Notes
Introduction
1. Hubert Damisch and Stephen Bann, “Hubert Damisch and Stephen Bann: A Conversation,”Oxford Art Journal 28, no. 2 (2005): 159.
2. Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play,” inWriting and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 280.
3. Ibid.
4. Yve-Alain Bois, Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss, and Hubert Damisch, “A Conversation with Hubert Damisch,”October 85 (Summer 1998): 3–4.
5. Ibid., 8.
6. Hubert Damisch,The Origin of Perspective, trans. John Goodman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 446;L’Origine de la perspective, 1987.
7. Hubert Damisch, preface toDe Ledoux à Le Corbusier: Origins et développement de l’architecture autonome, by Emil Kaufmann (Paris: Éditions l’Équerre, 1981), 20. Translated and published in this volume as “Ledoux with Kant.”
8. Damisch,The Origin of Perspective, 446.
Prologue: Noah’s Ark
1. Jacques-François Blondel, “Architecture,” inEncyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 1, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (Paris, 1751), 617.
2. Ibid.
3. “Modern,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 10 (Paris, 1765): 601.
4. Blondel, “Architecture,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1751), 617.
5. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,Les luttes de classes en France, 1848–1850: Le 18 brumaire de Louis Bonaparte, trans. Gérard Cornillet (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1948), 173. Translated from the German by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul asThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1926).
6. Blondel, “Architecture,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1751), 617.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.; emphasis in original.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Leo Strauss,Droit naturel et histoire, trans. Monique Nathan and Eric de Dampierre (Paris: Éditions Plon, 1949). Originally published in English asNatural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
12. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol. 1 (Paris: Q. Morel, 1863), 175. Translated by Henry Van Brunt asDiscourses on Architecture (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1875).
13. Blondel, “Architecture,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1751), 617.
14. “Proportion,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 3 (Paris, 1765), 468.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Daniele Barbaro, in Vitruvius,I dieci libri dell’architettura (Venice, 1556), quoted in Rudolf Wittkower,Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 2nd ed. (London: A. Tiranti, 1952), 64.
18. Plato,Republic, 10.602d.
19. See Pierre-Maxime Schuhl,Platon et l’art de son temps (arts plastiques), 2nd ed. (Paris: F. Alcan, 1952).
20. See Erwin Panofsky,Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
21. Blondel, “Architecture,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1751), 617.
22. “Composition,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 3 (Paris, 1753), 769.
23. “Construction,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 4 (Paris, 1754), 92.
24. Ibid., 4:94.
25. Blondel, “Architecture,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1751), 617.Architectus is from the Greekarkitekton, with the sense of architect, builder, and (more particularly) engineer specializing in naval building. See Aristotle,Metaphysics, 1.1.ii.
26. Abbé Edme-François Mallet, “Arche,” inEncyclopédie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1751), 607.
27. Ibid.
28. Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, trans. John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 153. Originally published asVers une architecture (Paris: Éditions G. Crès, 1923), 75.
29. Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, 156–157;Vers une architecture, 78–79.
30. Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, 158;Vers une architecture, 80.
31. See Roland de Vaux and Bernard Couroyer,La Genèse (Paris: Éditions du cerf, 1952), 57, note b.
32. De Vaux and Couroyer,La Genèse, 58, note c.
33. Le Corbusier, preface toPrécisions sur un État présent de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (Paris: G Crès, 1929), v. Translated by Edith Schreiber Aujame asPrecisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).
34. André Masson, quoted in Manfredo Tafuri,Teoria e storia dell’architettura (Rome: Laterza, 1973), 111. Translated by Giorgio Verrecchia asTheories and History of Architecture (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).
35. See Reyner Banham,Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Oxford: Butterworth Architecture, 1960), 166.
36. See Carmine Benincasa,Architettura come dis-identità: Teoria delle catastrofi e architettura (Bari: Dedalo libri, 1978).
37. Le Corbusier,When Cathedrals Were White: A Journey to the Country of Timid People, trans. Francis E. Hyslop Jr. (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947). Originally published asQuand les cathédrales Étaient blanches (Paris: Éditions Plon, 1937), 3.
38. See Peter Sloterdijk,Im selben Boot: Versuch über die Hyperpolitik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993).
1 Aujourd’hui, l’architecture
1. Le Corbusier,Vers une architecture (Paris: Éditions G. Crès, 1923). Translated by John Goodman asToward an Architecture (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007).
