Straight & Curved

martedì 2 novembre 2010

How to draw a curve?

The compass is the main drawing tool to draw circles and curves in general

Curved line in architecture

Guggenheim Museum, F.L. Wright Ingalls Rink, Eero Saarinen

The arch is the first curved element that appears in the history of architecture, invented by the Etruscans and then taken over by the Romans. It will become the key figure in the Gothic style (as pointed arch). In art and architecture in the curved line appears in moments of crisis and rupture, in contrast to the polished mastery of the straight line: in the baroque wants to express rebellion against the traditional rules of Renaissance straight perspective; in the expressionism appears as a protest against the order geometry of rationalism, as well as Wright's organic architecture. At the same Aalto and Saarinen use enveloping curves in critical opposition to the International Style of Le Corbusier.

In architecture, it is worth mentioning the use of curved lines by the Danish architect Jorn Utzon, who in the wake of organic architecture of Asplund and Aalto designed the Sydney Opera House, a project of great complexity. Watch the technique and the clean lines of design, Utzon finds its most effective means of communication in the curved line.

Finally, may be sued Oscar Niemeyer, one of the greatest living architects who chose the curved line and organic as a key element of its architectural language.

Opera House, Jorn Utzon

Museo di arte contemporanea, Oscar Niemeyer

"It's not the right angle that attracts me. Not even the straight, harsh, inflexible line created by man. What attracts me is the curved line, free and sensual. The curved line that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the clouds of heaven, in the body of his beloved. The whole universe is made of curves. The curved universe of Einstein ......"
(Oscar Niemeyer)

Straight line in architecture

Ville Savoye, Le Corbusier

The use of straight lines in architecture is typical of the Rationalist Movement in the '900. The composition of the buildings is based on primary and regular geometric solids: cube and cuboid. Le Corbusier is one of the greatest exponents of this design. He is also inspired by urban development organization by the Romans, who developed the town around straight streets. In fact, he writes: "The Romans were enlightened legislators, great colonizers, skilled entrepreneurs. Pick a place to settle in a river, drawn with line and square the typical plant of the city straight. They wanted that the city had a pattern clear, orderly, very neat, they wanted to orient and drive the best. The straight line expresses very well the severe nature of the Roman Empire. "

天圆地方：Round Sky and Square Earth

In ancient times, the Chinese viewed the heaven as "rounded" while the earth as "square". This was known as "Tian Yuan Di Fang 天圆地方" and influenced various aspect of Chinese culture. And this was especially seen in traditional Chinese architecture.

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/28401-round-heaven-and-square-earth-%26%2322825%3B%26%2322278%3B%26%2322320%3B%26%2326041%3B/

"Round sky and square earth" is a basic concept in the traditional of ancient Chinese geography. It appeared at least two thousand years ago and has influenced Chinese geography significantly - both for good and for ill. As an academic subject in China, the history of geographical thought is new. It has become "the center of geographical history" (Yang 1989, p. 7; Wang 1982, p.4).

From Wikipedia-

Chinese thought on the form of the Earth remained almost unchanged from early times until the first contacts with modern science through the medium of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. While the heaven were variously described as being like an umbrella covering the Earth (the Kai Tian theory), or like a sphere surrounding it (the Hun Tian theory), or as being without substance while the heavenly bodies float freely (the Hsuan yeh theory), the Earth was at all times flat, although perhaps bulging up slightly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

Examples

The ancient Chinese coins

The shape of the coins embodied the concept of "Round sky and square earth".

You can find the interesting information about the history of Chinese coins here http://chinesecoins.lyq.dk/

Examples

Shanghai Museum

The building has a round top and a square base, symbolizing the ancient Chinese perception of the world as "round sky, square earth".

lunedì 1 novembre 2010

The concepts of body and soul: Straight vs Curved

Some bodily attitudes always show the opposition between important concepts in human life.
The straight is male: the whole morale of the Mediterranean societies can be summarized in the word "right" or "straight." "Stay Straight" means "to be a man of honor, looking straight at me, look in the face."
The Pythagorean table of opposites, as shown in the Metaphysics of Aristotle, seems to show that the Greeks had associated the male, the right, the light and the good together, and similarly the female, the curve, the darkness and the ugly. In the Medioeval writings soul-body matching was treated very much: “stand up right " indicated the rightness of soul, while “being twisted and bent” was a sign of a indirect spirit, but also “to be tamed and bent” because “bend the person is an act that proves to bend and humiliate the soul”.

In the Bible a pharisee expresses his devotion praying in the temple standing straight, while the publican pray humbly curved before God.