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{{Short description|Book about the various forms of pasta}}{{Infobox book
| image             = Pasta by Design cover.jpg
| author            = George L. Legendre
| isbn              = 978-0-500-51580-8
| pub_date          = November 2011
| language          = English
| publisher         = Thames & Hudson
| illustrator       = Photography by Stefano Graziani
}}
'''''Pasta by Design''''' is a book by George L. Legendre, with a foreword by Paola Antonelli, and photography by Stefano Graziani. It is based on an idea by Marco Guarnieri.

==Overview== 
''Pasta by Design'' spans the fields of architecture, food, and popular science . The book features 92 pasta shapes, each depicted by a photograph, a mathematical equation, a 3D visual, and a short paragraph on geographic provenance and cooking etiquette.<ref>[https://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-trigonometry-of-tortellini/ Anne Kingston ''The Trigonometry of Tortellini''] in Maclean's 2011</ref> It was first published in 2011 by Thames & Hudson, while a German translation was published in 2012 by Springer Verlag.

==Taxonomy==
''Pasta by Design'' is primarily a work of [[Taxonomy|taxonomy]], or classification. The critical inventory of shapes recalls the compilations of building-related knowledge known in the nineteenth century as architectural [[Philosophy:Treatise|treatise]]s, in which the source material was systematically drawn and formatted as a catalogue. To organise and classify the large variety of pasta shapes, the book employed principles of [[Biology:Phylogenetics|phylogenetics]]. The first application of phylogenetics to architectural criticism appeared in ''Phylogenesis: FOA’s Ark'' (2003), an architectural monograph by Foreign Office Architects,<ref>FOA’s Ark by Foreign Office Architects a Monograph by Actar Barcelona (2003)</ref> the first such publication to catalogue projects exclusively by ''design property'', instead of the commonly used markers of programme, location, and client. ''Pasta by Design'' opens with a phylogenetic chart  and uses it to classify 92 pasta shapes. Unlike ''FOA’s Ark'' its criteria of classification are couched in [[Analytic geometry|analytic mathematics]].<ref name="auto">[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228342-400-spaghetti-functions-the-mathematics-of-pasta-shapes/ Richard Webb ''Spaghetti Functions''] in  New Scientist 2011</ref>

== Morphology==
The organizing principle of classification is the [[Biology:Morphology|morphology]] of each pasta shape, reduced to its elemental characteristics and expressed by simple mathematical relationships.<ref name="auto"/> Shapes which may look dissimilar at first glance, such as Sagne Incannulate and Cappelletti, may still be described with the same mathematical relationships and hence may turn out to be more closely related than is immediately apparent.<ref name="auto"/> Technically, each shape is depicted by three parametric equations of two mathematical functions, [[Sine and cosine|the sine and cosine]] of two angles. Parametric equations can describe any three-dimensional form. The mathematics of the book are neither exclusive to the modelling of pasta, nor innovative in a technical sense.

==Design, science, and culture== 
''Pasta by Design'' reflects the recent anointment of pasta as the subject of theoretical <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.geometryofpasta.com/|title=The Geometry Of Pasta - Official Pasta, Sauces and Recipes|website=Geometry Of Pasta}}</ref>  and historical <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255227/encyclopedia-of-pasta|title=Encyclopedia of Pasta|first=Oretta Zanini De|last=Vita|date=October 30, 2009|via=www.ucpress.edu}}</ref> investigations, its embrace by the public as both foodstuff and design icon, and the prominence of food in society and culture at large.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/science/pasta-inspires-scientists-to-use-their-noodle.html Kenneth Chang ''Pasta Graduates from Alphabet Soup to Advanced Geometry''] in {{wipe|The New York Times}}</ref> It is also indicative of a broader, post-millennium cultural trend summarised by design curator Paola Antonelli in those words: ''In our contemporary world (...) where programmers talk about the beauty of code and architects and designers tinker with algorithms and software to achieve organic formal and structural behaviours, seeing mathematics in fusilli makes perfect sense''.<ref>Paola Antonelli, Finish Your Design, Darling Foreword Pasta by Design 2011</ref> The application of geometry and phylogenetics to design and illustration is symptomatic of the wholesale identification of many creatives with the ambitions of mathematicians, biologists and scientists at large. This cultural trend is in evidence in architecture’s decade-long pursuit of ''morphogenetics'', the mathematical and biomorphic modelling of form.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.achimmenges.net/?p=1588|title=Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design &#124; achimmenges.net}}</ref> In the design arts, it is the subject of MoMA’s ''Design and the Elastic Mind'' (2008), a curatorial exploration of the ''designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores''.<ref>[https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/58 Design and the Elastic Mind ] Curated by Paola Antonelli Feb 24–May 12, 2008 Museum of Modern Art NYC</ref> In the field of cookery, it is found (among other places) in Nathan Myhrvold's ''Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking'' (2011) <ref>The Cooking Lab; Spi Har/Pa edition (March 14, 2011)</ref> and the rise of [[Engineering:Molecular gastronomy|molecular gastronomy]].

==References==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Mathematics books]]

{{Sourceattribution|Pasta by Design}}