Welcome to the Autumn 2001 issue of the Nexus Network Journal. I want to introduce our readers to the newest feature of our journal, one that is going to make using the journal even more productive: a Search Engine right on our pages. I haven't created a special page for the search engine; it will live on the homepage of the journal, on the index of each individual issue, and on the Research Articles Abstracts page. Readers can now search by proper name or keyword, and can search either the NNJ or the Internet. I am very excited about this. With more than 700 pages and growing, the NNJ is too large to browse efficiently; this takes the place of an index for us. Let me know how you like it!

Another new feature is the Viewpoint column. Leonard K. Eaton opens this issue with Comments on the Nexus 2000 Round Table Discussion. The Viewpoint column is reserved for editorial and opinions that open the way for discussions on architecture and mathematics. The Round Table discussion at Nexus 2000 was found to be a welcome addition to the conference, a forum for the exchange of ideas so vital to an interdisciplinary undertaking like Nexus. I hope we'll have other Viewpoint contributions in the future.

All of us engaged in research work know that there is no end of theories and ideas. What we can hope is that our ideas reproduce and grow and bring about a clearer understanding of the subject. That is certainly the case with Rachel Fletcher's work on Palladio's Villa Emo, presented at the Nexus 2000 conference on architecture and mathematics in Ferrara, Italy. In this new issue of the NNJ, reknowned theorist Lionel March turns his attention to Palladio's work with Palladio's Villa Emo: The Golden Proportion Hypothesis Rebutted. Dr. March draws on the theories of proportion laid out by theorists from antiquity and the Renaissance to formulate an arithmetic analysis of the room dimensions in the villa.

Paul Rosin was also a speaker at Nexus 2000. In this new issue of the NNJ he discusses Rosettes and Other Arrangements of Circles. This is the most technically mathematical of the treatments we have had so far of this subject, previously treated by Kim Williams and Paul Calter. Where my article was mainly a visual introduction, and Prof. Calter's was a practical discussion, Dr. Rosin provides the mathematics behind the popular motif.

In previous discussions on the relationships between architecture, mathematics and music, attention has been focused primarily on proportions. Sweden's Åke Ekwall brings to our attention a lovely visual aspect of this subject: the similarities between the form of volutes in the Ionic order and the design of the volutes in the design of stringed instruments in Violins and Volutes: Visual Parallels between Music and Architecture. You'll find some similarities to Paul Rosin's article discussed above as well.

Michael Leyton is back in this new issue of the NNJ as well, with the second part of his two-part series, Group Theory and Architecture. This installment is entitled Why Symmetry/Asymmetry? and discusses the functional roles of symmetry and asymmetry in architecture. The knowledge of symmetry adds an important tool to the toolkit of the architect, and Dr. Leyton's articles are accessible introductions to the subject.

Even children can become architects, building their own toolkit for architectural design right in their classrooms. Charles Bender shows how in this issue's Didactics feature, Math-Kitecture at PS88. These are very privileged children, having access to not only a great teaching program, but their own computers as well. I hope that one day every child can have access to such tools.

Marcus the Marinite has been busy in his Geometer's Angle. This month he looks at Geometric and Harmonic Means and Progressions that can be used as a basis for space-frames in art. When Marcus couldn't answer some of the questions raised in his research, he called on Stephen R. Wassell, the NNJ's Mathematics Editor, for help. Steve's reply, Arithmetic, Geometric and Harmonic Sequences, appears as an adjunct to this month's Geometer's Angle column.

This past summer saw the fourth annual conference, Bridges 2001: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science. Daniel Daniel of Southwestern University has provided those of us who could not attend with a conference report.

Book reviews in this autumn issue take us far from Western architecture, where there are important lessons to be learned. William D. Sapp reviews Traditions in Architecture: Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania. An archaeologist who works with the Inkas, Prof. Sapp knows all about non-Western architecture: he also presented at Nexus 2000. Mark A. Reynolds (aka Marcus the Marinite) reviews Roger Herz-Fischler's The Shape of the Great Pyramid. Mark himself has been to Egypt to study the Great Pyramid, about which he contributed an article entitled A Comparative Geometric Analysis of the Heights and Bases of the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan to the 1999 NNJ. His review is insightful and thoughtful.

This autumn finds a world full of turmoil. I wish that the Nexus Network Journal and the cooperative spirit that it represents may help the world become a better place. Please e-mail me with questions or comments (but only about architecture and mathematics, not about politics, please).

Kim Williams, Editor-in-Chief

Copyright ©2001 Kim Williams