Argument for Proportion (First draft of some ramblings...)

As you will recall, I have been
reading Padovan's "Proportion".  Having had a few days to
digest the material now I figure it's a good time to write up the
arguments as I see them for (and against) using proportional systems in
design.

From a perceptual standpoint
(the standpoint of our thesis), the primary question of any approach to
design is the effect that the approach has upon the viewer. 
The desirability or utility of any given approach is therefor
predicated on the particular effect that the designer wishes to induce
in the user.

"Van
der Laan encouraged me to see a proportion system not as a tool or
recipe that makes good design 'easier', but as something vastly more
important.  The role of the system he discovered, the 'plastic
number', is not to help make a better architecture, but rather, the
role of architecture is to embody the plastic number."[1]

Padovan goes to great lengths
describing three approaches to humanity's relation to nature, based on
Worringer's 'Abstract', 'Empathic', and 'Oriental'
descriptions.  He describes, in particular, the role of
architecture in each case as mediating (or reflecting) our
understanding of the natural world.  In the 'Abstract' forms
(including 'Oriental') an order is imposed upon or set up against an
unknowable external world.  In the 'Empathic' forms, order is
seen as arising from the ordered and knowable external world (though
Padovan argues (via Kant) that this is simply our perceptual systems
subconsciously imposing order).

Much of Padovan's text is taken
up with his thesis regarding the transitions between the three (or two,
for him, with 'Oriental' merely being an 'Abstract' form) approaches to
the external environment, and their implications for the use of
proportional systems in design.  He argues, that the ancient
Greek philosophers brought humanity from seeing nature as an unknowable
external force to seeing it as a realm comprehensible via Numerology
(Pythagoras).

In such an environment, where
numbers are seen to order the world, and the secrets of the universe
are just an equation away, an 'Empathic' tradition arises wrt the use
of proportion in architecture.  Numeric correspondences are
used to tweak the viewer's sense of underlying patterns, to suggest the
emergence of a new pattern of understanding, but more, the 'truth' of
the numbers is seen as itself an ideal to be embodied by the
architecture.

Padovan then argues that the
various scientists of the Enlightenment (Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler,
Galileo, Newton, and Berkeley) while creating an ordered universe,
divorced the underlying patterns of the universe from direct connection
with human experience.  This culminated in Hume's philosophy
suggesting that there is no absolute truth that can be based on our
experiences of the world; that all is merely perception and opinion.

In such an environment, all
discussion of numeric 'truth' becomes irrelevant.  If nothing
can be known from the world around us, then hoping to find truth in the
emergent patterns of numbers observed in the world is hopeless.

From Hume's relativism, Padovan
argues that Kant provides a sort of lifeboat.  Our perceptions
and our perceptual mechanisms, including our model of the universe, can
be used as a foundation for knowledge.  Now, as we may recall,
the human perceptual system is constantly seeking for underlying
patterns and orders in our environment.  It is searching for
concepts and clues that will allow us to better understand (and
thereby, better cope) with our environment.  Our model of the
universe is constantly being reevaluated and revised to take into
account new perceptions, and to resolve inconsistencies.  We
are pattern seeking creatures.

Here Padovan inserts the
discussion of Van der Laan .  As we have discussed in the
past, Van der Laan used perceptual experiments (in the line of Fechner,
as Padovan mentions) to discover various types and orders of size which
were the limits on our ability to perceive differences and relations
in size.  From this he built up his proportional system, the
'plastic number', which he sees as being 'not a means, but the end, of
making architecture'.[2]

As we see from the quote,
Padovan and Van der Laan see the plastic number as an absolute good,
though derived from perceptual experiments and itself considerably
malleable.  That is, they see the plastic number as an end or
goal in and of itself. The plastic number, in their understanding,
should be applied in all architecture, having been discovered as
something solid which is based on human perception.

You may see the problem
there.  Padovan constructs a world in which an ideal, a truth,
is constructed, then immediately returns to the world of the
renaissance.  Having discovered one pattern in the world, that
pattern is taken as absolute truth, and the search is halted. 
The problem here is that Kant's lifeboat is not a stable foundation on
which to build a temple.

The problem that arises in
Padovan and Van der Laan's search for a proportional system is that the
entire idea of proportional systems is not examined to see their effect
on human perceptual systems.  Padovan does take some time to
review experiments which tried to prove whether there was any effect of
particular proportions on a viewer, but this doesn't address the
underlying issue.

As we have mentioned, humans
are pattern-finding animals.  We are constantly searching for
rules and models which better describe our environment and allow us to
better cope with that environment (in the largest sense of environment,
including our own bodies, that immediately around us, and the world at
large).  What is the effect of proportional systems embodied
in architecture on a pattern-finding animal experiencing that
architecture?

The first thing we need to
answer the question is to look at the effect of proportional schemes on
the environment in question.  We can characterise these
effects along much the same lines as Padovan does. 
Proportional schemes tend to have additive and multiplicative
characteristics such that multiple dissimilar elements with readily
comprehensible interrelations combine in such a way as to produce
composite elements which are themselves related to the individual
pieces.

In
other words, a proportional scheme will tend to produce designs where a
complex phenomena appears to resolve itself.  It will tend to
produce an impression of emergent order.

Consider, in contrast to a
proportional system, a grid.  A grid is, similarly, a
generative/limiting mechanism in many architectural designs. 
It is readily comprehended, and is highly ordered, but is comparatively
not complex at all.  The grid does not read as a complex
phenomena resolving itself between parts and whole, but rather as a
highly ordered phenomena which remains static.

So, what is the effect of this
impression of emergent order on the human perceptual system? 
Well, as we understand the perceptual system, which is constantly
searching for such emergent orders, the effect will tend to be mimic
that of a discovered order.  If the perceptual system cannot
resolve the order, it will tend to produce anxiety. If it can, it will
tend to be perceived with excitement and interest.  If the
order is too easily resolved, or not of sufficient complexity to
engage, it will tend not to be noticed or noticed with
boredom.  The nature of this effect will
depend in no small part upon the individual perceiving the work
involved.

Given this effect, how and when
should we use proportion in design?  Padovan and Van der Laan
are asserting that proportion in design (and particularly, the plastic
number) should be used at all times, that it is, in effect, a moral
requirement for building.  This assertion is tied up with an
implicit moral argument regarding the purpose of design; that the
purpose of design should be to inspire confidence and solidity while
inspiring the observer with the potential to find greater depth in the
universe.  It is interesting to note that the most effective
designs using the plastic number are religious in programme.

Separating out the two
concerns, moral and effective, proportion is a tool which allows a
designer to produce an impression of a complex phenomena resolving
itself.  This impression can be used to lend a certain set of
associations to a design which are tied to our interest in resolving
patterns and finding deeper orders in the universe.

Care must be taken when using
this particular tool, as it is playing on one of the most basic human
perceptual systems.  An order which is trivial or
uninteresting, yet takes a great deal of investigation to resolve will tend to
produce a negative reaction.  Similarly, an order which is
painted on at the last moment will tend to have a poor reaction,
seeming to the viewer to be an attempt more to obscure the truth or
apologise for something than an approach to underlying reality. This same caution, of course, applies to all generative/limiting orders, and indeed most tools in design, if the design does not actually help the user cope, it will not likely be well received.