How Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek inspired 2 Hong Kong architects
Wilczek’s book, A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design, argues that beauty is the universe’s organising principle; Napp Studio and Architect’s Wesley Ho and Aron Tsang were captivated
Aron Tsang: “I read it first and introduced it to Wesley. I got it at Eslite in Causeway Bay; I always go into the architecture and design corner, and right next to it is the science corner. The book’s name was very attractive to me – as architects, we’re always asking ourselves: what is beauty and how can we achieve that?
“The first few chapters were easy to understand but then the middle and end were very difficult for me, with a lot of quantum physics. What I initially expected was for it to explain beauty by talking about the golden ratio and nature’s order. But in the first chapter, he talks about geometry and the linkage between the mathematical and physical worlds. The example of music is also very cool; harmony is a mathematical relationship. But the funny thing is: why do we like harmony? Because of the structure of our ears. It explains that beauty has at least some sort of objective formula.”
“One thing I find most interesting is that the symmetry in beauty is not the literal symmetry we see in classical architecture. That kind of symmetry is a lack of information – copying one half to make the other half. In reality, nothing is symmetrical, which relates to how we find beauty in asymmetry. It challenges the way beauty is defined, which can tend to be restrictive.”
AT: “Symmetry is an underlying logic behind everything. As a professional practice, finding the underlying logic of a project is what we do daily.”
