Nexus Network Journal

This book presents an exploration of the arch from the points of view of architecture, mathematics, engineering, construction history, and cultural symbolism. Leonardo da Vinci described the arch as "two weaknesses which, leaning on each other, become a strength," a metaphor for the way that science and art lean on each other to strengthen our lives.

This volume features a collection of papers dedicated to "Canons of Form-Making", in honor of the 500th anniversary of the birth of architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). Theorist as well as practitioner, Palladio's architecture was based on well-defined canons that he had gleaned from studying the treatises as well as the remains of architecture from antiquity. Palladio himself left to posterity not only his large corpus of built works, but his Quattro libri d'architettura. Three of the papers in this issue are specifically about Palladio and his work. The other papers deal with canons of form-making, ancient and contemporary.

Baroque architect and mathematician Guarino Guarini is the subject of this issue of the Nexus Network Journal. A group of international scholars were invited to contribute papers that shed light on the unanswered questions in several areas: Baroque architecture in general and Guarini’s architecture in particular; philosophy; history of structural mechanics; mathematics and history of mathematics, cosmology. As always, the NNJ takes an interdisciplinary approach to the broad range of subjects that Guarini concerned himself with, thus the final results will add significantly to our understanding of how Guarini’s actual practical and technical processes were informed by knowledge of his multifaceted scientific and philosophical interests.

The title of this issue of the Nexus Network Journal, "Architecture, Mathematics and Structure," is deliberately ambiguous. At first glance, it might seem to indicate the relationship between what buildings look like and how they stand up. This is indeed one aspect of what we are concerned with here. But on a deeper level, the fundamental concept of structure is what connects architecture to mathematics. Both architecture and mathematics are highly structured formal systems expressed through a symbolic language. For architecture, the generating structure might be geometrical, musical, modular, or fractal. Once we understand the nature of the structure underlying the design, we are able to "read" the meaning inherent in the architectural forms. The papers in this issue all explore themes of structure in different ways.

The Winter 2012 (vol. 14 no. 3) issue of the Nexus Network Journal features seven original papers dedicated to the theme “Digital Fabrication”. Digital fabrication is changing architecture in fundamental ways in every phase, from concept to artifact. Projects growing out of research in digital fabrication are dependent on software that is entirely surface-oriented in its underlying mathematics. Decisions made during design, prototyping, fabrication and assembly rely on codes, scripts, parameters, operating systems and software, creating the need for teams with multidisciplinary expertise and different skills, from IT to architecture, design, material engineering, and mathematics, among others The papers grew out of a Lisbon symposium hosted by the ISCTE-Instituto Universitario de Lisboa entitled “Digital Fabrication – A State of the Art”. The issue is completed with four other research papers which address different mathematical instruments applied to architecture, including geometric tracing systems, proportional systems, descriptive geometry and correspondence analysis. The issue concludes with a book review.

Leonardo da Vinci was well aware of the fundamental importance of mathematics for architecture. This book examines Leonardo’s knowledge of theoretical mathematics, explores how he used concepts of geometry in his designs for architectural projects, and reports on a real-life construction project using Leonardo’s principles. Authors include Sylvie Duvernoy, Kim Williams, Rinus Roelofs, Biagio Di Carlo, Mark Reynolds, João Pedro Xavier, Vesna Petresin, Christopher Glass, and Jane Burry.