Vitruvian Man vs. Le Modulor

 

THE MODULOR

The

Modulor

anthropometric proportions

is

scale

devised

by

an of the

Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier (1887 –1965). It was developed as a visual

bridge

incompatible

between

two

scales,

the

imperial and the metric system. It is based on the height of a man with his arm raised. The graphic representation of the Modulor, a stylized human figure with one arm raised, stands next to two vertical measurements, a red series based on the figure's navel height (1.08 m in the original version, 1.13 m in the revised version) then segmented according to Phi, and a blue series based on the figure's entire height, double the navel height (2.16 m in the original version, 2.26 m 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 VITRUVIAN MAN

The Vitruvian Man is a drawing made by the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci around 1490. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the Roman architect Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in ink on paper, depicts a man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions

or,

less

often,

Proportions of Man. It is kept in the Gabinetto dei disegni e stampe of the Gallerie dell'Accademia, in Venice, Italy, under reference 228. Like most works on paper, it is displayed to the public only occasionally, so it is not part of the normal exhibition of the museum. This image demonstrates the blend of mathematics and art during the Renaissance and demonstrates Leonardo's deep understanding of proportion. In addition, this picture represents a cornerstone of Leonardo's Leo nardo's attempts to relate man to nature. Encyclopædia Britannica online states, "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical

 

drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe."

REFLECTION

I think that size, scale, and proportion are where a good architect makes their living. There are all sorts of devices that have been developed to help designers determine how ho w best to guide them in their creations; c reations; and the Modulor and the Vitruvian Man are the two best examples of it. These two are well-known and contributed a lot in the field of Architecture and both of them focused on making visual scales and how it can be the basis of almost every habitable structure that will ever be made. As both of the Vitruvian Man and Modular seem to have the same use as an anthropometric scale but the truth is both of them are different in many ways. The Vitruvian Man is based on the correlations of the human body proportions with geometry. It was made because Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion and should be one of the bases for architecture. The drawing itself is often used as an implied symbol of the essential symmetry of the human body. On the other hand, Le Modulor is developed to depict as a visual bridge between two incompatible scales, the imperial and the metric system. This system is

 

based on a number of variables including: human measurements, the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio. These two may be different but it was a very helpful innovation made by two great artists to achieve the three qualities a structure must exhibit  – that is stability, utility, and beauty. These are sometimes termed the Vitruvian virtues or the Vitruvian Triad. Achieving these virtues is essential and with the help of these said systems, the quality of being useful of a structure will be attainable without compromising its strength and aesthetic quality.