This is a read-only archive of the inkscapeforum.com site. You can search for info here or post new questions and comments at Was skipping through images of it when realised that a small (c) mark was at the bottom.
What in the world.
Let's see what that FLC is about:
Copyright: ADAGP – FLC
The Fondation Le Corbusier, sole legatee of Le Corbusier, is entitled to the moral rights and patrimonial rights attached to Le Corbusier's entire oeuvre. Consequently, prior to the reproduction of any buildings, works in the plastic arts, furniture and texts, permission must be sought from the Fondation Le Corbusier and the ADAGP (Société des auteurs dans les arts graphiques et plastiques) to whom the Foundation has entrusted the management of its copyrights. Any reproduction of any document must necessarily be accompanied by the reference © FLC-ADAGP.
For further information :
http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/corbuweb/morpheus.aspx?sysId=58&sysLanguage=en-en&sysParentId=58&sysParentName=Copyright&clearQuery=1
So basically you cannot copy the Modulor 2 depicted above, only study it and accept the perfection you are never allowed to use.
Ok, but maybe there is an idea behind, that could be implemented, making something open to the public?
Since it is an iconic drawing, I would draw at least something with a similar logic.
Let's see what the description at the FLC site can offer:
Le Modulor, Not located, 1945
It was in 1945 that Le Corbusier finally closed the researches on proportion that he had conducted for twenty years, and which had won for him, ton years previously, the degree of Dr. h.c. in philosophy and mathematics of the University of Zurich.
Those researches were brought to an end in view of the immediate task to be undertaken, one national as well as universal. Throughout the world, people must build, manufacture and prefabricate; products will travel from province to province, from country to country, from continent to continent. A common measure must be discovered !
Various measures are now in use :
The inch and foot by the British (it kept their architecture related to human proportions in spite of the machine age). The meter, derived from the meridian of the globe, is an artificial and arbitrary measure that has nothing to do with human proportions and which, as a result, has led to a certain disintegration in the architecture of those countries which used it.
In view of the immense task of manufacture and prefabrication to be completed, a unified scale of measurement based on the human body had to be created, a highly significant mathematical expression capable of giving innumerable combinations that are really satisfactory and above all harmonious.
After the defeat, a committee to study the means of prefabrication (AFNOR) was formed in France. Le Corbusier was not invited to join the committee. After years of work this committee arrived at the result of a simple arithmetical standardization (in progressions from 2 to 2 or from 10 to 10 cm). Such a decision can only be arbitrary and a limitation; in fact we do not find any such precarious law in nature.
Quite on the contrary, nature offers us mathematical proportions of an abundant richness in ail her phenomena. For a year now Le Corbusier has been making all his architectural drawings with the “Modulor” he created. The engineers and architects of his offices use it every day to great advantage.
Professor Einstein (in Princeton, New York) expressed the following opinion with regard to Le Corbusier's invention : “It is a language of proportions which makes it difficult to do things badly, but easy to do them well”. This is a patented invention.
http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/corbuweb/morpheus.aspx?sysId=13&IrisObjectId=7837&sysLanguage=en-en&itemPos=82&itemSort=en-en_sort_string1%20&itemCount=215&sysParentName=&sysParentId=65
Now, let's see what wikipedia can add:
History
Le Corbusier developed the Modulor in the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, the work of Leone Battista Alberti, and other attempts to discover mathematical proportions in the human body and then to use that knowledge to improve both the appearance and function of architecture. The system is based on human measurements, the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio. Le Corbusier described it as a "range of harmonious measurements to suit the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and to mechanical things."
With the Modulor, Le Corbusier sought to introduce a scale of visual measures that would unite two virtually incompatible systems: the Anglo Saxon foot and inch and the French Metric system. Whilst he was intrigued by ancient civilisations who used measuring systems linked to the human body: elbow (cubit), finger (digit), thumb (inch) etc., he was troubled by the metre as a measure that was a forty-millionth part of the meridian of the earth.
In 1943, in response to the French National Organisation for Standardisation's (AFNOR) requirement for standardising all the objects involved in the construction process, Le Corbusier asked an apprentice to consider a scale based upon a man with his arm raised to 2.20m in height. The result, in August 1943 was the first graphical representation of the derivation of the scale. This was refined after a visit to the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences in Sorbonne on 7 February 1945 which resulted in the inclusion of a golden section into the representation.
Whilst initially the Modulor Man's height was based on a French man's height of 1.75 metres (5.7 ft) it was changed to 1.83 m in 1946 because "in English detective novels, the good-looking men, such as policemen, are always six feet tall!" The dimensions were refined to give round numbers and the overall height of the raised arm was set at 2.262m.
...
Graphic representation[edit]
The graphic representation of the Modulor, a stylised human figure with one arm raised, stands next to two vertical measurements, a red series based on the figure's navel height (1.08m in the original version, 1.13m in the revised version) then segmented according to Phi, and a blue series based on the figure's entire height, double the navel height (2.16m in the original version, 2.26m in the revised), segmented similarly. A spiral, graphically developed between the red and blue segments, seems to mimic the volume of the human figure.
The Modulor 2 was drawn by André Maissonier and Justino Serralta.
So much for the words, let's see some sketches!
It seems that the wikipedia quote "A spiral, graphically developed between the red and blue segments, seems to mimic the volume of the human figure." is the alpha and omega of the drawing, while, it has basic problems.
When clicked their spiral description, it comes clear they wanted to use the word conical helix with the equiangular spiral.
http://www.mathematische-basteleien.de/spiral.htm#Three-dimensional%20Spirals
On the modulor image, the outer left segments go from middle of the right sections, which is, not fitting to the clean mathematical concept of the helix in my opinion, as, they are making up another helix, not in a pi phase.
Also those segments are looking like circular archs, and not alterations of sine waves.
In this topic I would like to play around with the concept of drawing an accurate proportional scale based on the golden ratio.
Not that it would be universal to each human body, I'm interested in only the mathematical-geometrical part.
There are at least three parts that would need to be answered:
- How to accurately construct golden ratio with inkscape
-the obvious problems with the circles not being accurate in their segments, and their use in finding exact intersection points.
No gaps, no overlaps, but mathematically correct divisions of the line segments. - Making researches and proving if conical helixes with the equiangular spirals are really looking sine-like at their sideviews,
maybe making some 3D renderings. - Writing the right formula depicting that sideview which can be plotted with extensions.
Any ideas?
