PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS

Comment: The practical use of these formulations is to relate these numerical values and physical relationships –

1. Whole, positive integers from 1-9

2. Plus Phi and phi

3. Generally apparent and usually symmetrical lines of relationship

4. The Fibonacci series in aspects of progression

Comment: In this designer's opinion, you can get almost anywhere from here with ordered proportions using a matrix relating 1-9 to 1-9, keeping it simple. You know, 1:1, 1:2 . . . 9:8, 9:9. This home designer has also leaned into Phi=1.618, phi=0.618, and early entries in the Fibonacci series 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, … Vesica Piscis, logarithmic spirals, dodecahedrons, and the like are fare for others for now.

Comment: Rule of thumb (not this designer's, but he cannot recollect whose sentiment this first was, and he thinks that, though the first guy was talking cathedrals or the like several centuries back, the point is a better reference for home design than for larger constructs): attend mostly to ratios between 4:3 and 7:1 as the range of casually observable size distinction.

Comment: If you're simply in the hunt for numerical relationships, knock yourself out: "music theory online: pitch, temperament, & timbre; lesson 27" by Brian Blood, http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory27.htm, supporting (among others) Julien Guadet's proposition, "Les proportions, c'est l'infini." Eléments et théorie de l'architecture by J. Guadet, Four volumes, first ed. 1901-1904, fourth ed. 1915, Vol. I, p. 138 ff.

Forming home design in a framework of proportion, the author finds that –

1. It's way easier to begin drawing with proportion in mind as a design premise than to attempt its imposition later on.

2. Complexity can overcome order or at least leave the practical realm when proportions proliferate beyond the 9 chosen integers and the 2 chosen irrationals, a/k/a while rigorous in harmonious design does not mean slavish, it also does not mean sloppy or obtuse.

3. Getting obsessive with this stuff can make you crazier. Enjoy.

4. There is a tendency to momentum, a propensity herewith in that proportional opportunities can present themselves sui generis with proportional precedent.

5. There arise practical limits particularly on interiors whereat function can rule.

6. There is no escaping a community's inattention to these matters when a client demands the project must necessarily conform to sometimes hideous design choice points in keeping up with the Joneses, e.g., outsized windows, cascades of gables, unbalanced segments, predetermined clad and trim, etc. [a point which is mirrored in client or community insistence in ignorant or insensitive departure from well-expressed style], a/k/a give it up, the horse won't drink; you hauled the water.

7. Whimsy accounts well now and then. So does artful, or creative; a little divergence is a good thing.

8. Don't ever be telling yourself that those who have gone before you were slacking in architectural design efforts of pattern. Your barren ignorance would be showing. Even jobsite tradesmen not all that long before your time were steeped in knowledge of sacred geometry and Classical style [would that you are doubtful, sit down sometime with the photographed front elevation of a fine example of some well-know residential architectural style of, say, the late 19th century, and layout that elevation using a basic knowledge of harmonious design and the parts fit over and over and over again], those designers and builders being at the tail end of millennia of practice, practice, practice and respect, respect, respect for the craft.

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