Fractal Dimensions in Architecture: Measuring the Characteristic Complexity of Buildings

Abstract

In architectural research, debates about the development, function, or appropriateness of building forms have traditionally been dominated by qualitative approaches. These have been common in the past because the full geometric complexity of a building has proven difficult to encapsulate in any single measurement system. Even simple buildings may be made up of many thousands of separate changes in geometry, which combine together across multiple scales to create a habitable or functional structure. However, since the 1990s architectural scholars have begun to adopt one particular method for mathematically examin