site analysis

this blog is concerned with 9/29, site analysis. i was fond of our descriptive words and though i recorded them in the moleskine, i did not do so in blog format.

barren
bare
flow downward
steep
bumps
asphalt
unkempt
uneven
underused
disheveled
depressing
crushed
multi-tiered
overgrown
dirty
geometric
artificial
turf
civilized
organized
as you go down level, it gets worse
structured
attack bees
treacherous
undergrowth/ chaparral
no mans land

my quote, “stumbling downward, depressingly overgrown asphalt… ATTACK BEES!”

jarrods quote, “ASPHALT! flow downward to disheveled, dirty attack bees.”

(group members; andy, elyse, cameron, john paul, paola, jarrod and myself).

critical summary (alvar aalto)

i chose to write my summary on alvar aalto and his municipal center of saynatsalo. (1949 -1952)

1. descriptive words. what kinds of words does the architect use that is specific to his ideas. HUMANIST, IDEAL

2. basic observation. how do you think the architect views the world in order to determine the way he creates? i think the architect is a compassionate man, sensitive to the natural world. i believe this architecture is created in such a way to harmonize with the wooded surroundings versus dominating them.

3. geometry. what kinds of forms of geometry, geometric patterns, geometric combinations, does the architect use to describe space? how do the forms affect human response? the center seems to be predominantly horizontal rectangular structures with the exception of the jutting triangular vertical tower. because of the relative consistency of the horizontal, the verticality of the tower demands the passerby to acknowledge it and pay particular respect to that form.

4. how is the architect an artist? how does one abstract the natural world and reinterpret it through architecture? quote, “a building is like an instrument. it has to absorb all the positive influences and intercept all the negative influences that might affect people. a building cannot do that unless it is treated with the same finesse as the environment it stands in.” aalto was particularly fond of using natural materials and rejected the modernists “machine aesthetic.” brick, wood, and copper have been used in this architecture.

5. site analysis. describe how the site determines how the architect located the building on site. how does the sun, wind, light, and shadow describe the building? various buildings are planned around a courtyard which was artificially raised above the surrounding countryside using earth excavated for the buildings foundations. the library, in contrast with the opaque tower, is transparent. a glass facade with wooden framing turned towards the sunlight.

6. describe the facade(s) of the building through patterns. do you see a pattern? the dominating element of the building is the vertical tower. the towers height is intentional as aalto wanted to, “assert the superiority of civic buildings [over commercial buildings].” the brickwork is patterned. pattern implies repetition of an element; however, the volumes of the buildings fluctuate.

7. diagram the building to visually describe the way the building is put together. imagine the building in plan as a large rectangle with a smaller rectangle hollowed out in the middle. this “middle” is where the courtyard is situated. the courtyard arrangement was inspired by italian renaissance.

8. describe some formative ideas about the building. quote, “variations in opacity and transparency. the diversity of the volumes, the work with proportions all give particular richness to the building.” quote, “each wing of the building was given an irregular geometry by the use of setbacks, cantilevers, or oblique walls so that the whole design evoked the tensions and complexity of an urban landscape.”

9. describe how scale and proportion are used in the building materials or forms, of the architecture; i.e. window sizes, textures, openings, etc. how is human scale represented (or not)? windows in council chamber; “large square bay window opening to the north is masked by interior wooden, open work shutters. like stained glass windows in a church, they obscure the view and keep the place in half light. an additional way of creating mystery and solemnity.”

architectures 3 (part 2)

i watched the remaining three excerpts on the dvd, architectures 3 and wrote quotes i found useful/ interesting.

1. the garnier opera. architect charles garnier. 1875 inaugurated.

french imperial administration decided to hold a competition (1860), the very first of its kind. 171 architects competed, identified by numbers and slogans. number 38 (garnier), “i aspire to much, i expect but little,” won.

great disproportionate clashing volumes; the slightly flattened dome that supports encyclopedian gable, creates strong plastic effects that upset the classic taste. but contrary to appearance, garnier considered this to be a rationale approach. the outer shape of the edifice is intended to express the spaces inside and their functions. according to garnier, “one ought to be able to understand the building simply by following the line of the roofs.”

garnier knew his classics and didnt hesitate to take inspiration from them. the monumental colonnade of the principal facade that designates the main floor and dominates the composition, is a direct reference to the colonnade of the louvre.

at the same time, garnier tempered the monumentality by creating a secondary plan. the great columns are backed up by smaller columns and surmounted by a stone screen that the architect compared to a curtain closing the portico and giving the building a lived in look.

