Page 71 - Vertical City
P. 71
ARCHITECTURE OF TOWERS 71
The window is on the scale of a meter. The tree, the
wall of the façade of a habitable space, vertically and
horizontally, is on the scale of the house, the decameter.
The tower is on the scale of the hectometer; it is
part of the landscape, just as the city is at the scale of
the kilometer.
Downwards, the column and the beam are at the
scale of the decimeter, the door and window profiles
at the scale of the centimeter, while the millimeter is
reserved for cracks or splits.
The physical and cultural characteristics engender in
the same way a succession of orders of magnitude.
For example, the first at the scale of the hectome-
ter results, among other things, from the latitude, which
dictates the space between constructions.
Manners of living determine the size of surfaces,
interior and exterior spaces, they are at the scale of the
decameter.
Traditions and cultural habits dictate the design at
the scale of the meter.
Ornamentation and its symbolism are most often
defined at the scale of the decimeter. The everyday
object integrated in the construction is at the scale of
the hand, the centimeter, even the millimeter.
The ergonomics of the objects that surround us and
the cut of our clothing are based on a series of dimen-
sions that are the result of our anthropometric and phy-
siological dimensions 4.
4 Collected in a systematic manner at the end of the 19th century by
German hygienists, they led to the Modulor of Le Corbusier in 1945:
