Transformational Geometry and the Central European Baroque Church

John Clagett ()

Chapter Chapter 62 in Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future, 2015, pp 231-242 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The Central European Baroque church appears to be in endless conflict with itself: at once unified and chaotic, continuous and fragmented. Architects strove to unite architecture and the plastic arts merging into a symphonic whole, forming contrasting tectonic systems into composite and dissolving sharply-defined boundaries. A look at scientific/mathematical developments of the age helps place this in context: Desargues, Newton, Leibniz and Descartes all dealt with theories of synthesis and convergence. The effect of the new mathematical ideas was on architecture was a gradual transformation of space from pure, static and isolated to composite, dynamic and interpenetrating. Transformational operations were of utmost importance, including area, rotation, reflection, translation, coordinate transformation, Borrominian transformation, dilatation. A projective transformation is related to mapping, with a three-dimensional form projected onto a two-dimensional surface. In Baroque vaults a far-reaching potential of projective geometry as a form generator may be recognized.

Keywords: Ground Plan; Projective Geometry; Projective Transformation; Dynamic Continuum; Transverse Arch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-00143-2_15

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319001432

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00143-2_15

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().