8. Palladio's Villas


There is evidence that the great architect of the Italian Renaissance, Andreas Palladio used the root 3 proportional system in his designs [Wassell 1998]. In the four large corner rooms of Villa Rotunda, each corner room has length and width in the ratio 26 by 15 which according to sequence 8a is an approximation to Ö3. On the other hand, the height is the arithmetical mean of 15 and 26 or 41/2, so that the height to width ratio is 41/2 : 15 = 1.366...» a. Mitrovic [1990] uncovered the fact that the four smaller rectangular rooms of the Villa Rotunda are related to the large corner rooms. Each smaller room has dimension 15 : 11 = 1.3636... » a, another ratio found in sequence 8a.


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