A Space of Amazing Proportions

A Space of Amazing Proportions

The basis of humanism can be summed up in the words of Protagoras, "Man is the measure of all things." Why were the Greek people so intrigued by the idea of ratios and proportions? What is the Golden Ratio and why is it so important? Their architecture and sculpture are examples of the ideas that were so dominant in the minds of the Greek people. What could be considered the most important piece of Greek architecture, the Parthenon, is one of these examples.

The Greek people of the fifth century BCE created a culture that was deeply rooted in philosophy and the arts. Their never-ending search for their place in the grand scheme of the universe, and in nature around them, influenced everything in their lives, especially their love of the arts.

"The Parthenon enjoys the reputation of being the most Doric temple ever built (Figure 1). Even in ancient times, its architectural refinements were legendary, especially the subtle connection between the curvature of the stylobate, the batter, or taper, of the naos walls and the entasis of the columns." This quote from John Julius Norwich's book, Great Architecture of The World, describes perfectly the reason for which the Parthenon has had an incredible influence on ancient and modern architecture. Even buildings today continue to borrow parts of the Doric order of which it is built. The Parthenon while deceptively simple in design is, in fact, an intricate and complex piece of architecture.

Greek temples were the first buildings that were not only functional but also intended to be seen as beautiful objects externally, though they still succeeded in creating a sacred internal space.3 The Parthenon, which many consider to be the culmination of classical Greek architecture, is a perfect example of this successful relationship between a public external space and a sacred internal space.

Situated on the Athenian Acropolis, the Parthenon was built to honor the goddess Athena, after she helped the Greek army in their defeat of the Persians. In the beginning, the Parthenon housed a forty foot tall statue of Athena, and was the focus of the annual Panathenaic Procession, where the Greeks would celebrate Athena's power and beauty.

The building itself reflects the Greek focus on ratios and proportions. For example, the building is seven columns wide by eleven columns long, a dimension regarded as aesthetically perfect by Greek artists. The buildings architect's were among the first to place importance on the visual effect created by the building when viewed from a distance. The temple is placed on an axis to allow it to be seen from several different vistas, all of which highlight the relation of ends to sides. The architects also addressed several problems associated with the buildings location.1 For example, when the straight lines of a building are seen from far away, such as the center of Athens, they appear to sag and distort. The architects compensated for this by raising the center of the temple roof slightly and bowing the centers of the exterior columns. The result is a three-dimensional object that can be observed with equal interest from all sides.

The customs and conditions that shape a society directly influence that civilization's art and architecture, and the culture of ancient Greece was no exception. Buildings constructed in Classical Greece were very different from major structures of other ancient cultures. Their beliefs in anthropomorphic gods lead them to become obsessed with the natural beauty of the human body. This resulted in the development of a standard approach to sculpture and architecture. Even the types of buildings constructed differed from those erected by other ancient civilizations. The sophisticated Greek government produced a society that had little use for extravagant tombs and palaces.1 Instead, temples to gods and goddesses were far more common, and structures similar to the Parthenon would become the standard for monumental architecture. The Greek people were more interested in paying homage to the Gods than building a place for a mere mortal to be buried. The Parthenon shared many attributes with Classical Greek sculpture; it used ratios and relationships to form an aesthetically perfect object (Figure 2). The Greek architects, Ictinus and Callicrates, were able to solve complex visual problems, and successfully make the Parthenon a temple worthy of the goddess that it honors, Athena. Greek culture created inventive works of art, and many aspects of their sculpture and architecture were not equaled until thousands of years later.3 The Greek civilization that focused on man as the measure of all things influenced many cultures that followed.

The Parthenon, built by Pericles between 447 and 438 BCE, to immortalize the greatness of Athens and secure it a place in history did its job very well. As mentioned before, the Parthenon is deceptively simple in design. It is simple because the structural elements are not overly complex. This is the result of a design process that focuses on determining the size and proportions of the columns, which are used in turn to determine every other aspect of the building's design and size (Figure 3). The width of the average column base is used to determine most of the other major dimensions of the structure and most importantly the interaxial spacing (the distance from column center to column center), which determines the center as well as the height of the colonnade, and the height of the entire faÐ"§ade. These measurements seem insignificant to us, but to the Greeks, they appear to have been incredibly important and reflect a great deal of experimentation. This approach to architecture may seem somewhat odd to us, but if we think of architectural design primarily as a complex problem of geometry, the Parthenon will make more sense to us.

The Parthenon was the climax of over four centuries of Greek temple architecture. Though no original plans of the temple exist, it appears that the temple was built on a square-root-of-five rectangle, that is, it is five times as long as it is wide.4 These are also the dimensions of the longest side view of the temple. The Parthenon is littered with a system of proportions, known as the golden rectangle. Throughout history, the ratio for length to width of rectangles of 1.61803398874989484820:1 has been considered the most pleasing to the eye. This ratio was named the golden ratio by the Greeks. In the world of mathematics, the numeric value is called "phi", named for the Greek sculptor Phidias. These proportions are most readily evident in the plan of the temple, which uses eight columns