Sacred Geometry in Interior Design: Spirals

Sacred geometry connects everything in nature, when used in design, will radiate healing energy and will harmonize anything that stands near or in the space.I had the opportunity to be back in my birthplace of New York for work and was able to spend quality time in some amazing museums.

I went to Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum, a structure I studied in design school many years ago. I was always fascinated by his work and loved his principles of organic architecture. While in the building, I couldn’t help but be taken in by all the spiral energy. I even had a meditation earlier that morning where my body started swirling in a spiral, it was a similar feeling as entered the building. This was not my first visit as I had been before, but I really noticed the spirals this time around.

There have been many great minds to understand spiral shapes in nature, Fibonacci, was one of the most famous mathematicians in the Middle Ages who utilized the concept of the logarithmic spiral. He also laid the groundwork for our modern-day mathematical understanding of certain shapes in nature, including Nautilus shells. I couldn’t help but think of the similarities of the nautilus shell while touring the Guggenheim
 

The Nautilus shell is a live organism and is one of the oldest creatures known to survive in the earth's oceans. As the nautilus grows, it does so in direct proportion to its needs and with geometric precision. It is a symbol of nature's grace in growth, expansion, and renewal. 

As the nautilus grows, it does so in direct proportion to its needs and with geometric precision.  The Nautilus shell’s symbolism tells us that we must never continue growing and the concepts of nature, therefore making it sacred geometry.

As I walked through this elemental design, I felt as if I was in a “live cohesive organism, where the building’s design was related to the whole”. This has always been Wrights’ philosophy and is essential to the experience of the Guggenheim. Wright has based his design on many spirals, including: the idea of a spiral- ramped building topped by a large skylight, he planned a continuous ramp curling around a great central space.

The structure makes you feel like you are experiencing the entire whole no matter where you stood in the gallery.  This concept was Wright’s idea that the building is about “movement through space as much as it is about space itself.” Nature was always Wright’s most inspirational concept in his work, he advised students to “study nature, love nature, stay close to nature as it will never fail you.”

For Wright, geometry was the basic building block of nature. Geometric forms also held symbolic significance, his view on circles were a symbol of infinity, another sacred geometry symbol.

Wright believed that geometry had cosmic meaning and that its use as the means of ordering design connected man to the cosmos.

In this view, “architecture could provide a means of harmony between the individual, society, and the universe.”

His view on organic architecture is that the building should develop out of its natural surroundings, this structure is definitely a classic.