Architectural Histories, the open access journal of the European Architectural History Network, has launched a new special collection.

Objects of Belief:  Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture, co-edited by Matthew A. Cohen and Maarten Delbeke.

Prior to the advent of modern structural engineering, architects and builders considered proportional systems to be necessary tools for determining key dimensions of their works in terms of local units of measure. They also believed that proportional systems conferred upon their works a general condition of order that was integral to their notions of structural stability and beauty. As the conference devoted to this subject, held in Milan in 1951, evidenced, since the Middle Ages the phenomenon of proportional systems transformed and continued in various capacities as a complex framework of belief. On the sixtieth anniversary of that conference, in 2011 a conference at the University of Leiden looked anew at the history of proportional systems, and has in turn led to this special collection.

The following papers explore proportional systems as design methods and modes of belief since Antiquity; current scholarly assumptions in light of the historiography of proportion; and the buildings themselves, using new tools and methods that increasingly replace preconception with precision.

  • Introduction: Two Kinds of Proportion: Matthew Cohen
  • Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture: A Conversation with James S. Ackerman: Matthew Cohen
  • Canons of Proportion and the Laws of Nature: Observations on a Permanent and Unresolved Conflict: Mario Curti
  • Decoding the Pantheon Columns: Gerd Grasshoff, Christian Berndt
  • 1, 2, 3, 6: Early Gothic Architecture and Perfect Numbers: Elizabeth den Hartog
  • Plotting Gothic. A Paradox: Stephen Murray
  • Divining Proportions in the Information Age: Andrew Tallon
  • Dynamic Unfolding and the Conventions of Procedure: Geometric Proportioning Strategies in Gothic Architectural Design: Robert Bork
  • To Build Proportions in Time, or Tie Knots in Space? A Reassessment of the Renaissance Turn in Architectural Proportions: Marvin Trachtenberg 
  • Philibert Delorme's Divine Proportions and the Composition of the Premier Tome de l'Architecture: Sara Galletti
  • Early Modern Netherlandish Artists on Proportion in Architecture, or 'de questien der Simmetrien met redene der Geometrien': Krista De Jonge
  • Proportional Design Systems in Seventeenth-Century Holland: Konrad Ottenheym
  • Were Early Modern Architects Neoplatonists? The Case of François Blondel: Anthony Gerbino
  • The Composto Ordinato of Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana: Proportion or Anthropomorphy?: Caroline van Eck
  • Conclusion: Ten Principles for the Study of Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture: Matthew Cohen