Selected Bibliography Architecture - Form Space and Order | Page 329

R E NAISSANCE TH EO RIES

S. Maria Novella, Florence, Italy.
Alberti designed the Renaissance facade (1456–70)
to complete a Gothic church (1278–1350).

Pythagoras discovered that the consonances of the
Greek musical system could be expressed by the simple
numerical progression—1, 2, 3, 4—and their ratios,
1:2, 1:3, 2:3, 3:4. This relationship led the Greeks to
believe they had found the key to the mysterious harmony
that pervaded the universe. The Pythagorean creed was
“Everything is arranged according to numbers.” Plato
later developed Pythagoras’ aesthetics of numbers into
an aesthetics of proportion. He squared and cubed the
simple numerical progression to produce the double and
triple progressions, 1, 2, 4, 8, and 1, 3, 9, 27. For Plato,
these numbers and their ratios not only contained
the consonances of the Greek musical scale but also
expressed the harmonic structure of his universe.

Diagram by Francesco Giorgi, 1525, illustrating the series of interlocking ratios that results
from applying Pythagoras’ theory of means to the intervals of the Greek musical scale.

314 / A R C H I TE C TU R E : F O R M , S PA C E , & O R D E R

The architects of the Renaissance, believing that their
buildings had to belong to a higher order, returned to the
Greek mathematical system of proportions. Just as the
Greeks conceived music to be geometry translated into
sound, Renaissance architects believed that architecture
was mathematics translated into spatial units. Applying
Pythagoras’ theory of means to the ratios of the intervals
of the Greek musical scale, they developed an unbroken
progression of ratios that formed the basis for the
proportions of their architecture. These series of ratios
manifested themselves not only in the dimensions of a
room or a facade, but also in the interlocking proportions
of a sequence of spaces or an entire plan.