The Octagon on the Houses of Orson Fowler

• Type: Summary of Presentation in an International Conference
• Date: 2010-06

Authors

Eliseu Gonçalves (Author) FAUP

Conference proceedings International

Title: NEXUS 2010 RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE & MATHEMATICS

The Octagon on the Houses of Orson Fowler

Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto, 12 a 15 de Junho

Scientific classification

FOS: Humanities > Arts

CORDIS: Technological sciences > Architecture

Other information

Abstract (EN): The text aims to reflect on the use of radial geometry as a panoptical tool placed at the service of an anonymous architecture, bearer of an eminently social and political objectivity, but clearly supported by reason of form. The theme remits directly to the architectural thinking of Orson Squire Fowler (1809-87) formulated on the book A Home for All or The Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building New, Cheap, Convenient, Superior and Adapted to Rich and Poor (1848). The work constitutes a manual of practical construction, whose influence and popularity shall be tested through the numerous re-editions occurred during the second half of the XIX century which resulted in a single legacy of houses with a octagonal matrices still visible today, mainly on the East side of the United States. The success of the “octagonal house” is due to the hybridism of a speech that, oscillating between the scientific and the empiric, explicit of an analytical and operative rationality, which was capable of being illustrated when confronted with the weak reality of the Eight hundred. Even though the use of the octagonal plan was of historical knowledge, the model proposed by Fowler is elaborated outside of the tradition that elects geometry as instrument of approach to the symbolic or the control of certain spatial effects. The universe in which Fowler moves is more prosaic and pragmatic. His scholarship resides fundamentally on an eclectic self-taught that allows, through logical-deductive thinking stimulated by Frenology to synthesize and systematize some problems associated with conception, production and for the use of builds within a socio-economic context of the age.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific