Proportions and the Number 26
by Richard HordenFriday, July 04 2008This is the 13th entry I have submitted and as it happens, the numbers 2.6, 13, 26, and 52 have recurred many times as an interesting and repeating theme in our work at the London office and at our institute at TU Munich.
The micro compact home is a 2.6 meter cube; actually it is 2.65 meters, but in the initial design phase we aimed for 2.6 meters for clarity and simplicity. The dimension is important as it is acceptable for transport throughout all European countries.
micro compact home proportion and the Golden Section.
The 'Leonardo' sketch (from October 2001) for the start of the design for the micro compact home explaining human scale and the 2.6 meter cube.The drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of the human figure set within a cube and circle generates a person's height to be 2.4 meters. If we add some thickness for insulation, say 10 cm, then we arrive at the perfect cube for human habitation of 2.6 meters. I made a rough sketch like this for the students at the start of our first semester design for the micro compact home in October 2001 to show the relation of human scale to a possible living cube. Of course the middle of the cube and a human being are each 1.3 meters/13 decimeters/130 centimeters.
Religions have very significant relations to the number 13 and I wonder how one could relate the excellent feng shui feeling of wellness that exists when alone inside the micro compact home to the dimensional perfection of human bones and units of the metric system. The Fibonacci series runs 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13, and so on. The Classic Greek Golden Section is a rectangle with the proportion 1 x 1.62; the current popular interpretation of this uses a projected diagonal of a square and is 1 x 1:41 (like an A4 size paper), so a vertical Golden Section rectangle with a base of 1.3 meters would have its other side of 1.83 and a base of 1.83 x 1.41 = 2.6. The north and south facades of the micro compact home contain two of the 'new' Golden Sections (see sketch below) and the window is the classic Golden Section.
The first micro compact home, the 2.6-meter cube prototype, with Lydia Haack and the students celebrating after their final presentation in July 2002. From left to right: wiebke seidler, vanessa blacker sturm, veronika gruber, taisi tuhkanen, claus hainzlmeier, bianca matern, lydia haack, stefan koch.
The proportions of the Golden Section in the south principal facade of the micro compact home: classic Golden Section is 1:1.62 and modern Golden Section is 1:1.41.We build wooden and acrylic construction cubes as gifts for the students who live in the micro compact homes at the O2 village in Munich. These are based on 5.2 cm and 3.25 cm cubes. The integral locking structure of the cube is made up of 26 units (plus three loose units).
The great Swiss architectural photographer and writer Werner Blaser prepared our first book Light-Tech at his atelier in Basel, Switzerland, and brought the mock-up to show us at our London office. When I asked him the modular dimensions of the book and grid he explained that it was 2.6 cm grid with page size at 26 cm! There are 26 Cantons in Switzerland, the source of micro architecture. The new book, titled micro architecture, has a caption block width (designed by Ulrike Fuchs) that is 2.6 cm. The book will be on sale at the MoMA bookshop in mid July.
The 5.2 cm (2 x 26) cube toy, a gift for students in the O2 Village, was designed in 1962 and is held together by 26 interlocking identical components and 3 loose ones: 29 in total.Le Corbusier generated his modular system to relate his architecture to human scale and to the proportion of spaces within his buildings based on the Golden Section. In 2000 we built the Study Gallery of Modern Art for young people at Poole in England. We needed to create a human scale for the young students so we designed the building as a cube of 13 meters, which stands at the corner quarter of a courtyard of 26 meters.
The Study Gallery of Modern Art, a 13 meter cube.
The Study Gallery of Modern Art in Poole England is a 13 meter cube set in a square courtyard space of 26 meters.Our home on Evening Hill on Poole Harbour has a structural grid of 2.6 meters, both vertically and horizontally. The south facade is made up of 2.6 m x 2.6 m spaced mullions and transoms, so each pane of glass is the size of one micro compact home. Paving is arranged on a 65 cm grid with four per 2.6 m.
I was born on the 26th of December, married on the 26th of August to Kathy, who was born on the 26th of April. Tragically Kathy died following a horse riding accident in Hyde Park on the 26th of May, 1998. Our first child, Christian, arrived on the 26th of November, 1995. I give 26 regular lectures in one year at the TU Munich as there are 26 weeks in an academic year (13 in each of two semesters), and I take 26 flights to Munich every year, frequently taking off or landing on Runway 26R or 26L at Munich Airport; the prevailing winds being from the opposite direction. One of the most elegant and efficient short haul aircraft with the smallest wings imaginable is the Canadair Challenger; it has a length of 26.7 meters and a cabin width of just under 2.6 meters. Not surprisingly, many but not all of the most intense experiences in my life have occurred on the 26th day of the month.
House on Evening Hill, Poole Harbour, England. The columns and mullions are spaced at 2.6 meters and the middle floor level and roof align with 2.6 meters vertically; each window is the size of a micro compact home.This is why the micro compact home has a base dimension of 2.6 meters.
Footnote for our American friends:
We here in the UK still remember inches, and just for you, please note that the micro compact home is actually 104 inches across. That's 4 x 26, so you cannot escape the number 26 even without following the metric system!
Cross Section