2. See Paul Valéry, “Eupalinos, ou l’architecte” (1923), inŒuvres, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1960). Translated by William McCausland Stewart asEupalinos; or, The Architect (London: Oxford University Press, 1932).
3. G. W. F. Hegel,Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. 2, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 636.
4. Samuel Beckett,Waiting for Godot, act II. [In the English script, Estragon says “Critic!” not “architect.”]
5. René Descartes,Discourse on Method, trans. John Veitch (New York: Cosimo, 2008), 17 [translation modified].
6. Plato,Timaeus, 29a–30b.
7. Plato,Philibus, 55d–56c.
8. Hegel,Aesthetics, 2:624.
9. Claude Lévi-Strauss,Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Schoepf (New York: Basic Books: 1963), 69 [translation modified].
10. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty,L’œil et l’esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 9ff.
11. Johannes Kepler, dedication to the first edition ofMysterium Cosmographicum (Tübingen, 1596), quoted in Werner Heisenberg,The Physicist’s Conception of Nature, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 74.
12. Kepler,Mysterium Cosmographicum, chapter 2, 23; quoted in Heisenberg,The Physicist’s Conception of Nature, 79.
13. Plato,The Sophist, 265c.
14. Philibert de l’Orme,Le Premier tome de l’architecture, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1569), fol. 2v.
15. Kepler,Mysterium Cosmographicum, quoted in Gérard Simon,Kepler: Astronome, astrologue (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 406.
16. Valéry, “Histoire d’Amphion,” inŒuvres, 2:1277–1283.
17. Kepler,Mysterium Cosmographicum, quoted in Simon,Kepler, 406.
18. Valéry, “Eupalinos,” inŒuvres, 2:93.
19. Johannes Kepler,The Harmony of the World, trans. A. M. Duncan, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997), book 4, chapter 1, 304.
20. See Yvon Belaval, “Une drôle de pensée de Leibniz,”Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 70 (October 1958): 754–768.
21. The first edition of Vicenzo Scamozzi’s treatiseDell’idea dell’architettura universale, which was published in Venice in 1615, is located at the turning point between two ages of theory: the Renaissance, which it appears to close, and the classical age, which it opens—the “idea” of an architecture being less important (the term is already to be found in Zuccaro and in Lomazzo) than the assertion of its universality.
22. “The structures are not immutable, either in their number or in their form; it is quite possible that the further development of mathematics will augment the number of fundamental structures by revealing the fecundity of new axioms, or of new combinations of axioms. We may take it for granted that there will be decisive progress in theinventions of structures, to judge by those which have produced the structures presently known. Of course, the latter are by no means completed buildings, and it would be very surprising if the full essence of their principles was already exhausted. Thus with the aid of these indispensable qualifications one can better understand the internal vitality of mathematics, that which gives it both unity and diversity; like a great city whose suburbs never cease to grow in a somewhat chaotic fashion on the surrounding lands, while its center is periodically reconstructed, each time following a clearer plan and a more majestic arrangement, demolishing the old sections with their labyrinthine alleys in order to launch new avenues toward the periphery, always more direct, wider and more convenient.” Nicolas Bourbaki, “The Architecture of Mathematics,” inGreat Currents of Mathematical Thought, ed. François Le Lionnais, vol. 2, Mathematics: Concepts and Development, trans. Charles Pinter and Helen Kline (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 34 [translation modified]. Note the extent to which, thirty years later, Bourbaki’s language shows itself to be dated, and sympathetic, even in its handling of metaphor, to a concept of urbanism that (for now) is no longer accepted.
23. Ferdinand de Saussure,Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1983), 176.
24. Vitruvius,De Architettura, book 2, chapter 8.
25. Maurice Merleau-Ponty,Signs, trans. Ricahrd C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 39 [translation modified].
26. Pierre Francastel, “Note sur l’emploi du mot ‘structure’ en Histoire de l’art,” inSens et usage du terme structure sans les sciences humaines et sociales, ed. Roger Bastide (The Hague: Mouton, 1972).
27. Immanuel Kant,Critique of Judgment, trans. James Creed Meredith, rev. Nicholas Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 151.
28. Saussure,Course in General Linguistics, 122.
29. Ibid., 131.
30. Ibid., 128.
31. “In tota re aedificatoria primarium certe ornamentum in columnis est.” Leon Battista Alberti,De re aedificatoria (Florence, 1486), 6.13.
