SKETCHBOOK2

mindmap

ILLUSION
Optical
Marcel Duchamp, Bridget Riley,

PATTERN
Repeat pattern
Tiles
Print - linocuts
Collage
Mandala
William Morris, M.C Escher, Keith Harring

3D
Abstract structures
Building blocks - lego, kids toys
Balance
Materials
Papercut / Kirigami

NATURE
Geometry in nature eg. leaves
Animals
Anatomy

ARCHITECTURE
Bauhaus
Castles
Urban
Brutalist
Stairs
Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry,

PERSPECTIVE
Vanishing points
Golden ratio

FIGURE
Athletes
Movement

castles

Symmetry is important to fort design for a couple of reasons. Firstly it makes your fort or castle look really good, and it is important to wow your enemy with an impressive and attractive looking building. Secondly it means that you won’t have a fort which contains a weak point – all parts of your fort should be equally difficult to get into. Asymmetric shapes have weak points:

A circular fort also has the advantage that it is convex. A convex shape means that there are no internal angles which are greater than 180 degrees. In the convex shape any two defenders are able to see each other, whereas in the concave shape the defenders could be stood in places where they can’t see each other.

Medieval Castles
According to the thinking so far, castles should all be perfectly round. There are however a few other points to take into consideration, affecting castle design. Later castles had an outer wall (with turrets) and a keep, such as at Harlech Castle.

It is much harder to build a round keep than a square keep, meaning that it was always a trade off between building an ideal shape and having a design which could actually be built. Most castles were still built in a symmetrical design, as it is possible to see from the shapes of these four castles.

There are further disadvantages to building a square or rectangular keep – it is much easier to tunnel underneath. A major consideration in medieval castles is the line of sight for archers who are defending the castle through arrow slits. If you have a flat wall, then there will be areas which your defenders can and can’t reach with their arrows:

If you have multiple arrow slits then you will still have areas which are undefended: If you have a square corner to defend you will again have a region which is undefended: This is why the builders of castles such as Harlech chose to build turrets: Some Tudor castles went even further and added turrets on turrets in order to maximise the area which the defenders could reach. They used maths and in particular, geometry to optimise their defence capabilities.

https://www.mathscareers.org.uk/the-maths-of-castles-and-forts/

why am i interested in castles?

Perhaps part of the reason we love castles is because the human brain loves symmetry, and castles – along with their fortresses – provide the ultimate geometrical symmetry.

The juxtaposition between the castle and its setting is also intriguing. Often set by the waterside, surrounded by a moat or nestled in trees or hillsides, the harshness of the concrete structures in contradiction to the natural wilderness around it presents a liminal environment.

In addition, the castles' histories capture the structures in a moment in time where its aging, often exaggerated by the contrasting age of the environment, present two (or more) time periods at once.