2. the casa mila. architect antonio gaudi. final civic work between 1906- 1912.

townspeople called it the quarry.

DIFFICULT: gaudi would not be held to time nor to budget but obstinately pursued eccentric artistic options. he angrily imposed his will. he passed his time in wielding civil and divine threats, invoking both lawsuits and the last judgement. he refused all discussion.

quote, “the artist should be a monk. not a brother.”

gaudi, breaking all the rules in force, set a wall on a soft slant instead of an angle. with this facade, he pushed the destructuration of an architecture based on line and right angle to its very limit. gaudi, with his passion for anatomy, thought of his building as a body covered with a skin. the columns were to be the buildings skeleton, the stone its flesh.

FORESHADOW: this was in 1910 and we can feel a premonition of abstract art in these shapes as well as a blend of archaism and modernism. gaudi maintained that he sought his inspiration in the observation of nature. “everything comes out of the great book of Nature. this tree beside my workroom is my master!”

“i have the knack of feeling, of seeing space, because i am the son of a boilermaker. a boilermaker is one who can turn a flat surface into a volume. he can see the space before he begins to work.”

by making these real interior facades, architecture is no longer exalted only on the side facing the city. it makes its presence felt in the very heart of the site and in the daily life of its inhabitants.

absence of load bearing walls, just as in the mila apt., gave gaudi complete freedom in the way he laid out the interior space. the partitions can be altered, rooms can be added or made smaller, each floor is different. the organization of the apartments is variable.

3. auditorium building in chicago. engineer, dankmar adler. architect, louis sullivan. 1889.

sullivan author of one of the most famous formula in the history of modern architecture, FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION.

sullivan was the first to assert that this revolution in technique should be accompanied by a revolution in form. that the time had come to abandon the old fashioned system of composition based on the predominance of the horizontal in favor of the vertical, which no line should be permitted to contradict. it was with this change in perspective that the break with the old continent was finally consummated.

4250 seats, twice as many as the paris opera.

featured edison’s incandescent lamp of 1890. 4000 bulbs light up the auditorium.

“organisms, structure, function, growth, form; all these terms imply the initial pressure of a living energy. we call this pressure the function, and its result, the form.”

architectures 3 (part 1)

we watched three excerpts from the architectures series, installment three. i rented the documentary to take more thorough notes. the following are quotes that i found useful.

1. convent of la tourette. architect le corbusier. 1953- 1960.

students spend 7 years in prayer and study.

the architecture of the place embodied the spiritual quest of their order in a unique manner.

long live the free plan in which walls are no longer needed. the concrete slabs of the upper floors are supported on stilts. long live the free facades that support nothing. glass can be used with total freedom.

quote, “i drew the road. i drew the horizon. i noted the orientation of the sun. i sniffed out the topography. i decided where to build because that had not been decided at all. in choosing the site, i committed either a criminal or a worthwhile act.”

the arrangement the architect saw and admired when he visited a monastery near florence, in italy, in 1907.

installed the friars cells on the outer perimeter of the building opening them onto the landscape. cells dimensions; 5.92 meters long, 1.83 meters wide, and 2.26 meters in height. dimensions that were the le corbusier patent. from 1930s onward, le corbusier thought about ideal architectural proportions. he defined a system founded on the golden section whos basic unit is the human figure. he gave a name to this ideal standard of modern architecture, LE MODULAR. measures 1.83 meters, the height of the average american; the hand raised to a height of 2.26 meters.

the facades facing the inside courtyard are made of large squares of concrete and 2.26 meter wide glass panels, known as mondrian squares, whose geometrical variations were calculated according the MODULAR.

