Herzog & de Meuron

I've mentioned these guys before, but having recently visited the Allianz Arena, home of Bayern München, and TSV 1860 München, I was blown away by the architecture and design of this stadium. Finished in 2005, the stadium is sublime in its originality and style; the ETFE-foil air panels create an incredible visual impact.  Inflated with dry air they are both matte and translucent depending on how close you are to them, and change colour depending on which team is playing.  Beyond the beautiful symmetry of the stadium itself, even the seats have the 'bubble' style of the exterior.  So impressive is it that the Meadowlands Stadium, the (soon to open) home of the New York Jets and Giants, is using the same light technology.  
Closer to home, the architecture firm is also responsible for the transformation of the Bankside Powerstation into our favourite gallery, The Tate Modern, London, whilst even further afield, the incredible 110,000 tonnes of steel, meshed and fused together, created Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium and is an another example of their genius.  Notably, the idea for this 'nest-scheme' evolved from Chinese ceramics, truly grounding the design in its surroundings.
From the Prada building in Tokyo, to 1111 Lincoln Road car park in Miami, Herzog & de Meuron have come up with some breathtaking architectural masterpieces.
Ada Louise Huxtable commented on the approach of the firm as refining "the traditions of modernism to elemental simplicity, while transforming materials and surfaces through the exploration of new treatments and techniques." Jacques Herzog himself bluntly points out the power of this approach, "A building is a building. It cannot be read like a book; it doesn't have any credits, subtitles or labels like picture in a gallery. In that sense, we are absolutely anti-representational. The strength of our buildings is the immediate, visceral impact they have on a visitor."  
Based on my visit to the Allianz Arena, I'd say they were bang on the mark for 'immediate, visceral impact.'

Phi and the Golden Ratio

φ

It sounds like it might be Roald Dahl's unreleased sequel to James and the Giant Peach, but it's not.
Is it the answer to our aesthetic dreams?  Well maybe, but whatever it is, this number has fascinated mathematicians, architects and artists for millenia now, so it must mean something right?
I don't really get maths but this has something to do with the proportions of two quantities:

"two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to (=) the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one"

Ok, so I don't get it but it's interesting because it's eveywhere.  Not only does it seem to be part of the design of nature, but it's consciously or unconsciously shaped many of the greatest pieces of art and architecture around us.  Some dimensions of the Acropolis, the Pantheon, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Great Mosque of Kairouan have it, Salvador Dali used it in his  'Sacrament of the Last Supper'.  Da Vinci's illustrations in De Divina Proportione and The Vitruvian man exhibit it, and it is expressed in the structure of branches, the stems of plants and even the veins in their leaves.

So I wonder, is it in the design of your iPod?

Remember it when you're designing your next building, painting your next painting or measuring your next garment...does it look better now?

φ = 1.6180339887...