Golden Ratio In Art And Architecture

Awards for Petersburgers Defy Expectations

The 12 most outstanding St. Petersburg residents were selected Sunday night on the stage of the city’s Mikhailovsky Theater.

The official awards ceremony was preceded by two months of voting on the Internet for St. Petersburg inhabitants who have made a breakthrough in ten categories: Theater, art, literature, film, music, business, social sciences, media, sport and fashion/lifestyle. The list of 50 nominees was compiled by Sobaka.ru magazine and a panel of experts, including city officials, business, art and sport representatives. This year was the sixth time the annual awards ceremony has been held.

Voting stopped on Sunday evening, as St. Petersburg’s beau monde and celebrities arrived at the Mikhailovsky Theater. Crowds gathered nearby in the hope of seeing famous Petersburg residents arrive and walk down the red carpet.

The welcome part of the ceremony was outdoors. After lengthy photo sessions and interviews, guests finally moved through to the theater itself to hear the results of the voting, presented by showman Mikhail Shats and 100 TV channel moderator Dasha Alexandrova, who together with her co-anchor Alexander Malich was victorious in the Media category, defeating popular showman Ivan Urgant, “a person who is loved by everyone,” as it was said at the ceremony.

“It was an award for the whole crew of journalists working in the cultural field,” said Malich.

Many of the results were surprising. Neither opera diva Anna Netrebko nor fellow opera singer Olga Borodina won an award. Instead, the status of most outstanding musician went to Igor Rasteryaev, who gained popularity via the Internet for his song about tractor drivers. The electronic age also encroached on the literature award, which was given to the poet and blogger Alina Kudryashova.

Kristina Berezovskaya and Kira Taimanova were deemed to have made the greatest contribution in the field of social sciences, getting more votes than the mathematician Stanislav Smirnov, who was recently awarded the Fields Medal. The two young women opened the Benois House educational center, where eminent and interesting people are invited to give lectures.

Interesting Facts About the Golden Ratio in Nature, Art, Math and ...

What is the Golden Ratio? If you ask different people you might a find a few that have been exposed to it in their field of work or in their hobby. If you ask an artist, you might be told that the golden ratio is a method of geometrical use of space in a painting. A biologist will explain how the golden ratio is found in the beauty of nature. A mathematician can provide solutions ranging from simple algebraic and geometric problems to more advanced problems in number theory. A medical doctor will share with you how the golden ratio is found in human body’s anatomy. What is truly amazing is that all these explanations, and many others, for the golden ratio are all correct!

In fact, the ancient Greeks saw this ratio as being so special they gave it its own name and they called it Phi (Greek symbol:φ). The same name still used today. The mathematical value is approximately 1.618….

The Greeks used this ratio to construct proportional rectangles which they believed as being the “most beautiful rectangles” These rectangles have their sides formed using this ratio. See figure below: (With figure "b" just a 90 degree rotation of the smaller rectangle to the left in figure "a".

Figure #1 Credit Reference #1

If you insert rectangle (b) into rectangle (a), the resulting space will be a square of sides “y.”

Figure #2 Credit Reference #1

As shown in the figure above, this process can be repeated over and over again resulting in smaller and smaller rectangles. This spiraling effect is what makes these rectangles so unique and the reason the Greeks saw this ratio as being so important. Let us explore a few examples is architecture:

The Golden Ratio in Architecture

1) The Great Pyramid of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza in 4700 B.C. with proportions according to a "sacred ratio."

 Picture #1, Credit Reference #2

In above figure, “h” is the height of the pyramid, “b” is half the length of the base, and “a” is the height of a triangular face. The ancient Egyptians constructed the Great Pyramids in such a way that the ratio (b : h : a) is approximately equal to (1 : √φ : φ).

2) Parthenon

The Greek sculptor Phidias sculpted many things including the bands of sculpture that run above the columns of the Parthenon.

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