Simona Chiodo

Mathematics and geometry towards ideality in «Domus»’s ideal houses

Between 1942 and 1943 the editor of the journal «Domus» invited the most important Italian architects to design their ideal houses: fifteen projects designed by seventeen architects were published. They are most instructive to try to understand, firstly, what the philosophical notion of ideal means and, secondly, why mathematical and geometric tools are extensively used to work on ideality, namely, to design ideal houses. The first part of the article focuses on the philosophical foundations of ideality and, after an overview of the fifteen projects, on the use of the golden ratio in two particularly meaningful cases. The second part of the article focuses on the cases in which there is a hidden use of the golden ratio, on the use of the modulus and on the use of the number 2.

Assolutizzazione dell’umano e imprigionamento antropomorfico del divino. Neri e il dualismo

Neri’s way of criticizing Banfi’s late philosophical position is most interesting in order to reason on the negative consequences of overcoming the dualistic relationship between the dimension of the ideal and the dimension of the real.

Estetica e conservazione del passato

The article investigates the relationship between aesthetics and the architectural preservation of the past through three issues: the analysis of the ontological status of the object to be preserved, the approaches to it and the taboo of death.

Storia breve della relazione filosofica tra la bellezza e l’esistenza etica e politica degli esseri umani

The article analyzes the relationship between the philosophical notion of beauty and the ethical and political life of human beings through the history of Western philosophy, from Plato to contemporary authors.

Ethical topicality of the ideal beauty

One of the most important reasons why beauty has been, is, and will possibly be exceedingly important for us is ethical at its core: by making us undergo the aesthetic experience of recognizing something ideal into something real, beauty can be the clearest symbol of our possibility, and even hope, of working on an ideal human measure, which means both the development of our identities as human beings and the development of more promising relationships between us, artifacts, and nature.