Design Approach, Part 3 - Ratios
Scale and proportion refer to ratios and are often used interchangeably, although they mean different things. A Building's proportions may be quite pleasing, but its scale might be at the same time imposing or even disturbing. Proportion is always an abstraction: the building's length as compared to its height, or the amount of window and door area to the remainder of solid wall on a building's façade. Scale is most typically about how what we are seeing relates to us. A room may be beautifully proportioned in the abstract, but the person occupying it may feel dwarfed and insignificant this is a problem of scale. It is the marriage of beautiful proportions and human scale that can make a building sing.
|