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In this presentation architect Steve Bass offers a view of the proportional idea based in the ancient philosophical systems of Pythagoras, Plato and later Neo-Platonists. In these systems number and geometry, the substance of proportion, are endowed with qualitative, harmonic, life-like properties. These ideas are linked to the numerical and geometrical methods used to describe the elements of classical architecture in reference literature such as Vitruvius, Vignola and Palladio. A central theme is the philosophical nature of beauty as a form of the good, beauty’s relation to proportion and to the idea of vitalization of matter in classical art. Such a view of beauty not only fully justifies the study of the classical today but could provide a possible pathway out of the alienation, anxiety and intentional ugliness of modernism.
