It's bullshit. The golden ratio's aesthetic bona fides are an urban legend, a myth, a design unicorn. Many designers don't use it, and if they do, they vastly discount its importance. There's also no science to really back it up. Those who believe the golden ratio is the hidden math behind beauty are falling for a 150-year-old scam. — fastcodesign.com
Do designers ever follow the Golden Ratio? Is it even relevant in architecture? FastCo.Design writer John Brownlee voices his perspective on the old myth.
43 Comments
not
Yeah, nature is dumb too. She doesn't even use fractals.
LOL
aren't the end columns in that picture pushed in a bit tight? that end triglyph doesn't seem to be centered quite right? Must have been a rounding error with the perfect math of beauty.
Curt, the end columns are intentionally closer together...not sure exactly why, but I remember reading about it.
the most appealing ideas are usually the inane ones
The end columns are closer to make for a more visually emphatic ending to the repetitive pattern.
That said, I think the Golden Ratio *as randomly applied to any- and every- thing* is bunk.
because it's not math. it never was. there is no more 'universal truth' to the golden section than there is in parametrics.
on top of that is the common theory that the triglyphs are intended to represent the ends of wood beams as they would have existed in wood construction. except the greek temples we study aren't wood. so they're applied decoration, pretty much like venturi's duck. in the stone/masonry architecture we study, the trigylphs wrap around the whole building as well, whereas in wood construction they would only be on 2 sides, so if it's correct that the design intent was intended to mimic wood construction, it does so poorly.
if they're not intended to represent the ends of wood beams, then they're applied ornament without much of a rationalization....
not the parthenon
Only God knows......
next up, at fastcompany.com - "this guy used the golden ratio to design something, and you won't BELIEVE what happened next!"
luckily, i don't use fast company as a design resource, so i can ignore that article as idiotic clickbait. not sure what archinect's excuse is, however (it wasn't exactly groundbreaking when it was published two months ago, either).
here's the thing - if you don't think that particular proportional system or approach is valid, don't use it.
matty, I agree that one can just not use it, but should bad science not be challenged? And again I'm not saying the Golden Ratio as a thing that exists is bunk, I'm saying the ways in which it's applied helter skelter to whatever aspects of given objects people can make it fit to is bunk.
The golden ratio is embedded within the Fibonacci sequence, and can be shown to be at the core of how many organic processes unfold. Famously, the branching patterns of many plants seem to be guided by the golden ratio. So it's clearly a part of the organic world.
I agree that many of the applications that people find for it are, shall we say...fanciful?
Question 1: false
Question 2: b
quondam, i don't think anyone would question your math. i think the question is what relevance that has in design..
edited to add, FRaC would question your math due to rounding errors
The image at the top of the thread IS bunk. The fit is actually much better than the author suggests:
When you put the spiral in the correct orientation, note the alignment with the lines of the entablature (the horizontal lintel beam). This is not a coincidence.
See this article for some other interesting embedding of phi in the doric order of the Parthenon: http://www.goldennumber.net/parthenon-phi-golden-ratio/
Nah, EKE there is no order in the universe. Its all just pure chance manifesting itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w
Gehry's turds on the landscape are the only manifestation of intelligent life in the universe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS67HA4YMCs
Anyone born last century or earlier obviously knows/ knew nothing. Therefore, anything they could possibly have to say about art, architecture, math, politics, medicine, law, etc is misguided. Archimedes couldn't possibly have been familiar with Calculus. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/archimedes-and-euclid-like-string-theory-versus-freshman-calculus/
Therefore, and obviously, in conclusion, the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance architects were obviously all troglodytes every single one.
Knowledge should only, obviously and in conclusion, be derived from the experts in the magazines i.e. Arch Record. Every previous month's accumulation of knowledge and wisdom is to be discarded. Reinventing the wheel is the only intelligent approach to life's conundrums large and small.
Step away from the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom, people...nothing to see here.
Good_Knight,
Maybe you should lay off the sarcasm a little. Try being a little more sincere.
EKE thank you for that much more convincing application of the pattern. I think a lot of people just drop it onto things wherever it will fit.
It certainly seems helpful in some situations; I'm not going to run out and get a Golden Ratio tattoo or anything, but I also wouldn't laugh at anyone who did (unless the proportions of the tattoo ended up being wrong, then LOL).
I have a proportional divider with a setting for the Golden Ratio. I use it all the time. :)
Thanks Donna...I don't need a phi tattoo...my body already demonstrates it. :)
http://www.goldennumber.net/human-body/
http://www.goldennumber.net/human-hand-foot/
Bzzzzzxxx! That's the buzzer for "wrong"; the body isn't *based* on anything. Some bodies fit this proportional system or that one, but that doesn't mean that any of them prefigure the body.