32. Hegel,Aesthetics, 2:641ff.
33. “Et perpetuam muri partem.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.10.
34. Hegel,Aesthetics, 2:668.
35. Ibid., 2:671.
36. Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, 220.
2 The Column, the Wall
1. See Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens sur l’architecture (Paris: Q. Morel, 1863–1872), 2:13.
2. “The whole matter of building is composed of lineaments and structure.” Leon Battista Alberti,De re aedificatoria (Florence, 1486), 1.1.3. Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor asOn the Art of Building in Ten Books (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 7.
3. See Vitruvius,De architectura, 2.8.
4. See Anthony Blunt,Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 6.
5. See Erik Forsmann,Säule und Ornament: Studien zum Problem des Manierismus in den nordischen Säulenbüchern und Vorlageblättern des 16 und 17 Jahrhunderts (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956), 46.
6. “Render a toutes choses les propres raisons concernantes les matiere.” Leon Battista Alberti,L’architecture et art de bien bastir, trans. Jean Martin (Paris: J. Kerver, 1553), fol. 101.
7. See Rudolf Wittkower, “Alberti’s Approach to Antiquity in Architecture,” inArchitectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London: A. Tiranti, 1952), 33–56.
8. “In tota re aedificatoria primarium certe ornamentum in columnis est.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 6.13.94; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 183. “Tum et tota in re aedificatoria nihil invenes quod opera et impensa et gratia praeferas columnis.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.10.13; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 25.
9. See Marcel Reymond,Brunelleschi et l’architecture de la renaissance italienne au XVième siècle (Paris: H. Laurens, 1912), 6ff.
10. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 7.10.13; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 219.
11. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 10.17.
12. “Quando ipsi ordines columnarum haud aliud sunt quam pluribus in locis perfixus ad apertusque paries.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.10.13.
13. Compare, for example, the classical connection between the façade of Santa Maria Novella and that of San Miniato-al-Monte. See Wittkower,Architectural Principles, 34–37.
14. “Arcuatis imitationibus debentur columnae quadrangulae. Nam in rotundis opus erit mendosum ea re quod capita arcus non ad plenum in solido columnae substitutae assideant.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 7.15.113; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 236.
15. See Wittkower,Architectural Principles, 36.
16. See Guilio-Carlo Argan,Brunelleschi (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1955), 76–77.
17. See Alois Riegl,Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom, ed. Arthur Burda and Max Dvor ˇák (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1908), 44–45; and Rudolf Wittkower, “Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurenziana,”Art Bulletin 16 (1934): 113–218.
18. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,Italian Journey, 1786–1788, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962), 64.
19. “Parietem dicimus omnem structuram quae a solo in altum surrexit ad ferendem onus tectorem.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.2.3–4.
20. An analysis attentive to the vocabulary used by Alberti’s successive translators would illustrate the gradual expansion of the semantic field of the concept “structure” from the fifteenth century on. Jean Martin sticks fairly closely to the Latin terminology, whereas James Leoni (who produced the English translation of 1726) systematically translates the wordstructura as “work,” or more simply as “wall,” reserving the term “structure” for the figure, form, or plan of a building, and even for the building itself (“the whole structure”) or for a certain type of building (e.g., “public structures,” the temple regarded as “the most honorable structure,” etc.).
21. See Paul-Henri Michel,Un idéal humain au XVième siècle: La Pensée de L. B. Alberti (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1930), 98–139.
22. “Edificare, non plasmare.” See Maria-Luisa Gengaro, “L’architettura romana nella interpretazione teorica de Leon-Battista Alberti,”Bollettino del Reale Istitutto di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 9 (1941): 37–42.
23. See Wittkower, “Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurenziana,” 214.
24. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 7.11.
25. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.6; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 69.
26. “Sed corticis infarcinamentorunque inter se ratio pro structurae varietate varia est.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.6.36.
27. “Sunt et inter primarias parietum partes uel in primis praecipuie anguli et insertae conceptaeque seu pilae, seu columnae, seu quid uis istiusmodi: quod qui dem substinendis trabeationibus arcubusque, tectorum illic columnarum sunt loco: quae omnia appellatione ossium ueniunt.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.6.36.
28. “Quae autem inter has primarias partes intercurrunt atque extenduntur, recte complementa nuncupabantur.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.6.36.
29. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.10.
