Mathematics in the Architecture Curriculum

We have worked for many years in Schools of Architecture, and we have come to realize that these schools can play a unique role for mathematics. The experience of teaching mathematics in schools of architecture can help us to travel cultural byways that bridge the gap that separates the humanistic and scientific cultures in a good part of the academic world and that of research. For some years now, the need to bridge this gap has been urgently felt, as has been pointed out in the proceedings of august international conferences. As mathematicians, in considering the technical, cultural and linguistic aspects of mathematics as well as the formation that it provides to our students, and in observing the sensibility for forms that architecture students have always shown, we have seen our own discipline from another point of view. Different viewpoints always provide interesting information! Schools of architecture the world over have different requirements with regards to their students’ formation in mathematics. As far as Europe is concerned, the variegated situation was illustrated in the pages of this journal some years ago (see Orietta Pedemonte, “Mathematics for Architecture: Some European Experiences”, Nexus Network Journal, vol. 3, no.1 (Winter 2001), pp.129-135, http://www.nexusjournal.com/Didactis-Pedemonte-en.html). But all schools of architecture, by their very nature, have a foothold in various fields, dipping into methods and ideas of the humanistic sector as well as the scientific, and reconstituting them as an integral part of the “spirit of the times”, in methods and artifacts that become a virtual home for discussion and forums and constructive comparisons. So we take this occasion of a special issue of the NNJ to open a general forum for discussion of the role and possibilities of teaching Mathematics in Schools of Architecture. The contributions presented here, from a strictly didactic point of view, are aimed at various age groups of students, not only university students. We think that the reflections of teachers that have worked with students of various ages are precious for the development of a curriculum for architecture and mathematics. Some contributions are by teachers of mathematics, who analyze the architecture the architecture-mathematics nexus with a mathematician’s eye; others analyze the topic with the eye of the artist or the architect who adopts and uses mathematics in their compositional and cognitive activities.