Richard Padovan (born 1935) is an

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

and

lecturer Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct re ...

. In the 1950s he studied at the

Architectural Association School of Architecture The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, commonly referred to as the AA, is the oldest private school of architecture in the UK. The AA hosts exhibitions, lectures, academic conference, symposia and publications. Histo ...

; he has practised architecture in several European countries, and taught at the

University of Bath The University of Bath is a public research university in Bath, England. Bath received its royal charter in 1966 as Bath University of Technology, along with a number of other institutions following the Robbins Report. Like the University ...

and Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education. He is the namesake of the

Padovan sequence In number theory, the Padovan sequence is the integer sequence, sequence of integers ''P''(''n'') defined. by the initial values P(0) = P(1) = P(2) = 1, and the recurrence relation P(n) = P(n-2)+P(n-3). The first few values of ''P''(''n'') are ...

Van der Laan

Padovan became fascinated with the works of

Hans van der Laan Dom Hans van der Laan (29 December 1904 – 19 August 1991) was a Dutch Benedictine monk and architect. He was a leading figure in the Bossche School. His theories on numerical ratios in architecture, in particular regarding the plastic ratio, ...

after being sent van der Laan's book ''De architectonische ruimte'' to review because of his knowledge of the Dutch language. He visited van der Laan beginning in 1980, and continued to correspond with him afterward. He became the translator of the book into English as ''Architectonic Space: Fifteen Lessons on the Disposition of the Human Habitat'' (1983), and wrote the book ''Dom Hans van der Laan: modern primitive'' (1989) about van der Laan.

Padovan numbers

In his book on van der Laan, Padovan described the

of numbers :1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 16, 21, 28, 37, 49, 65, 86, 114, 151, 200, 265, ... defined by a

recurrence relation In mathematics, a recurrence relation is an equation according to which the nth term of a sequence of numbers is equal to some combination of the previous terms. Often, only k previous terms of the sequence appear in the equation, for a parameter ...

P(n)=P(n-2)+P(n-3)

and having properties similar to the

Fibonacci number In mathematics, the Fibonacci sequence is a Integer sequence, sequence in which each element is the sum of the two elements that precede it. Numbers that are part of the Fibonacci sequence are known as Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted . Many w ...

s. These numbers were named after Padovan by Ian Stewart, despite Padovan's attribution of the sequence to van der Laan.

Other works

Padovan is also the author of the book ''Proportion: science, philosophy, architecture'' (1999) on the mathematics and philosophy of architectural proportion and proportion systems. One of his arguments in the book is that the use of the

golden ratio In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their summation, sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities and with , is in a golden ratio to if \fr ...

in architecture is modern, rather than being used for this purpose by the ancient Greeks. He also wrote ''Towards universality: Le Corbusier, Mies, and De Stijl'' (2002), about the push to remove individuality from architecture through the works of

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...

, and the Dutch art and architectural movement

De Stijl De Stijl (, ; 'The Style') was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 by a group of artists and architects based in Leiden (Theo van Doesburg, Jacobus Oud, J.J.P. Oud), Voorburg (Vilmos Huszár, Jan Wils) and Laren, North Holland, Laren (Piet Mo ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Padovan, Richard 1935 births Living people 20th-century English architects Academics of the University of Bath