I didn't say it was "based" on it. I said it "demonstrates it". If you look at averages over a large sample, you will find that the human body has proportions which are approximately related to phi. On average, the human forearm relates to the length of the hand in an approximate golden ratio. On average, the bones of the human finger diminish in size in approximate golden ratio.
One explanation is, like other branching phenomena in the organic world, there may be efficiency in successive iterations converging on that proportion.
Fibonacci numbers are not special.
The first page of your first link says "The human body is based on Phi and 5." That's the headline of the article. I agree that it demonstrates it, but that's not what the article says.
one of the most profound classes i had in college was Philosophy of Mathematics taught by Prof. Cole (KU) who if I remember correctly was too young for WWII but too smart to be idle and worked on computers at Boeing or something during the war....he wrote his papers on an Aplple IIe (1998) and said the technology was good enough for what he did........richard balkins cousin was in that class, i swear, looked like him and wore an FBI flac jacket to class..........4 of us only......................the first issue i have with the fastco article is its jump in reasoning to using a decimal version of the golden mean as its failure at achieving its pracrical application. Euclidean geometers and the ancients started with theorems, straight edges, and compasses and not a grid, this came later when Descartes essentially made the x,y grid. therefore they worked in proportions which often can become Irrational numbers,when translated out of the world of proportions and into decimals .......... now i never accepted irrational numbers or the number 0 or Infinity. This was my debate with Prof. Cole at the end of semester. the way i saw it, numbers were abstractions of objects and therefore could never be irrational because you never have 1.618 of a stone. Cole then introduced me to Hilbert i think who I thought was a mathematical version of Peter Eisenman - it is all a game on paper. i didnt buy it. He then noted Russell and Whiteheads work that was flipped on his head by Godel i think....which basically said NO human could ever create a complete system of thought that could avoid any incompleteness theorem or essentially a systems crash......so i went with a lesser known foundatioms of Mathematics gUY LEJ Brouwer who essentially said if it does not click in your head you do not understand the math..........so - irrational numbers as objects can never click in your head as they are not objects but rather Formulas - they are verbs, or actions necessary to convert proportions (x over y) into decimal numbers - its a math problem to convert it. Just like Zero is not a number but rather a verb or thought action of removing object from place, just like infinity is a constant crunching of numbers and NOT a number....henri poincare and henri bergson i think agree.....which makes Georg Cantors orders of infinteaimals a big crock of shit.........just like this article and bad application of the golden mean. golden mean is not a number, it is an action of comparitive relations. it is not a telephone number but rather the action of dialing. growth in plants is not Data, data comes after and is a discrete measurement in time. the noun will never equal the verb. the noun at best is a mythological description of the verb. error begins when you make the 'actiom of design' a 'solution of design'......15 hour day.....feel better now....ha
Understood, Donna. I was referring to what I said, and you were referring to the posted article.
Nice post, Chris. That's a great way to think of math.to tie it back to what EKE and I are discussing, the math is based on our minds' ability to abstract, not the inverse, and if our minds were different we would abstract differently.
I think there is order in the universe, it just needs very particular circumstances to appear, like a flower or a human body. That being said, I don't ever reach for a ratio to create a design. I'm sure there are formulations that tend to produce nice proportions, but it depends on the element in question. Even Vitruvious said that proportions would need to be fine tuned to accommodate specific conditions.
I think geometry is more important than any ratio. The English system based on 12 is superior to the metric system, at least artistically. 12 can be broken down into 2, 3, 4,and 6 while 10 can only be broken down into 2 and 5. Much more rhythm and pattern possible with the English system, if one is inclined to play with patterns.
http://www.designboom.com/art/golden-ratio-faces-igor-kkk-fibonacci-celebrities-06-01-2015/
donna and thayer-D so much to discuss...............Donna, one can consider perhaps the ability to abstract, the manner in which humans do, the main principle too allusive to recreate in Artifical Intelligence. to some degree this is still true, a computer calculates every possibility while the human in split seconds after review of a few key observations can quickly abstract a principle that appears to be visible in many various conditions and adjust their behavior accordingly, even a baby learning can do what would take a computer millions of calculations with little effort......... thayer-d notes 'order', copied the following from a nice article - Jeff Hawkins' theory that human intelligence can be defined as the ability to see patterns and predict outcomes based on previous experiences. Our brains build a model of the world from our experiences and based on this model we are able to make theories and predictions about the future. In essence the brain is a prediction machine......intelligence defined and gauged by predictions rather than behavior. in other words, the ability to predict based on abstractions of memories makes us human and intelligent and not our 'behavior' which is informed by our abtractions of 'orders' to make predictions on how to behave...........inteligent prediction over intelligent behavior, latter based on former. so to Thayer-d's point and all those who argue for beauty through proportions, etc.....intelligent design would be to realize successful patterns in design and employ them. this does not mean copy paste or ruled base instructions necessarily, rather as intelligence defined as prediction would mean to be able to analyze the scenario in design and employ the best solutions based on past experiences (memories and abstraction of memories). so its probably closer to playing an instrument when designing by golden mean than just arbitrarly designing spaces based on a template..........