30. Ibid., 3.12.
31. Ibid., 3.8.
32. Ibid., 2.10.
33. “Quin et columnam ipsam diffinisse cum iuvet, fortassis non ineptae esse eam dicam firmam quamdam et perpetuam muri partem excitatam ad perpendiculum ab solo, immo usque ad summum tecti ferendi gratia.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.10; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 25.
34. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.12.
35. Ibid.
36. “Sunt et apertionum stantia hinc atque lic labra: quae angulorum columnarumque insimul natura sapient.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.6.
37. “Nam esse arcum quidem non aliud quam deflexam trabem: et trabem quid aliud quam in transversum positam columnam.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.6; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 69.
38. “Arcum dicimus trabem esse flexam.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.13.
39. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.5.
40. Ibid., 10.17.
41. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 10.16; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 359.
42. “Appingentur praeterea ornamenti gratia atque item utilitatis ad parietem supra coronas primas aliae insuper columnae maximae quadrangulae: quae in substitutas primarias columnas mediis centris acquiescant. Nam confert quidem quod feruata ossium soliditate et aucta operis honestate pondus atque impensa parietis maxima ex parte leuigabitur.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 7.15.114.
43. Philibert de l’Orme,Le Premier tome de l’Architecture, 1.8, quoted in Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens, 1:365.
44. “Ordines ordinibus crebis traductis kapidum nexuris coadjugato.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.11. “De illinendo pariete.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 3.11.61; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 77.
45. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.10; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 25.
46. “Insigne urbis ornamentum extare ubi civium copiam.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 7.1.96.
47. Even before the fifteenth century, as P. H. Michel opportunely reminds us, “grammar” had started to free itself from the logic of extended meaning and to look at the word no longer as the immutable sign of an idea but as a provisional approximation. Alberti himself was extremely interested in the linguistic renaissance distinguished by the names of Lorenzo Vallan Decembrio and others—so much so that he played an active role in it and devoted a treatise to it, now lost. See Michel,Un ideal humain, 150ff.
48. See Leon Battista Alberti,De pictura/On Painting, bilingual Italian/English edition, ed. Martin Kemp, trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Penguin, 1991).
49. See the first plan for San Sebastiano (Mantua, 1460), as reconstructed in Wittkower,Architectural Principles, 52, fig.7.
3 Composing with Painting
1. Leon Battista Alberti,De pictura/Della pittura, bilingual Latin/Italian edition, ed. Cecil Grayson (Rome: Laterza, 1975), 8. Translated by Cecil Grayson and edited by Martin Kemp asDe pictura/On Painting, bilingual Italian/English edition (London: Penguin Classics, 1991), 35.
2. Alberti,De pictura, 2.26; Alberti,On Painting, 61.
3. Alberti,De pictura, 2.26; Alberti,On Painting, 61.
4. “In tota re aedificatoria primarium certe ornamentum in columnis est.” Leon Battista Alberti,De re aedificatoria (Florence, 1486), 6.13. Translated into Italian by Giovanni Orlandi asL’architettura (Milan: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 1966), 2:521. Translated into English by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Travernor asOn the Art of Building in Ten Books (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 183.
5. See Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 6.2.
6. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 6.2; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 156. Quoted and commented on by Françoise Choay,La Règle et le modèle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1980), 116. Translated asThe Rule and the Model, ed. Denise Bratton (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 91.
7. See Jacques Derrida,Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 145.
8. Alberti,De pictura, 2.30.
9. Ibid., 2.31.
10. Ibid., 2.33.
11. Ibid., 2.38.
12. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, prologue, fol. 1.
13. Ibid., 1.9.
14. See Peter Eisenman,Fin d’Ou T Hou S (London: Architectural Association, 1985), fol. 4.
15. Alberti,De pictura, 3.55; Alberti,On Painting, 89 [translation modified]. For more on this, see Hubert Damisch,A Theory of the Cloud: Toward a History of Painting, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 116–117.
16. See Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 7.7. For advocates of cement, the molding will constitute one of the stumbling blocks of modernity, while at the same time it will be, for them, situated at the junction between construction and architecture, with the obligatory reference to the idea of composition: “Contour modulation leaves the practical man, the bold man, the ingenious man behind; it calls for the plastic artist.” Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, trans. John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 247. “La science de la modénature a disparu en même temps que celle de l’architecture. Actuellement, les recherches de construction et d’organisation occupent entièrement l’esprit de l’architecte; de plus, la science de la composition est si égarée que seuls les problèmes plastiques principaux ont pu, jusqu’aujourd’hui, être étudiés et résolus de manière satisfaisante.” [The science of contour modulation has disappeared at the same time as the science of architecture. These days, construction and organization research occupies the architect’s mind entirely; moreover, the science of composition is so far lost that only the central plastic problems have been able, untill now, to be studied and resolved in a satisfying manner]. André Lurçat,Architecture (Paris: Sans pareil, 1929), 170.
