Proportion: Science, Philosophy, Architecture - Softcover

"Padovan's important new book surveys 25 centuries of theoretical concern for proportion in architecture in relationship to philosophy and science." -"Choice "Padovan had much to offer all architects, not only in respect of what they design but also of how they see the world as a whole. And that is quite and achievement "Architectural Review."

This handbook provides readers with a well-illustrated and readable comparative guide to proportion systems in architecture, setting out the mathematical principles that underlie the main systems and illustrating these with examples of their use in historical and modern buildings. The main body of the text traces the interplay of abstraction and empathy through the history of science, philosophy and architecture from the early Greeks through to the two early twentieth-century architects who made proportion the focus of their work: Le Corbusier and Van der Laan. The book ends with a reflection on the present and future role of proportion in architecture.