Be sure to visit the basement museum to see the upside-down string + tiny sandbag weights model that was used to simulate the structure. Pure genius.
The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
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Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#12Vaguely related, there is also the unfinished Cathedral of Justo [1] near Madrid built by a solo developer since 1961 and essentially by hand and more or less from scrap and whatever people donated. Justo Gallego Martínez died in 2021 at age 96 and donated the building to some foundation for completion.
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#13I went went once it's very beautiful inside! And the view from the top is also wow! Thanks for sharing this
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#14I visited this and several other Gaudi buildings about 15 years ago in Barcelona, and many of them are truly breathtaking, or at least dramatically original and unique. I went to the Gaudi museum as well and found it fascinating that the architect himself was not a professional mathematician - he did not use hyperbolic cosine to calculate the dimensions of the catenary curves, he traced the outline of hanging chains.…
> I love how artistic taste can be partially derived from math [...] the math itself isn't sufficient to develop artistic taste
Strictly speaking, it isn't "math" as math is the science of quantity and structure, both of which are objective features of reality. We all perceive structure and quantity as it is instantiated in concrete things and ensembles of concrete things and so on. We all respond to and reason about quantifiable and structural properties of reality at varying depths all the time. All math does is pursue them intentionally and methodically. It isn't surprising, then, that a competent artist should intuit various mathematical truths. Indeed, quantity and structure as essential to art. The artist is therefore closer to a domain-specific application where such properties are understood in relation to the subject matter. This introduces a domain-specific aesthetic dimension that is not present in abstracted properties, though one can certainly make aesthetic judgements about abstracted properties.
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to put this one through Claude, but it boils down to: > A culture's felt sense of proportion, ratio, and spatial order manifest directly through the hands of masons and sculptors, without necessarily needing the mathematical formalism of proofs, axioms, and treatises. Not sure how I feel about this, as the Familia was absolutely built in a context of formalised mathematical sciences.
It seems somewhat important to me to know if something was done because it looked pretty, was random or because there was an intent to reflect maths, science, planetary alignment etc.
Whatever one might say about method, epistemically speaking, the aesthetic is prior to the mathematical. The mathematical is found in the analysis of the beautiful.
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#16Call me grumpy, but numerology does not make architecture more beautiful.
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#17"The temple’s dimensions are based on the number 12 and a module of 7.5m."
12 / 7.5 = 1.6 ~= Golden ratio
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#18Call me grumpy, but numerology does not make architecture more beautiful.
That's not grumpy but ignorant. Aspect ratios are not numerology (per se)
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#19Gaudi stuff is cool. I used to live in Barcelona, I know all about it. But numerology is not the same as mathematics- nothing in the article comes close to sniffing at the math of classical architecture. And while many have said I have a well-developed architectural taste, and I certainly understand the artistic fascination and amusement with Gaudi’s works, I never understood the magnitude of architectural devotion that they have attracted.
Re: The mathematical secrets of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
#20I visited this and several other Gaudi buildings about 15 years ago in Barcelona, and many of them are truly breathtaking, or at least dramatically original and unique. I went to the Gaudi museum as well and found it fascinating that the architect himself was not a professional mathematician - he did not use hyperbolic cosine to calculate the dimensions of the catenary curves, he traced the outline of hanging chains.…
Designing in an era where calculus exists, using chains and weights strikes me as gratuitous or onanistic.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans also used the same or similar empirical geometric methods to generate ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas in their architecture. The difference is, they were still 1000-2000 years away from having formalized calculus.