17. See Derrida,Of Grammatology, 295.
18. See James Leoni, trans., The Architecture of Leon Battista Alberti in Ten Books (London, 1726), 143.
19. On the column considered as a bone, see “The Column, the Wall,” chapter 2, this volume.
20. See Ferdinand de Saussure,Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 145. Times change; we now talk aboutparadigmatic relationships, whereas Saussure referred toassociative relationships.
21. For more on this, see Hubert Damisch,The Origin of Perspective, trans. John Goodman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
22. See Rudolf Wittkower, “Brunelleschi and ‘Proportion in Perspective,’”Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16, no. 3/4 (1953): 275–291; reprinted in Rudolf Wittkower,Idea and Image: Studies in the Italian Renaissance, ed. Margo Wittkower (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 125–136.
23. See Jacques Derrida,Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, trans. John P. Leavey Jr. (Stony Brook, NY: N. Hays, 1978). Also see Damisch,The Origin of Perspective, 95.
24. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 2.1; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 34. On the notion of “architecture in perspective” as developed by Jacques-François Blondel in the entry on “Architecture” in theEncyclopédie, see “Prologue: Noah’s Ark,” this volume.
25. Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 1.1; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 7.
26. See Choay,The Rule and the Model, 95n109.
4 Perrault’s Colonnade and the Functions of the Classical Order
1. “Registre ou Journal des délibérations et résolutions touchant les bâtiments du roi,” compiled by Claude Perrault (April–May 1667), inDescription historique de la ville de Paris et de ses environs, by Jean-Aimar Pigagniol de la Force, vol. 2 (Paris, 1765), 260.
2. See Michel Foucault, “Order,” inThe Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), 50–57.
3. Claude Perrault, ed. and trans.,Les dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve (Paris: 1673), 98n1.
4. Vicenzo Scamozzi, quoted in Perrault,Les dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve, 37n2.
5. Perrault,Les dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve, 9.
6. See Louis Hautecœur,L’histoire des châteaux du Louvre et des Tuileries (Paris: Van Oest, 1927), 171–174.
7. See Jean-François Blondel,Architecture française, vol. 4 (Paris: 1756), 54.
8. “A royal palace should be sited in the city center, should be of easy access, and should be gracefully decorated, elegant, and refined, rather than ostentatious. But that of a tyrant, being a fortress rather than a house, should be positioned where it is neither inside nor outside the city. . . . An appropriate and useful guideline, which will lend the building dignity, will be to construct it in such a way that, if a royal palace, it should not be so large that it is impossible to throw out any troublemaker, or, if a fortress, not so constricted that it resembles a prison more than the apartment of a fine prince.” Leon Battista Alberti,De re aedificatoria (Florence, 1486), 5.3. Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor asOn the Art of Building (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 121–122.
9. “Nunquam fuit multitudo non referta malis ingeniis.” Alberti,De re aedificatoria, 5.4; Alberti,On the Art of Building, 122–123.
10. “[Bernini] created the loggias so that the King could go up and down in a closed carriage, which made them into places where troublemakers could hide behind the columns he made to support the vestibule.” Paul Fréart de Chantelou,Journal du voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France (Paris, 1885), 85. As Colbert noted, “It is necessary to take careful note that, in the seditious times that almost always occur in the ghettos, not only can kings be secure but the quality of their palace may serve to hold the people to the obedience they owe” (Colbert, quoted in Hautecœur,L’histoire des châteaux, 155).
11. Perrault,Les dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve, 70n1.
12. See the plans published in André Chastel and Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, “L’aménagement de l’accès oriental du Louvre,”Monuments historiques de la France 12, no. 3 (July–September 1966): 176–249.
