Page 70 - Vertical City
P. 70
70 The vertical city
The orders of magnitude
The first observation concerns the orders of magnitude
and the proportions.
The tower is seen at great distance, but is also
experienced near at hand. It is thus necessary, just as
the great historical buildings such as the Taj Mahal, our
Gothic cathedrals or the large Chinese or Japanese
pagodas, that its design is both significant from a great
distance from which it can be seen and in its immediate
proximity where daily life is lived.
This brings us to the succession of the orders of
magnitude.
The perceptible field of vision is limited by seven
orders of magnitude, each subdivided into seven parts,
as rediscovered by van der Laan (see footnote n°23),
just as the perceptible audio fields is limited by seven
octaves of the piano forte and each octave is composed
of seven notes 3.
There is nothing artificial about this succession. It is
the result of the art of construction, the physical and
cultural characteristics of the site and ergonomics.
The art of construction, attention to manners and
details of constructions naturally engender a succession
of orders of magnitude that is simpler to express than
to conceal.
3 The pocket book by Jacques SIROUL, La musique du son, Brussels.
L’Académie en poche, 2013 explains this with elegance.
