On Mathematics and Architecture.
Bill Barton is a Math Educator, we discussed the potential of mathematics to enable possibilities for architecture. Bill mentions a salient example of this ‘possibility’ - Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia, the ongoing construction of which involves a design team including Mark Burry, an architect, and his wife Jane Burry, a mathematician.
Bill says ‘a lot of people perceive mathematics to be restricted, ordered and non-creative, so rectilinear sets of buildings and ordered things, where identifiable patterns are fairly clear, would be seen as mathematical, but something like the Guggenheim in Bilbao or La Sagrada Familia might not be. And yet in fact it’s exactly that highly designed disorder or highly designed creativity which is more mathematical, so I much rather think about mathematics and architecture as mathematics providing creative opportunities, rather then mathematics providing templates of order.’
Bill suggests that mathematics can act as the enabler, ‘its not fundamentally a source of ideas, it’s something that enables ideas to happen.’ It can be a way ‘to communicate, to activate, to develop it in strange ways, it doesn’t restrict you.’
Mathematics, like architecture, is not pre-determined, one is not learning what has already been decided. Math can enable this opening up of the field of possibilities.
In terms of education this poses an interesting question, how to educate architecture students about the possibilities offered by mathematics?
In the case of La Sagrada Familia, an understanding of mathematical principals enabled Gaudi to revise the catenary arch, the form of the towers. Math is now the mode by which the Burrys describe the lines of Gaudi’s sketches, to seamlessly document the complex geometries to enable fabrication and constructability.
Mathematics is also integrated with architecture at the scale of the detail. Bill talks about the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland, specifically the lalava or lashing around the intersections of the high wooden beams.
Photo Credit eventpolynesia.com
Within this lashing detail we have integration between art and sculpture, mathematics and architecture, memory and culture. Bill states ‘when I say its mathematics that creates the opportunities, I refer to this binding as much as I’m referring to the beautiful curved surfaces of Bilbao.’
I ask Bill about the future of maths. He describes an exploratory process that sounds very similar to the creative process identified by Edward de Bono. Bill describes mathematicians working away without necessarily knowing where this activity might suddenly turn out to be useful, but it almost always does. Edward de Bono argues that one cannot with only logic achieve a creative idea, but once you have come up with the idea, it will be logical in hindsight. (This is based on the mathematical premise of asymmetrical patterning behaviour of the brain).
Bill also describes an emergent field within mathematics, whereby its practitioners ‘link the strands’ of mathematics, which have otherwise lost touch with each other, to find solutions.
This ‘linking across the strands’ is a valuable model for architecture, particularly in this interdependent and fragile world. Not one discipline in isolation can resolve the complex problems of our ecological predicament. Architects facilitate the expertise of other consultants during the design process, so are in a position to make lateral connections across disciplines, to collaborate with like-minded people with a vision.
Mathematics is one of these disciplines that can be utilised as an enabler, to integrate source material, to open up design possibilities, and therefore increase the probability of discovering creative solutions to better the environment.
References:
de Bono, Edward (2009) Think, Before It’s Too Late; Vermillion, London
Tohi, Filipe (URL accessed 2011) http://www.lalava.net
A Jane Burry lecture on her book with Mark Burry The New Mathematics of Architecture
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1281
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