensions not to the Modulor but to the exact relations of the Golden Mean, but with little success.

        

        

        

        

        

 © 2001-2003 Radoslav Jovanovic              translated: D.Filipovic   created:  January 2003.