Geometry of Architecture

I’ve gone down the Architectural route with for this weeks WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge : Geometry as I feel it’s the one true profession that begins with geometry and since earliest times, architects have relied on these mathematical principles. Even the famous Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius believed that builders should always use precise ratios when constructing temples. “For without symmetry and proportion no temple can have a regular plan,” Vitruvius wrote in his famous Ten Books on Architecture. These proportions Vitruvius recommended were modelled after the human bodies precise ratio of – 1 to PHI (1.618) – which exists in every part of nature, from Jack Russell’s to the Moon. This divine geometric ratio, or divine proportion, has been called the building block of all life.

These sacred principles of geometry are not only confined to great temples and monuments, geometry shapes all buildings, particularly in these geometric forms that grace the skyline of my home town of Leeds. There’s the old Leeds Corn Exchange using draftsman geometric skills of ages-past, to the new Broadcasting House lovingly nicknamed The Rusty Nail which was designed using the latest geometric Building Information Modelling (BIM) techniques with Revit software, either way their foundations start with Geometry… I hope you enjoy all my photography of them…I do 🙂