 |
| Golden Spiral Derivation |
 |
| Fibonacci Squares in Golden Rectangle |
2
Emeriti Insight: "Man is not the measure of all things, he just measures things." (Anonymous Emeriti)
The Emeriti were
students of Greek and Roman architecture and were particularly interested the
economics of early building and design.
It was Vitruvius, the Roman architect in the 1st Century BCE,
who codified the practice of building by laying out principles of design and
construction in his Ten Books on Architecture.
The books were aimed at educating the emperor about how to understand
architecture with regard to utility, stability, durability, and beauty (The
book was actually a clever marketing scheme to convince the emperor to hire
Vitruvius for a big job, and it worked.
It was billed as “overhead.”). Vitruvius was a hero to the Emeriti because he received a pension from
Augustus (by way of his sister Octavia), allowing Vitruvius to enjoy financial
independence in his later years.
In the
15th Century, the Emeriti frequently associated with Leon Battista
Alberti (1404-72) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), both of whom read Emeriti
copies of Vitruvius’ Ten Books on
Architecture, during wine and cheese parties. Alberti was an “author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath," so like Copernicus, he had much in common with his Emeriti colleagues. In
1452, he published his famous book, De re aedificatoria, (On the Art of Building), which was
heavily influenced by Vitruvius (It even had 10 chapters--remember, in the arts, plagiarism is merely "Reiterative Science").
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), a pivotal Venetian architect
published his book, I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, (Four Books on Architecture) in 1570. His influence would last for centuries and
the lessons of his book can be seen in Jefferson’s Monticello and even in the
Nova Scotia Legislative Building, built in 1819 (Harry Jost, take notice).
The Emeriti encouraged Alberti, da Vinci, and Palladio to
study Fibonacci’s 1202 book, Liber Abaci, which provided a more lucrative fee structure than the older Greek
architects’ standard Φ structure of 1.618% of the construction costs. (The Greek architects barely covered overhead
expenses using that fee standard). The
Fibonacci squares derived from the Spiral progression of the Golden Rectangle square
dimensions, gave rise to the modern architectural fee structure; the series includes the numbers 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 or 3%-21%, depending on the nature
of the project.
Sources: Emeritipedia, Wikipedia, and One Book on Architecture, EPI ©1961
Brotherhood of the Emeriti ©2013
