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Transformational Geometry and the Central European Baroque Church

In: Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future

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  • John Clagett

Abstract

The Central European Baroque church appears to be in endless conflict with itself: at once unified and chaotic, continuous and fragmented. Architects strove to unite architecture and the plastic arts merging into a symphonic whole, forming contrasting tectonic systems into composite and dissolving sharply-defined boundaries. A look at scientific/mathematical developments of the age helps place this in context: Desargues, Newton, Leibniz and Descartes all dealt with theories of synthesis and convergence. The effect of the new mathematical ideas was on architecture was a gradual transformation of space from pure, static and isolated to composite, dynamic and interpenetrating. Transformational operations were of utmost importance, including area, rotation, reflection, translation, coordinate transformation, Borrominian transformation, dilatation. A projective transformation is related to mapping, with a three-dimensional form projected onto a two-dimensional surface. In Baroque vaults a far-reaching potential of projective geometry as a form generator may be recognized.

Suggested Citation

  • John Clagett, 2015. "Transformational Geometry and the Central European Baroque Church," Springer Books, in: Kim Williams & Michael J. Ostwald (ed.), Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 231-242, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-00143-2_15
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00143-2_15
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