Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science

Download or read book Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science written by Alberto Pérez Gómez and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the late Renaissance and the early nineteenth century, the ancient arts of architecture were being profoundly transformed by the scientific revolution. This important book, which won the 1984 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, traces the process by which the mystical and numerological grounds for the use of number and geometry in building gave way to the more functional and technical ones that prevail in architectural theory and practice today. Throughout, it relates the major architectural treatises of successive generations to the larger culture and the writings of philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.Alberto Pérez-Gómez is Director of the School of Architecture at Carleton University in Ottowa.