Numerology is not architecture.
Except of course for elevators and the 13th floor.
here are some number abstraction practices that lead to strange basis for confirmation of texts dealing with morals, religion, God, etc...
granted both of these are based on languages (Hebrew, Greek, etc...) where the alphabet had numerical correlations, so it's not really abstracted later, at least historically.
Ivan Panin sample mainly dealing with the divine number 7 in the Bible
19 in the Qur'an another example
Both 7 and 19 are actually very interesting numbers.
Thayer-D in graduate school after reading Cecil Balmond's (engineer of Ove Arup and worked on many very architectural projects) book Number 9: The Search for the Sigma Code I managed to prove the main point of the book worked on all numerical systems or in other words the action of counting, finding primes, ratios, etc...occurred essentially the same way - order. the Excel spreadsheet was on a website I made that isn't up anymore....
So this Golden Ratio debate can go in two directions quickly and it's not a surprise, at least in the Western world, that everything must be 'scientific' (mathematical) to ultimately have any validity. Without getting into that debate, Husserl and all the phenomonologists since have been warning and pressing against this 'mathemization' or whatever other term we use for basically requiring science to be the only basis for 'truth'.
Hence all things have become verified or denied through Quantity and Quality has become allusive.
Think about it this way, does a religious person really need a whole slew of number too prove why they might believe?
so is beauty a Quality or a Quantity?
The history of the YARD measurement
each measuring system (the only paper I still have from Prof. Cole, one page double sided printed from his Apple IIe deals with this) essentially effects everything - ratio, wavelengths, packets of time, etc...
so is beauty a Quality or a Quantity?
This is America, where too much is not enough. If drinking a beer is good, then drinking a keg is better.
Big servings, big asses, big tits, big lips, big tvs, big cars, big houses, etc. living large is living the dream. That's the real golden ratio.
'Mericah! (" Welcome to Costco. I Love you")
"Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness"
- Stendhal
Beauty is a quality that opens us to the world beyond our immediate needs. It's the most basic expression of civilization.
based above two posts, beauty then can not be defined by a ratio........in Mericah the only number that matters is ONE and our favorite ratio is Supersize.....
I agree that beauty can't be defined as a ratio, that's silly to the extreme. Beauty appears not just from the form one is perceiving but also from one's mental state. For example, it's hard to perceive beauty if one is depressed, like trying to pick up a signal when you have a small band width. But that doesn't mean it's all relative or futile. On another day, that band width will vary and if that beauty is out there, it will do a whole lot of good when it sneaks in. So even if it's not a science or perfectly predictable, it's worth pursuing just like many non quantifiable things in life. I guess there's a lot of faith involved, which for a non-believer is saying something. What exactly, I'm not sure.
A masterpiece, it turns out, does not issue from fixed mathematical rules. It comes from a happy mixture of all the elements of composition cohering with messy particularity...Beauty arrives in the night and hovers just outside our window, shifting and shimmering, floating just beyond the reach of our strings and calipers, unwilling to fit into any box we build for (it).
ran enthusiast has written a novel called The Golden Ratio, check it out.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1191723
TED would demur on WIRED's recent article too.
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/celebrities-go-golden-ratios-knife/?mbid=social_twitter#comment-2063368824
Seems they're going for plausible deniability by doing it Onion-style anyway.
Looking exclusively at only Spatial interpretations are so last century anyway.
And does that also mean the entire repertoire of plant phyllotaxis is an illusion? Plants are telling us something, we need to think harder about the Temporal, thermodynamics and morphogenesis, as Alan Turning did in his last research on the Fibonacci series, phyllotaxis and morphogenesis before he tragically died. We need to look at inanimate nature, as well the living world.
What the sciences of complexity and dynamical systems have been sharing recently though is that the golden ratio is one of several optimal, analogical geometric signatures of how nature evolves emergent complexity most easily - over time. Here's how I Tweet it:
#Asynsis #DaoOfDesign on #TED at #TEDxWanchai #HongKong.
A New, Extremely Lean, Mean (#Design) #TheoryOfEverything
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Form-follows-flow-%7C-Nigel-Readi;search%3ANigel%20Reading
http://asynsis.styleonedigital.com/archives/4017
http://about.me/asynsis
The very latest examples (including E8 & ER=EPR #Universality), are shared here (so the golden ratio's not only relevant, it's an innate signature of heat doing work and information self-organising itself, of how nature designs itself most easily - enjoy!):
https://www.facebook.com/pages/AsynSo%CF%86ia/202383966558282
I am going to quietly say: Tune in2 the Future for Proof of the Overwhelming Relevance.
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