GoGeometry York Minster Cathedral: Chapter House Ceiling and Golden Rectangles

Successive Golden Rectangles dividing a Golden Rectangle into squares.

York Minster Cathedral: Chapter House Ceiling and Golden Rectangles

 

York Minster
York Minster is a cathedral in York, England and is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The minster is the seat of the Archbishop of York, the second-highest office of the Church of England and is the cathedral for the Diocese of York; it is run by a dean and chapter under the Dean of York.

The minster has a very wide Decorated Gothic nave and chapter house, a Perpendicular Gothic choir and east end and Early English north and south transepts.

The style of the chapter house is of the early Decorated Period where geometric patterns were used in the tracery of the windows, which were wider than those of early styles. The chapter house is octagonal, as is the case in many cathedrals, but is notable in that it has no central column supporting the roof. Source: Wikipedia, York Minster.

Photo credit: David Stephenson

Golden rectangle
A golden rectangle is a rectangle whose side lengths are in the golden ratio, one-to-phi, that is, approximately 1:1.618. A distinctive feature of this shape is that when a square section is removed, the remainder is another golden rectangle, that is, with the same proportions as the first. Square removal can be repeated infinitely, which leads to an approximation of the golden or Fibonacci spiral.

Droste Effect
The Droste effect is a specific kind of recursive picture, one that in heraldry is termed mise en abyme. An image exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration geometrically reduces the picture's size. It is a visual example of a strange loop, a self-referential system of instancing which is the cornerstone of fractal geometry. Source: Wikipedia, Droste Effect.

Home | Sitemap | Search | Geometry | Geometric Art | Golden Rectangles | Sacred Geometry | Cathedrals | Email | Post a comment