Symmetry in Architecture: Toward an Overdue Reassessment

Reinventing the Façade, 2021

In our thematic issue, Symmetry welcomed multidisciplinary articles on the role of non-obvious symmetries in architectural design and city planning, with special regard to urban façades, social participation, and the concept of beauty in tectonic culture.

Katona, V. (2018) Symmetries and Proportions in Architecture. Symmetry: Culture and Science, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 325–327., 2018

On 18 August 1418, the Florentine Arte della Lana announced an architectural competition for building the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral using Neri di Fioravanti's design. The two main competitors were two master goldsmiths, Lorenzo Ghiberti (by whom the concept of symmetry was first explained in vulgar Italian) and Filippo Brunelleschi. Lifelong competition between the two remained sharp, but Brunelleschi received the commission, and completed the dome in 1436. It was the first "octagonal" dome in history to be built without a temporary wooden supporting frame, and was one of the most impressive projects of its time.

2013

Throughout history, symmetry has been widely explored as a geometric strategy to conceive architectural forms and spaces. Nonetheless, its concept has changed and expanded overtime, and its design exploration does not mean anymore the generation of simple and predictable solutions. By framing in history this idea, the present paper discusses the relevance of exploring symmetry in architectural design today, by means of computational design and fabrication processes. It confirms the emergence of a renewed interest in the topic based on two main ideas: On the one hand, symmetry-based design supports the generation of unique and apparent complex solutions out of simple geometric rules, in a bottom-up fashion. On the other hand, despite this intricacy, it assures modularity in the design components, which can bring benefits at the construction level. As the background for testing and illustrating its theoretical arguments, this paper describes the work produced in the Constructive Geome...

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2005

We call attention to the historical fact that the meaning of symmetry in antiquity-as it appears in VitruviusÕs De architectura-is entirely different from the modern concept. This leads us to the question, what is the evidence for the changes in the meaning of the term symmetry, and what were the different meanings attached to it? We show that the meaning of the term in an aesthetic sense gradually shifted in the context of architecture before the image of the balance was attached to the term in the middle of the 18th century and well before the first modern scientific usage by Legendre in 1794.

Bauhaus 100, 2019

The architects’ community is now celebrating the first centenary of Bauhaus. The famous design school of post-World War I Germany combined crafts with the fine arts, heralding a new architectural paradigm for modern life. Based on pure geometry and functionalism, it relied upon a scientific approach to re-create the human environment, to liberate the same from historical allusions, and to redefine culture as a product of rational thinking. Bauhaus changed the structure of the education of applied arts, and placed architectural master planning at the hub of all major specializations. However, those specializations were each progressive actualizations of traditional crafts due to the needs of industrialized construction. Materials were processed and objects were fashioned accordingly in the Werkstatts of the old campus at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, then in the southern wing of the new school in Dessau. Light penetrating through the great curtain wall of the new building was an achievement that presaged the age of transparency.

10th International Erciyes Scientific Research Congress, 2023

The concept of symmetry is existential for both humans and other life forms, dating back to the origins of life. Given its intrinsic nature within life, it has been a frequently invoked, questioned, and attributed concept in every historical period and across various disciplines. Symmetry, explained over centuries through concepts of proportion, similarity, and transformation, has been associated with order, beauty, and harmony at different times during this process. Regardless of the direction of discourses, it has been observed that symmetry studies have often remained confined to the theoretical realm. However, neuroscience studies that have found their place in the field of architecture recently, facilitated the measurement of brain activity through biometric tools and the visualization of data. Thus, researchers have been able to test theoretical discourses in practice. Eye tracking, one of the mentioned biometric tools, visualizes the act of seeing by the observer. The aim of this study is to collect visual attention data of the observer on symmetric structures in the discipline of architecture, where the sense of sight plays a more active role than other senses. Additionally, it aims to practically test theoretical discourses related to the concept of symmetry and generate new discourse in architecture based on symmetry. Thus, this study contributes to addressing the lack of application-based discourse on the concept of symmetry in architectural literature.

Symmetry is commonly perceived as a concept that expresses bilateral or radial relations, which effectively describes spatial arrangements that most people think is in some sense innate to the human mind. So, does the concept have a history? Has it evolved? Was there a revolution? The long history of the concept of symmetry began in classical Antiquity as a single concept with a range of applications, expressing proportionality with a specific constraint. In fact, symmetry was used in two different contexts: in mathematics it had the technical meaning of commensurable, while generally it meant suitable or well proportioned. The latter usage involves an aesthetic judgment arrived at by comparison with an ideal in the relevant domain, in an attempt to establish a certain property of the object, e.g., that it is beautiful or that it functions efficiently. We offer historical evidence that, despite the variety of usages in many different domains, there is a conceptual unity underlying the invocation of symmetry in the period from Antiquity to the 1790s which is distinct from the scientific usages of this term that first emerged in France at the end of the 18th century. We examine the trajectory of the concept in the mathematical and scientific disciplines as well as its trajectory in art and architecture. The changes in the meaning of symmetry from Antiquity to the eighteenth century can be explained by appealing to evolution—nobody in that period claimed to be doing anything new. The philosopher Immanuel Kant is probably the first thinker to indicate that something is fundamentally missing in the traditional account. In 1768 he introduced the concept of incongruent counterparts to indicate a reversal of ordering in entities that are equal and similar but cannot be superposed. However, the key figure in revolutionizing the concept of symmetry was the mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre who, in 1794, claimed to be doing something new. Indeed, by introducing a principle of ordering he revolutionized the concept, and laid the groundwork for its modern usages.

Mathematical Principles, 2022

Space and Place, Modern and Contemporary Art, Geometry, Project Managment, Symmetry, CAD/CAM, Islamic art and architecture, Tiles, Roger Penrose, Penrose tiling

The buildings will have an extreme influence on one’s health and divine and our psychic state of being. The combination of euphony and stability, colour and light, connection with ecological footprint, and geometric guise are contributing factors of shelter which aspires to be stimulating. The relationship between architecture and geometry has frequently been a median issue in architectural theory and practice. Since the historic architecture, to the modern era architecture; the constructive, metaphysical, and aesthetic roles or geometry in architecture have been accurately used. As different kinds of geometry were evolved through the centuries, its perceived use to architecture developed equivalently from Vitruvius's early use of Euclidean ruler and compass constructions for architectural plans to the use of modern geometry to describe the structure of architectural forms. Apart from these and other surveillance about building forms, the relevance of geometry to architecture is demonstrated importantly by directing to occurrences of geometric forms in nature, space, architecture and other designs. In precise to the context, geometry is omnipresent in all the spheres of life.

2012