2. municipal centre of saynatsalo. 1949- 1952. architect alvar aalto.

foremost finnish architect of his time. aalto, with le corbusier, was one of the instigators of the modern movement. two buildings made him internationally famous. the sanitorium at paimio (1933) and viipuri library opened in 1935.

also designed furniture but not a theoretician- far from it. “the creator invented paper for architectural designs. as far as im concerned, using it for anything else is a waste of paper.”

double challenge. 1. show the superiority of civic buildings over commercial building, one of his favorite themes. and 2. to build in the middle of the trees an urban monument inspired by the ideal city of the italian renaissance.

each wing of the building was given an irregular geometry by the use of set backs, cantilevers, or oblique walls, so that the whole design evoked the tensions and complexity of an urban landscape.

quote, “a building is like an instrument. it has to absorb all the positive influences and intercept all the negative influences that might affect people. a building cannot do that unless it is treated with the same finesse as the environment it stands in.”

tower asserts the superiority of civic buildings. architect invented the “butterfly beam” for pitched roof.

large square bay window opening to the north masked by interior wooden, open work shutters. like stained glass windows in a church, they obscure the view and keep the place in half light. an additional way of creating mystery and solemnity.

tower is an emblem; impressive but opaque. long library which is on the contrary, totally transparent. a glass facade with wooden framing. a facade turned towards the sunlight.

variations in opacity and transparency; the diversity of volumes, the work with proportions all give particular richness to the building.

aalto considered nature and buildings are two ingredients of a single landscape. they are not in opposition. they are inter-permeable. they are part of the same composition because of the materials and colors of course, and also the progression of spaces.

3. jewish museum berlin. built 1993- 1998. architect daniel libeskind.

real inspiration for the building was walter benjamins book einbahnstrasse and schoenbergs opera, “moses and aaron,” a work in three acts with no music beyond the second act. libeskind wanted his building to be a prolongation of this unfinished musical work. to show that he was serious, he wrote his proposal on the staves of a musical score and entitled it, “between the lines.”

the line in all its variety, governs the building. nicknamed the blitz, lightning. for libeskind, the tortured form of this zigzag embodies all the violence, all the ruptures in the history of jews in germany.

three axes (corridors) embody in space the three major experiences in german judaism: 1. continuity, 2. exile and 3. death. this is not a place for a stroll through a museum but a testing journey, an ordeal. only one of these three paths leads to the museum galleries. it is the longest one. “the axis of continuity,” the continuity of jewish presence in germany.

garden of exile. loss of a reference point. labyrinth of leaning pillars that destabilizes and nearly unbalances the visitor. in fact, this is a perfect square, the only place in the museum with strict right angles but the architect has tipped it to create a double 10 degree slope, so that when walking through the pillars, the pitch changes at every turn.

“a rigorous geometry” (part 1)

maps of the imagination: the writer as cartographer. by peter turchi

the following are notes from the reading pages 160- 183.

i cannot understand how this particular reading is beneficial to an intro to architecture course. i can glean that form plays a role in writing and that writers should be conscientious of form but this strikes me as material for an english course. this being said, the following quotations were useful.

quote by hannah arendt, the human condition. “nothing can remain immense if it can be measured. prior to the shrinkage of space and abolition of distance through railroads, steamships, and airplanes, there is the infinitely greater and more effective shrinkage which comes about through the surveying capacity of the human mind, whose use of numbers, symbols and models can condense and scale earthly physical distance down to the size of the human bodys natural sense and understanding. before we knew how to circumscribe the sphere of human habitation in days and hours, we had brought the globe into our living rooms to be touched by our hands and swirled before our eyes.
the world of a story is a thing we create or summon into being, but which the reader participates in creating and understanding. a story or novel is a kind of map because, like a map, it is not a world, but it evokes one.

constraints in writing. one example is the oulipo, or the workshop of potential literature begun in europe in 1960.

examples of constraints of the oulipo;

a. belle absente, a form of acrostic encoding in which the letters of a given name are the only letters not used in the text. (definition, acrostic: a series of lines or verses in which the first, last, or other particular letters when taken in order spell out a word, phrase, etc.)

b. cento, a text composed entirely of passages from other texts

c. eye rhymes, a poetic form in which the end rhymes are visual, not sonic (e.g. know, cow)

d. heterogram, a text in which no letter is repeated

e. lipogram, a text in which a given letter(s) does not appear; and various replacement formulae.

writers in the oulipo believe constraints can inspire writers to be creative in new ways; they believe constraints can lead to a kind of freedom.

milan kundera, “two centuries of psychological realism have created some nearly inviolable standards: (1) a writer must give the maximum amount of information about a character: about his physical appearance, his way of speaking and behaving; (2) he must let the reader know a characters past, because that is where all the motives for his present behavior are located; and (3) the character must have complete independence; that is to say, the author with his own consideration must disappear so as not to disturb the reader, who wants to give himself over to illusion and take fiction for reality… [but] a character is not a simulation of a living being. it is an imaginary being. an experimental self. understand me, i dont mean to scorn the reader and his desire, as naive as it is legitimate, to be carried away by the novels imaginary world and to confuse it occasionally with reality. but i dont see that the technique of psychological realism is indispensable for that”

called suspension of disbelief, coined by samuel taylor coleridge.

kundera continues, “a novel examines not reality but existence. and existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything hes capable of. novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that human possibility… the kafkan world does not resemble any known reality, it is an extreme and unrealized possibility of the human world.”

