At the beginning of December, the Winton Gallery opened at the Science Museum in London, a permanent exhibition dedicated to mathematics and its impact on the world. The architect of the project was Zaha Hadid, who studied mathematics before becoming an architect and achieving outstanding success in this field. Recalling her childhood in Iraq, Hadid said that solving problems and writing math formulas came as naturally as drawing and sketching. Hadid passed away in March 2016 and Winton became the first project of her bureau completed after the death of the architect.
Here mathematics is presented not as a set of academic concepts, but as a practice that allows us to change the surrounding space with the help of new technologies. The 1929 Gugnunc airplane was chosen as the central object of the new hall. At one time, the experimental model became a breakthrough in aerodynamics: the new wing shape increased flight safety and influenced the further development of all civil aviation. The architects built the exhibition concept around this breakthrough research. Suspended from the ceiling, the plane is surrounded by three structures, the shape of which follows the turbulence of the air around the airliner. This is, if you like, a visualized formula for calculating air flows. And it’s fantastically beautiful – simply breathtaking! The whole process was recorded on video.
As the creators of the exhibition say, the flying machine under the dome is also the embodiment of the main theme of the gallery, an illustration of the fact that mathematical calculations are useful in everyday life. For example, all passenger aviation is built on them. The remaining elements of the exhibition with stands and screens, in contrast to these visualized air flows, are made in emphatically rectangular shapes. In total, the new hall of the museum contains more than 100 exhibits that clearly answer the question of how mathematics shapes the world around us, affecting everyone: from sellers to fishermen, from aircraft designers to bankers and landscape designers.