13. Legrand and Landon, who witnessed the opening up of new windows under Napoléon I, report that they “found fully built and arched bay windows and the masonry for the niches that replaced them, formed of light partitions. . . . We cannot quite divine the reasons that prompted Perrault to do away with [the windows]. Perhaps he realized too late that they did not correspond to those of the interior of the courtyard. Or perhaps he thought that in closing them up he would give his peristyle more tranquility.” Hautecœur,L’histoire des châteaux, 175. According to Hautecœur, it is likely that Perrault was hoping to imitate the blank walls of antique temples at the back of his peristyle. But again, is that really a peristyle?
14. See Blondel,Architecture française, 4:25. As a lithograph of Baltard’s shows, a provisional gallery was set up on the edge of the Cour Carré, in Year IX of the Republic, to house the exhibition of the products of industry.
15. Perrault, preface toLes dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve, viii.
5 The Space Between
1. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, “Restauration,” inDictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Paris: Bance, 1854–1868), 8:14–34.
2. Victor Hugo, “Note Added to the Definitive Edition (1832),”Notre-Dame de Paris, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 8–11.
3. See Pol Abraham,Viollet-le-Duc et le rationalisme médiéval (Paris: Vincent, 1934). A summary of this work appeared with the same title inBulletin monumental 93 (1934): 69–88.
4. Henri Focillon, “Le problème de l’ogive,”Bulletin de l’Office International des Instituts d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 3 (March 1935).
5. Viollet-le-Duc, preface toDictionnaire, 1:vi.
6. Ibid., 1:x.
7. See, for example, Viollet-le-Duc, “Style,” inDictionnaire, 8:474–497.
8. Even by his greatest advocate, Focillon himself. See Focillon, “Le problème de l’ogive,” 52.
9. Viollet-le-Duc, “Pilier,” inDictionnaire, 7:151.
10. Ibid., 7:171.
11. “Just as when one sees the shape of a leaf, or an animal’s bone, the whole plant or creature can be inferred, so on seeing a section one can infer architectural features,” and from a single feature, one can infer the whole building. Viollet-le-Duc, “Style,” inDictionnaire, 8:486.
12. Viollet-le-Duc, “Cathedrale,” inDictionnaire, 2:324.
13. Viollet-le-Duc, “Construction,” inDictionnaire, 4:1.
14. Viollet-le-Duc, “Style,” inDictionnaire, 8:486.
15. See Claude Levi-Strauss,Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963).
16. Abraham,Viollet-le-Duc et le rationalisme médiéval, 58.
17. Focillon, “Le probléme de l’ogive,” 46–48.
18. See Eduardo Torroja,Philosophy of Structures, trans. J. J. Polivka and Milos Polivka (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958).
19. Viollet-le-Duc, “Construction,” inDictionnaire, 4:1.
6 From Structuralism Back to Functionalism
1. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, “Colonne” [Column], inDictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Paris: 1854–1868), 3:491.
2. Viollet-le-Duc, “Fût” [Shaft], inDictionnaire, 5:563.
3. Viollet-le-Duc, “Style,” inDictionnaire, 8:500.
4. Viollet-le-Duc, “Astragale,” inDictionnaire, 2:10–13.
5. Viollet-le-Duc, “Abaque” [Abacus], inDictionnaire, 1:1–3.
6. Viollet-le-Duc, “Chapiteau” [Capital], inDictionnaire, 3:480–544.
7. Viollet-le-Duc, “Échelle” [Scale], inDictionnaire, 5:149.
8. Viollet-le-Duc, “Pilier” [Pillar], inDictionnaire, 7:173.
9. See “The Space Between: A Structuralist Approach to theDictionnaire: Viollet-le-Duc as a Forerunner of Structuralism,” chapter 5, this volume.
10. Philippe Boudon, Hubert Damisch, and Philippe Deshayes,Analyze du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Paris: A.R.E.A., 1978).
11. Claude Lévi-Strauss,Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 68–69.
12. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens sur l’architecture (Paris: Q. Morel, 1863–1872), 1:175.
13. Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens, 1:78.
14. Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens, 1:213.
15. David Hume,A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 299.
7 Ledoux with Kant
1. Bertolt Brecht, “Ce que nos architectes doivent savoir,” inLes arts et la revolution (Paris: L’arche 1970), 143.
2. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, comp. Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, vol. 23 (Leipzig: Seemann, 1928), s.v. “Ledoux.”
3. Immanuel Kant,Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 108 [translation modified].
4. Emil Kaufmann,Trois architectes révolutionnaires (Paris: Edition de la S.A.D.G., 1978), 137.
5. Jacques Derrida,Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry, trans. John P. Leavey Jr. (Stony Brook, NY: N. Hays, 1978), 178.
6. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux,L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la 1égislation (Paris, 1804); quoted in Emile Kaufmann,Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier (Vienna: Passer, 1933), 43.
7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau,Contrat social, 3.10, quoted in Kaufmann,Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier, 42.
8. Ledoux,L’architecture, quoted in Kaufmann,Trois architectes révolutionnaires, 162.
9. Ledoux,L’architecture, quoted in Kaufmann,Trois architectes révolutionnaires, 162.
10. Kaufmann,Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier, 38.
11. “The new ruling class should not begin its construction work with the construction of three million individual houses, nor slightly more comfortable housing barracks, but with that of large-scale residential buildings.” Brecht,Les artes et la revolution, 144.
12. Theodor W. Adorno,Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1951), 38.
13. François Furet, “The French Revolution Is Over,” pt. 1 inInterpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1–80.
14. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” inIlluminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), 261–262.
15. Leon Trotsky,La Révolution permanente (Paris: Rieder, 1932), 7–8.
16. Emil Kaufmann, preface toL’architecture au siècle des Lumières, French trans. Olivier Bernier (Paris: René Julliard, 1963), 14.
17. Meyer Schapiro, “The New Viennese School,”Art Bulletin 18 (June 1936): 258–266.
18. Immanuel Kant,Lectures on Logic, ed. and trans. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 8.
8 L’Autre “Ich,” L’Autriche—Austria, or the Desire for the Void
1. Adolf Loos, “Potemkin City” (1898), inSpoken into the Void: Collected Essays 1897–1900, trans. Jane O. Newman and John H. Smith (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), 95–96.
2. Adolf Loos, “Architektur” (1910), inSämtliche Schriften (Vienna: Herold, 1962), 315; “Architecture,” trans. Wilfried Wang, in Yehuda Safran and Wilfried Wang,The Architecture of Adolf Loos (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985), 108.
3. Adolf Loos, “Antworten auf fragen aus dem publikum” (1919), inSämtliche Schriften, 372. One can recognize here the title of Karl Kraus’s tragedy about World War I (Die letzen Tage des Menschheit). But if we are living “the last days of mankind” today, then what of thefuture of the work of art now?
4. Adolf Loos, “Men’s Fashion” (1898), inSpoken into the Void, 12.
5. In June 1913, Georges Besson published a first translation of Loos’s “Ornament and Crime” (1908) inLes Cahiers d’aujourd’hui, later reprinted by Paul Dermé inL’Esprit nouveau, vol. 2 (November 1920).
6. In all cases in which the termego appears, the author used the Frenchmoi, which refers also to “me” or the “self” more generally and corresponds to the Germanich.—Trans.
7. Robert Musil,The Man without Qualities, trans. Sophie Watkins (New York: Vintage, 1995), 28–29.
8. Ibid., 4.
9. Karl Kraus,Dicta and Contradicta, trans. Jonathan McVitty (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 42.
10. Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” inThe Architechture of Adolf Loos, 103.
11. See Heinrinch Kulka,Adolf Loos: Das Werk des Architekten (Vienna: A. Schroll and Co., 1931).
12. In 1857, Owen Jones had already prefaced hisThe Grammar of Ornament with a picture of the tattooed face of a Maori woman, accompanied by this revealing commentary: “In this very barbarous practice the principles of the very highest ornamental art are manifest, every line upon the face is the best adapted to develop the natural features . . . the ornament of a savage tribe, being the result of a natural instinct, is necessarily always true to its purpose.” Owen Jones,The Grammar of Ornament (London: Day and Son, 1856). Loos clearly must have been familiar with Jones’s book, in which the notion of ornament was already the object of heavy criticism, just as he would have known the writings of Gottfried Semper. See “Science, Industry, and Art” (1852), in Gottfried Semper,The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 130–167. Jones, like Semper, was very much struck by the presentation of a Maori village reconstructed at the international exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace in 1851, for which the inhabitants had been specially brought over.