(far from celebrating the results of every experiment, members of the oulipo themselves are quick to acknowledge that many of the poems created by replacement strategies are tedious).

architectures 2 (part 1)

as mentioned before, i rented the second in the architectures series. the following are notes on the first two segments.

1. the johnson building. on the shores of lake michigan in racine, wisconsin. architect frank lloyd wright.

one of the american architects greatest masterpieces.

“a vast building that is an inspiration to work, as much as a cathedral is an inspiration to adore god.”

“it requires someone fully developed to appreciate this building in its entirety. technically in the field of the scientific art of architecture, its one of the most remarkable successful constructions in the world. i like it, they like it.”

“my idea was that the horizontal lines of a building, the lines parallel to the ground identified with the ground and made the building belong to it.”

you have to move around and admire this apparently impenetrable building in order to gain entrance. there is no opening on the facade along the main street. you have to persevere. the sole entrance lies on the west side. its a garage entrance. for wright, by 1936 the car was part of architecture and conditioned space and movement.

there are pyrex tubes throughout the building. wright was the first to use them for architectural purposes. they would need to be replaced over the years by plexiglass for reasons of insulation and fragility. pyrex preserves privacy by offering light without transparency. instead of windows or opaque partitions, we find these translucent tubes.

the main thing that the american public praised was the beauty of a building streamlined like the body of a car, the fuselage of a plane or the hull of a ship. it was fashionable.

2. the galleria at umberto primo. 1887- 1891 architect emmanuel rocco.

built in naples.

steel and glass dome that provides a spectacular break with scale and appearance of the old city.

the dome conceals one of the nineteenth century architectures great inventions; a street of a new type, passing through a block of buildings reserved for pedestrians and sheltered by a glass roof. in italian known as a galleria and in english as an arcade.

the first parisian arcades were built to provide shelter for pedestrians in a neighborhood without pavements and create an easy link between the districts of the city. the galleria fulfills these functions. its streets are an extension of the public thoroughfare. they are the property of the city that undertakes to light them. in return they must remain free of access both day and night.

the dome peaks at 56 meters making it the highest covered arcade in europe.

the city arcade that every neapolitan is fond of because they all end up meeting here. a passage between us and the nineteenth century with its love of monumental buildings that may seem outdated now but whos true grandeur is to claim that a public area is above all, an important area.

architectures 2 (part 2)

i rented architectures 1 only to find that its the first in a series. i rented the second, and the following are notes i wrote down concerning the final three excerpts.

1. the stone thermal baths. spa in switzerland. architect peter zumthor.

“it slowly dawned on me that if you reconsider the idea of bathing and if you think of the hot spring, you can design a building that is more in harmony with the topography and geology of a place and not just with the immediate aspect of its surroundings. the idea came to me of a bath born of the mountains, just like the hot spring is born of the mountains. so that gives us the possibility of thinking that this building has always been there, before all the others.”

sinking the building into the slope. the flat roof covered with grass makes the building blend in with the landscape. only the geometrical pattern reveals its presence.

60,000 carved stones 1 meter long. 60 kilometers of stone.

order in which [the stones] are stacked could seem haphazard. this is merely an illusion. its actually the arrangement of three elements of varying thickness but whos total is always 15cm. the permutations in the order of these elements are enough to create great visual variety without necessarily complicating construction.

by repeating this confrontation that places us almost naked before the spectacle of the mountains, the architect forces us to face what surpasses us.

2. the paris fine art school. jacques felix duban architect.

quote, baudelaire, “the work of an eclectic leaves no trace.”

having clarified the space in this manner, duban reorganized the distribution of the schools buildings and assigned 3 distinct functions to the 3 buildings on the site.

a. the cloister at the entrance would be used for classes and different services and stores.

b. the building at the rear would be used solely for exams and the main building c. thus freed of all trivial functions would become the study museum that could house the collections, a library and a hall for prize giving.

the facade of the study museum is a copy of the florentine palaces with their rustic stone work, exposed stone and large arched windows. inside the study museum also has the structure of a florentine palace with open galleries overlooking a large courtyard.

