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 An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

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 ''transla ...

and lecturer. 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 independent school of architecture in the UK and one of the most prestigious and competitive in the world. Its wide-ranging programme ...

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

University of Bath (Virgil, Georgics II) , mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind , established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...

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

Padovan sequence In number theory, the Padovan sequence is the 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 :1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 ...

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 number, ...

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 paramete ...

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

and having properties similar to the

Fibonacci number In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted , form a integer sequence, sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors start ...

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 sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0, where the Greek letter phi ( ...

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 architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...

, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the Dutch art and architectural movement

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a bod ...

References

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