The human scale. The measure of Being

Of proportions, of scale, of the “Modulor” and of a colossus, I'll write. Goya's giant "The Colossus" 1818-1825 with that huge character in the back of a city, who adopts the style of his black paintings. It comes to my mind when I mean proportions. If you want to paint a giant, draw a flower next to it and there will be no doubts. A proportion needs a reference, a previous number.

A French person of 1.75; an English person of 1.82 "I took the proportions from the solar plexus to the head and arm and found the gold section there", Le Modulor, Le Corbusier said. I like to imagine the face of the genius when he was able to enrol the right angle and do a series of Fibonacci, Eureka! Le Corbusier stays in my head and so I put a little sauce on the Swiss character.

It was not only the Swiss who came across this divine number, Φ (fi). Vitruvius (80 BC- 15 BC), the Roman architect, wrote the "Ten architecture books"; texts that Leonardo Da Vinci later used to continue with the golden number. They all found beau

Much later, Fibonacci describes this number sequence; it is present in practically everything and tends towards a limit that is the number Φ. It is a magic number, from which life expands. If you do not know it, I invite you to do try it! Mathematics is present as a universal order. You will find it in art; in music ... this proportion is associated with beauty. Albrecht Dürer 1417-1528, realized the harmony and balance that the pieces created with this proportion possessed and many more used it.

Returning to Le Corbusier; what he wanted to achieve with his Modulor was to create a universal design that would respond to human proportions, be it in daily activities or in the objects around him, using the divine proportion or the number (fi) based on the height of an English man of 1,82 which is 6 feet. In the “Unité d’habitation”, Marseille 1946-1952, he put into practice the theories of proportion and conceived architecture and urban planning in the same building. It is the result of an approach to a massive accommodation system required after WWII. Raise the building off the ground leaving the ground floor free and occupy the roof as a social space and function centre. In the search for a rationalist and functional architecture, “Le Modulor” arrives, bringing man closer to it and organizing everything.

Luis Barragán met Le Corbusier in 1931 on his 2nd trip to Europe. He uses the golden ratio in his architecture and in many of his apartments; he reflects the influence of rationalist architecture. The Mexican architect humanizes space as in the “Jardines del Pedregal” in his hometown, an urbanization located on volcanic stone, an apparently infertile site. Sound and functional beauty are also created in the trough of the "Cuadra San Cristóbal", a space of simple geometries that bring man closer and his function, in that case of a horse rider, to space. "... I leave nature the colour green" as he frames a large tree on a pink wall.

He tames space by making it human and brings it closer to nature. The “Casa Gilardi” 1976, is an example of this. A large blue jacaranda in the garden, it seems the tree created a pink house around it. Nature is the protagonist that domesticated the space so that from our small human scale we can enjoy it. And the water entered the dining room, illuminated from the sky, accompanied by blue and red walls. A serene but shill space; light, water and colour dominate the senses.

In a previous post I commented on my obsession with measurements in renders. It is very useful to work with numbers because there is no sense that it deceives more than that of the view. If you do not want a colossus in your render it is better to work with proportion and real measurements in the 3d model. Do we agree?

Editor: Drewry Cooper


Casa Gilardi, 1976 Luis Barragán


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The art of doing NOTHING.

Reinforced concrete

Mathematics in the arts.