“believe me you young architects who form the majority at the fine arts school, you will one day use painters and sculptors. you will exert on them the influence that every creator exerts on those with whom he chooses to work. return to simplicity and grandeur. here is the secret of proportion in great art- do not copy them but let these examples be a constant reminder of the laws that must govern us. instead of copying the work of others, create. become natural writers of this fine universal language called architecture.”

definition “et cetera?” are simply an extension of an object of which only traces remain today.

duban died in 1870 (b. 1797), bitter at having only ever done restoration work however prestigious. the fine art school was his darling child that he spent his life looking after.

3. SATOLAS station, tgv. (tgv, successful french high speed train). architect santiago calatrava.

a monument in the [rural] country. a symbol, a piece of monumental architecture to mark its territory.

in 1989, competition held for a building that would symbolize the rhone-alpes region, the same way the eiffel tower symbolizes paris.

an expressive shape that everyone calls the bird. at the origin of this shape is a sculpture made by the architect 10 years earlier. it didnt represent a bird but an eye.

“personally i feel to carry out original and personal work i have to spend some time in research first. in my case, this research work finds its expression in sculptures and drawings. using this i have created a vocabulary; a vocabulary that attempts to be original in the sense of crossing the border between sculpture and architecture.”

calatrava is fascinated by mobile structures, hangar doors, awnings, opening roofs but he is above all known for his bridges, having built dozens of them around the world.

style of architecture that highlights the structure.

definition (wikipedia) CANTILEVER is a beam supported on only one end. the beam carries the load to the support where it is resisted by moment and sheer stress. cantilever construction allows for overhanging structures without external bracing. cantilevers can also be constructed with trusses or slabs.

“ive always felt that concrete is a simple material since its made only of cement, gravel and sand but its extremely rich where its expressive quality is concerned. since you have texture, color and above all shape. you can create shapes with a great deal of freedom. in my mother tongue in valencia, we call it formigo, a material that can be shaped.”

“the engineers art,” claims calatrava, “is the art of possibility.”

architectures 1 film (part 2)

i rented the documentary architectures 1 and watched the remaining three excerpts. the following are notes taken from the excerpts.

1. family lodging in guise. architect jean- baptiste andre godin. b. 1817- 1888.

“the social progress of the masses is dependent upon the progress of the social provisions of architecture.”

unique experiment in utopian socialist architecture. built in northern france, few kilometers from belgian border in the second half of the nineteenth century. it was home to more than 1,000 people. 300 comfortable apartments. 700 people still live there.

he designed the school furniture detailing the measurements with obsessive precision. the human body was like a yard stick.     this extreme form of pragmatism revealed godin’s utopian ideals. a utopian world where everything could be measured, calculated and reduced to a mathematical order. still, godin believed architecture had to serve man.

AIR SPACE LIGHT the essential human needs that underscored godins architecture.

“one can develop plans in books but when it comes to putting them into practice one has to confront the contradictory desires of man. the rare attempts at social reform have so often met with failure, that social reformers are dismissed as dreamers. perhaps the same is said of me but i have been a man of action. i have made my thoughts reality. i put them into practice before theorizing. i cannot be accused therefore of remaining in the realm of utopia.”

2. georges pompidou centre 1970- 1977. architects richard rodgers (english) and renzo piano (italian)

home to books, the arts, contemporary creation.

it DOES look like a colorful oil refinery!

ARCHIGRAM office. british tradition of building with metals.

by placing the walkways and functional systems outside, the architects have freed all of the interior space. each level is an immense empty space the size of two football pitches. 7500 square meters.     absence of interior structures … make a building where totally different cultural forms could coexist peacefully.

3. vienna savings bank. architect otto wagner. construction 1903- 1906.

announced his conversion to the principles of modern architecture. many viennese saw it as treason. wagner had built a large number of renaissance style buildings before.

the savings bank is the only modern building on the ringstrasse. has an ambiguous relationship with the rest of the avenue. it is set back from the street on a small square producing the effect of discovery or surprise. it was also so that wagners brutal facade would not upset the balance of the rest of the buildings on the avenue.

in modern architecture, wagner said, “one can no longer let the choice of a style dictate architectural creation. the architect must create new forms adapting those that best meet the construction techniques of the time and the requirements of the era. it is the only way it has any true meaning.”

the shape of the banking hall is based on the shape of early christian basilicas with a high central knave flanked by two lower ones. from the mid 1800s this design had been used everywhere; in exhibition halls, stations and factories. the banking hall was to be as functional as the shop floor of a factory.

