corb had a tape he carried with himself everywhere.
neufert.

i'm interested if any of this scripting craze is related to human proportions?

don't believe the hype.
proportion isn't really about math
or being "mathematically approved"
except when used by mathematicians
which most architects are not
(though thats the koolaid some drink).

you're better off with Joe Albers than with Plato's Timaeus
Wittkower in a fright listed an ever-growing bibliography of proportional speculators in his arch principles
and the golden section is just one possibility of a recursive or self similar repetition among however many you'd like to make, even if it it is mysteriously interesting.

I dont think any architects fess to their tools or tricks, especially in regards to something so seemingly antiquated.
good luck with your search.

nazia it gives our designs a strong reasoning to every line we draw.

metababble i'm interested if any of this scripting craze is related to human proportions?

thinking of it, parametric scripting certainly is a matter of scripting proportion into the process as well as the product. except its not so much a correlative relation where proportion is isotropic (i.e where the laws of proportion are independent of transformative factors). rather, one speaks then of a transformative proportion, trans-propotion that stands to proportion as accelaration stands to speed or integral to a derivative . principally, the laws of sequential progression are subject to the proportion of the script. this reflects geometrically into a rate of proportion. the higher the rate, the more diversification within one area. the lower, the less in that same area.

yes, i believe parametric designers are the contemporary disciples of the mathematically minded architects. nazia, i believe that this "strong reasoning" you allude to is that same inevitability of working exclusively within the logic of a system. this reasoning i derive from hart crane and harold bloom; harold bloom applies the term "inevitable" to great poetry in consistency crane's "logic of the metaphor".

in consistency with crane's etc

In the great and eternal search for "what is right," which in the visual arts (architecture arguably first among them) involves and combines the mental/theoretical and the physical/visual realms, any system which is thought (either by the user or the observer) to bestow an automatic, guaranteed "successful" or "superior" solution, is going to be sought and celebrated -- regardless of the actual effect of such system.

The fact that one of these systems may be in direct conflict with another should be ignored, of course; phrenology, astrology, and numerology will likely give very different readings to any one individual at any particular point in time -- and why should the Modulor or the Golden Mean, or the Fibonacci Sequence, be expected to render the "right," or "best," proportions to any given building facade, when they may be and likely are mutually exclusive ?

Proportional systems should of course be differentiated from modules and grids; the first are intended to arrange different dimensions relative to one another, while the second are regulating rasters composed of (presumably) equal units.

As religions are employed by many to provide rules of civilized behavior to themselves and (it is hoped) to their neighbors, so systems of proportion -- rules of dimensions and their relationships -- are employed with the intention of guaranteeing visual "good behavior" and acceptability. Don't we know innately, and by example, what good social behavior is, without having our mores and ethics dictated and enforced by our "superiors" ? And can't artists arrive at satisfying visual proportions by means of their own sensitivities and experiences, without having to resort to prescripted rules ?

Admittedly, the above argument ignores that many a mind is satisfied only when its judgments are somehow externally justified -- and also the fact that the employment of such systems may be regarded as a form of play, no doubt enriching the rewards of successful accomplishment, if only by prolonging the search and subjecting the task to additional (some would say unnecessary) obstacles !

And. . .it could be said that a comparable constraint, intended likewise to impose and produce a pleasant order to the appearance of a building, is the rigorous Symmetry that is the mark of so much traditional building -- another of the historic trappings from which modernism sought to free us ?

(I would like to have said, ". . .from which modernism sought to free us, for better or worse"

-- but I didn't, so I guess it's too late. . .?)

architects are practical thinkers and thinkers are those who dwell on reasoning to the unjustified...... every great structure in the past even the stone henge has a fractional sense of regularity in their designs..
thought to process OR process to thought, judgement is complicated and vicious.... allocation of an idea in design can be the "grid or module"..great perceptions of geometry and balance and rhythm and harmony are majority of the "reasoning" to the design.... but many of us devise our own Principles and dwell upon them.... those principles related to the aesthetic beauty may be justified by the simple organisation of thoughts .... then y not..?..

i strictly believe that every artist has the right to think independently with no boundations of any kind... but is it bad to form a set of rules of his own which may also become his trademark / patent / style???

I'm with SDR, you might be interested in The Golden Ratio By Mario Livio.

Livio goes step by step through the history of the mathematics of Phi and the ancient structures supposedly designed using this number. His arguments are substantive and quite thorough in refuting the idea that the ratio influenced the design. In some cases it is simply a matter of showing that the structure existed long before the mathematics of Phi had even been discovered, in others he simply show the arbitrary nature of the golden mean design proponents arguments. On the other hand, the book does present many fascinating qualities of the number, the mathematics and its prevalence in nature, from the growth patterns of leaves and conch shells to much less commonly discussed topics like the attacking flight patterns of falcons.

actually i don't see SDR's point still.

religion is never of your own individual making. not unless you are a peculairly paradigmatic person. mani, christ, mohammed...etc. in which case, your paradigm has the promise of developing into a syntagm, as opposed to being a stunted play.
it is not the dogmatic determinism of proportion that should be of substance but the usage of such templates to communicate symbolically a culture's religious and/or ideological beliefs, to relate architecture to the sacred and the worldly, to the body, the machine...etc: encoding the body vis its proportions within a plan or elevation, the proportioned vertical differentiation of religious building from the cthnonic to the heavenly, the democratizing self-similar expansion of the post industrial module, spatial reification of time as the proportioning principle in parametric design.

there seems to be a deeper understanding of proportion than that of relating spaces and expanses to one another through mathematico-visual specifying laws: relating spaces and expanses to one another by virtue of mythical-cultural laws that relate architecture to the universe. from a quantifying understanding of proportionality to a qualitative one.

thank you for the reference,,,, i am with SDR too.... its so mysterious when u think even the river courses and mountain peaks speak the language of maths....... like everything is justified... can our designs speak the same language when we all talk about "not disturbing the environment " .....can it be a solution???? using natural proportions....

One book that nazia might like is "The Old Way of Seeing," by architect Jonathan Hale (Houghton Mifflin, 1994). Here are some of Hale's illustrations

There are quite a few of the kinds of geometrical overlays in the book, of which these four will serve as examples:









This last one is where Mr Hale begins to go for broke; he claims that the photographer (himself) got into the act, unconsciously including surrounding elements in the geometric gestalt. Note auto wheel (lower right), chimney (upper left) and roof at right. Geez. . .

(Oddly, he doesn't include two classic examples published elsewhere, showing regulating lines superimposed on a Palladian villa and a house by Corbu.)

My favorite Hale photos are ones free of such analysis, however. These are all Colonial-era American residences; the second illustration appears on the book's cover.







The subtle (or not-so-subtle) irregularities here are worth ten of any module or grid-regulated arrangement -- no matter how subtle or obscure -- to me.

36 24 34

Also, its not the proportion system itself that has any value, what matters is how it's used. Corb's universal man was 6'2" because that was the height of the protagonist in a detective novel he liked.

I kinda think the golden ration is the visual equivalent of the perfect fifth in music. Like a power chord, it's simple and basically pleasing to almost everyone, but you can bust out some augmented-flatted-what-have-you-chord and catch the musical connoisseurs off-guard in a very agreeable fashion, if you do it right.

Read 'The Music Lesson' by Flecktones bassist Victor Wooten, or at read least an interview with him. He does big-picture music-to-life stuff quite well, which suits itself to architecture quite easily.