by michela rossi
co-authored with Giovanni Ferrero, Celestina Cotti, Cecilia Tedeschi, published in Nexusjournal, 11/2, Birkauser, 2009
The long search of M.C. Escher in order to decode the geometric meant of the space among mathematical truth,... more
The long search of M.C. Escher in order to decode the geometric meant of the space among mathematical truth, perception and representation, developes itself through some compenetrating topics:
- geometric structure of the landscape, as continuity between morphology and architecture;
- metamorphosis between shapes, ideas or living species in the evolutionary chain;
- rappresentazione of the temporal dimension, also in the ambiguity of the point of view.
The common denominator of this search is the intention to give a shape to the concept of “infinite” that lies toghether unit and variety: the rappresentazione becomes cosmogonia, like a secular image of the creation.
If the sensory knowledge caught up through the perception is illusory, the explanation of the geometric structure of the space through rigorous logic of the mathematical rationality is real and concrete.
The image of the infinite takes shape in the drake biting its tail, in the Moebius’ strips, in the spirals or in the compositions of circles and the squares according to Coxeter’s surface. These forms, sophisticated in their mathematician reference are tied to iniziatory symbols, and ancestral designs.
But the Escher’s graphical inventions are reflected from the work of a contemporary American inventor, who was extremely pragmatic and visionary at the same time. Buckminster Fuller, half architect and half engineer, went on studing spatial simmetries of the platonic solids, in order to resolve the problems of the construction and applies space geometries to the planning of light, industrialized and transportable structures.
To the time of the Cold War its geodetic domes become the symbol of the technology of the West, but his imagination was not pleased of the architectonic construction and he extends this model to the rappresentazione of the land surface, with the licence of one innovative cartographic projection, specifically thought for the air navigation on orthodromic routes.
Fuller’s buildings give concretness to architectural concerns of Escher’s mathematical representations, who trought his graphic constructions based on hiperbolic geometry, opens new ways related to non linear transformations in groups theories. This work means investigate how architectural design may develope new geometries.
References
M.C. Escher, His life and complete graphic work, Abrasale Press, New York, 1982.
Michael J. Gorman, Buckminster Fuller Architettura in movimento, Skira, Ginevra-Milano, 2005
Frucht, R., Graphs of degree three with a given abstract group, Canadian J. Math. 1, pgg. 365-378 (1949)
Klein, F. Vergleichende Betrachtung ueber neue geometriche Forschungen, Program, Erlangen, 1872
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