Structure of phenomenological forms: Morphologic rhythm

Abstract

The images in architecture are handed down through mathematical forms. The meaning of the plastic value of the forms and the conflict between their visual boundaries are a result of the geometrical composition of the object. Since Stonehenge in Britain, the Egyptian pyramids, the Greek Parthenon or the Roman Pantheon, architecture has been a reflex of simple boundaries without accidental confrontations. Nowadays materials are organised through movement/change in order to represent the required profile. This developed structure emerges in the artistic manifestations according to the theory of continuity. As an expression of the formal quality in opposition to the ancient characteristics of quantity, a new conception of rhythm appears. The concept of a cell as an architectural element that can have any biological form and can be grouped itself according to different ways and functions (such as repetition of floors) is introduced. This concept of cell permits eurhythmy (harmony in the proportion of a building) through the notion of rhythm once all the elements of a building are situated among themselves. © Kim Williams Books 2006.