“works of art must always be a reflection of their time.”

“architecture must stop imitating the styles of the past. it must become a true reflection of our time expressing simplicity, a functional nature and, dare i say, even the military precision of modern life.”

architectures 1 film (part 1)

i rented the documentary architectures 1, as i was nodding off in class. here are some notations from the three excerpts we watched in class.

1. dessau, BAUHAUS. a higher academy for the arts. designed by walter gropius, 1926.

glass walls, right angles, flat roofs. “to build is to create events.” at 43, walter gropius was also its director.

bauhaus literally means, “the art of building.” bauhaus manifesto, “the supreme aim of any creative activity is architecture.”

paul klee and wasily kandinsky were instructors.

you must walk around the building to understand its materiality and the function of its various elements. the building requires movement to be understood.

definition; parallelepiped: a prism with six faces, all parallelograms.

the “glass curtain” facade is not weight bearing.

built in just over one year. launched an assembly line on work site.

the quest for cleanliness, clarity and liberality has triumphed here.

gropius deliberately stressed the industrial aspect of the radiators. force passerby to admire present day objects.

interior decoration designed and built by bauhaus students.

“in the training of a talented architect, the quest is what counts the most. i believe we need to lead our future architects from observation to discovery, from discovery to invention and finally, urge them to use their intuition in giving artistic shape to our environment.”

2. the siza school. alvaro siza architect. construction from 1985- 1996. university of porto.

siza is considered one of the leading contemporary architects.

“im a functionalist. for me some of the basic issues in the development of a project are its functional problems, except that the form, spaces and atmosphere of a building dont arise from its functions. this is essential. every architect is forced to provide answers to functional problems.”

“for me, whenever i finish a building, i nearly always feel disgust and concern. disgust because i know that its not finished, that there are all kinds of things that can develop from what has already been done but i also know that this is merely obsession and egotism because a building lives on without us.”

3. nemauses 1. council housing of the 1980s. architect jean nouvel.

the walkways, the verandas and the thin screen roof give the buildings the appearance of two large ships.

“having a style means sticking to a formal system and reproducing it whatever the circumstances. in that sense, i dont have a style. for me, each building is a unique expression. whats important is that the building has strong identity. that you know where you are. that you know youre not in a neighboring building. with nemauses 1, i wanted to lay down the ground rules for social housing in the 1980s, to get back to the old forgotten principles of space, light and air.”

experiencing architecture (chapter 5)

the following are some quotes gleaned from the reading that are useful, informative;

chapter 5. scale and proportion.

special proportions in music produce delightful tones; it was believed that there must be ideal visible dimensions also.

innumerable (futile) attempts have been made to work out principles of architectural proportioning analogous to mathematical principles of musical scales.

GOLDEN SECTION formerly, various sizes of paper were often based on the golden section and the same was true of letter press printing (8 1/2 x 11 is NOT manufactured to the golden section, the ratio doesnt work).

around 1920 many attempts were made in scandinavia to get away from the romantic tendencies in architecture of the previous generation and to formulate clear aesthetic principles (modern).

similarity in proportioning of a PALLADIO villa (1560) and a LE CORBUSIER house (1930).

average height of english policemen was 6 feet, or about 183 cm, and as average height is increasing the world over, le corbusier began to fear that the dimensions of his houses would be too small if he utilized measurements derived from the height of the average frenchman. therefore, he resolutely established 183 cm as the definitive quantity from which all other measurements were to be derived.

LE MODULAR is for le corbusier a universal instrument, easy to employ, which can be used all over the world to obtain beauty and rationality in the proportions of everything produced by man. (unrealistic; must account for fluctuations, site, etc.).

the ratios of PALLADIOs villa were derived from the classical columns he used. the columns, taken over from antiquity, were regarded as perfect expressions of beauty and harmony. there were rules for their proportioning down to the smallest details.     basic unit was the diameter of the column and from that were derived the dimensions not only of shaft, base and capital but also of all the details of the entablature above the columns and the distances between them.

danish architect NICOLAI EIGTVED built fredericks hospital in copenhagen (1750). wards dimensions were determined by the basic element of a hospital ward: the bed. (practical).