Applications of Mathematics to Architecture

Dear Colleagues,

A new era of adaptive design has opened up, with a recently-developed mathematical framework now being justified by neuroscience experiments. Combining tools coming from biophilia, design patterns, and fractals, new buildings and spaces can be shaped to a create healing environments. The same rules can be used to humanize and renovate older structures when their time comes for periodic repair and upgrade. Architecture and mathematics have an ancient and intimate relationship. Mathematics has provided not only the technical methods for design and construction, but also a deeper understanding of the nature of habitat structure itself. In particular, the elusive concept of “beauty” is best understood from a mathematical approach. What are the most recent contributions of mathematics to architecture? How can they be further developed and applied to contemporary challenges? We will focus on network science, topology, fractals, group theory, and related developments. This discipline combines the results of Christopher Alexander with those of many other researchers who identified the necessary qualities for structures to have a positive emotional feedback on people. The design toolkit also includes most classical and traditional architectures from all over the world. By extending those tried-and-tested design toolkits into new territories, the mathematical toolkit empowers innovative practitioners to create never-before-seen buildings. Importantly, new designs, if they follow the new guidelines, will share the same high degree of adaptivity as the best-loved heritage buildings. We will not be as interested in how new developments in mathematics make more exuberant and imaginative art forms possible—for example, computer-generated splines and the like—but rather what these developments tell us about the adaptive nature of habitat in today’s context. We will also be interested in the potential crossover applications of these insights to other disciplines, including biology, physics, and philosophy.

Prof. Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros
Dr. Michael W. Mehaffy
Guest Editors

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