Modulor

The Modulor is a scale of proportions devised by the French, Swiss born architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965).

History

Le Corbusier developed the Modulor in the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, the work of Leone Battista Alberti, and other attempts to discover mathematical proportions in the human body and then to use that knowledge to improve both the appearance and function of architecture. The system is based on human measurements, the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio. Le Corbusier described it as a "range of harmonious measurements to suit the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and to mechanical things."

Le Corbusier published "Le Modulor" in 1948, followed by "Modulor 2" in 1955. These works were first published in English as "The Modulor" in 1954 and "Modulor 2 (Let the User Speak Next)" in 1958.

Le Corbusier used his Modulor scale in the design of many buildings, including Notre Dame du Haute and buildings in Chandigarh. In the construction of the first Unité d'Habitation apartment building, in Marseilles, a version was cast in concrete near the entrance.

Graphic representation

The graphic representation of the Modulor is a stylized human figure with one arm upraised stands next to two vertical measurements, the red series based on the figure's navel height (108cm in the original version, 1.13m in the revised version) then segmented according to Phi, and the blue series based on the figure's entire height, double the navel height (216cm in the original version, 2.26m in the revised), and likewise segmented. A spiral, graphically developed between the red and blue segments, seems to mimic the volume of the human figure.

Criticism

Critics of the Modulor have pointed out a number of concerns with the system. The height of the figure appears to be arbitrary and was perhaps chosen for mathematical convenience. The female body, in the words of Robin Evans, "was only belatedly considered and rejected as a source of proportional harmony" (Evans 1995, quoted in Ostwald 2001, 146). The system bears no relationship to actual anthropometric observations. There is no self-evident method to transfer these measurements to the spaces humans are meant to inhabit; for instance, the Modulor cannot be used to derive comfortable tread length and riser height for stairs.

Trivia

* A picture of the Modulor appears on the current [http://www.snb.ch/en/iabout/cash/history/id/cash_history_serie8 Swiss 10 CHF] banknote dedicated to Le Corbusier.

ee also

* Body proportions
* Rudolf Wittkower
* Vitruvian Man
* List of strange units of measurement
* Preferred number, especially the section about Renard series, which covers a mathematical approach on evenly distributed numbers using geometric sequences, for use in constructing houses or devices.

ources

* Evans, Robin. 1995. "The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries". Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0262050498
* Ostwald, Michael. 2001. " [http://www.springerlink.com/content/1qr207l820065874/fulltext.pdf "The Modulor" and "Modulor 2" by Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), 2 volumes. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2000] " [book review] . "Nexus Network Journal" 3, no. 1:145–48.