13. We must recognize another probable source of Loos’s ideas on the “felonious” nature of ornament and various forms of tattooing: Lombroso’s writings on delinquent man, the “palimpsest body,” secret languages, and “anti-languages,” which had a great influence in their time.Palimseti dal Carcere, published in 1888, constitutes one of the most fascinating works that can be found on tattooing among delinquents (despite the limited number of copies that were published). Cesare Lombroso,Palimseti dal Carcere, Raccolta unicamente destinata agli uomini di scienza (Turin, 1888); “Gerghi nuovi,” inArchivio di psichiatra, scienza penale e antropologia criminale, vol. 9 (Turin, 1888);L’uomo delinquente in rapporto all’anhropologia, alla giurisprudenza e alla psychiatria (Turin, 1897). For a recent, if superficial, contextualization, see Ernesto Ferrero,I gerghi della malavita dal’500 a oggi (Milan: Mondadori, 1972).
14. Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” 100.
15. Ibid. The same “puritanism” that made Loos assimilate ornament to “crime” also led him to work toward the reform of typography, by eliminating from his text (as one can see from the preceding citations) the accumulation of capital letters with which German bedecks all nouns—and with them any residual trace of ornamental calligraphy, which he considered “barbaric,” like the “Gothic” writing the Nazis were to bring back to a place of honor. In doing this, Loos relied on the authority of Jacob Grimm: “If we have rid our houses of their gables and their projecting rafters, and have removed the powder from our hair, why should we retain such rubbish in our writing (warum soll in der Schrift aller Unrat bleiben)?” Cited in Loos,Spoken into the Void, 2.
16. Loos, “Architecture,” 104. Translation modified.
17. Manfredo Tafuri,Architecture and Utopia, trans. Barbara Luigia La Penta (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), ix.
18. Manfredo Tafuri,Theories and History of Architecture, trans. Giorgio Verrecchia (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 84. I would not follow Tafuri’s analysis to the end, however. According to Tafuri, the effect of Loos’s project resulted from the extraction of a “linguistic” element (the column) from its context and from its transfer to another context, to a scale beyond any norm. In fact, the column monument was nothing new, and Loos was playing on this symbolic autonomy, long conquered by the column relative to its “linguistic,” syntagmatic, and paradigmatic functions, by enlarging the monument to the dimensions of the skyscraper.
19. Loos, “Architecture,” 108.
9 Ornament to the Edge of Indecency
1. Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime” (1929 revision), inOrnament and Crime: Selected Essays, trans. Michael Mitchell (Riverside, CA: Ariande Press, 1998). First written 1908.
2. As an example, see Reyner Banham,Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1967), 88–97.
3. See Le Corbusier,The Decorative Art of Today, trans. James Dunnett (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 135. Ripolin is a brand of paint.
4. Ibid., 118.
5. Ernst Gombrich,The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 19–20.
6. “Quasi ad inspirciendum delectationis causa.” Cicero,Orator, 37.
7. Ibid., 65.
8. Ibid., 152.
9. Ibid., 50.
10. Ibid., 155.
11. Frances A. Yates, “The Three Latin Sources for the Classical Art of Memory,” inThe Art of Memory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 17–41.
12. “Sed quandam neglegentia est diligens.”“Legantia modo et munditia romanebit.” Cicero,Orator, 78.
13. Ibid., 80.
14. Cesare Lombroso,Palimsesti del carcere: Raccolta unicamente destinata agli uomini di scienza (Turin: Bocca, 1888).
15. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol. 2 (Paris: Q. Morel et Cie, 1872), 177.
16. Ibid., 185.
17. Auguste Choisy,Histoire de l’architecture, vol. 2 (Paris: Éditions Vincent Fréal, 1954), 469–470.
18. Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil, “L’Architecture,” inArchéologie du sud de l’Inde, vol. 1 (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1914), 169.
19. Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens, vol. 1 (Paris: Q. Morel et Cie, 1863), 82.
20. Ibid., 1:80. Passage translated inThe Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary, ed. M. F. Hearn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 85.
21. Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, “Discours préliminaire,” inRecueil de décorations intérieures (Paris: 1812), quoted in Gombrich,The Sense of Order, 32–33.
22. Viollet-le-Duc,Entretiens, 1:80.
23. See “L’Autre ‘Ich,’ L’Autriche—Austria, or the Desire for the Void: Toward a Tomb for Adolf Loos,” chapter 8, this volume.
24. Heinrich Kulka,Adolf Loos: Das Werk des Architekten (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1931).
25. Le Corbusier,Decorative Art of Today, 12.
26. Ibid., 84.
27. Ibid., 79.
28. Ibid., 114.
29. Ibid., 18.
30. Le Corbusier clarified in the preface to the book’s 1959 edition: “Page 99, third line. The phrase ‘expressing the construction’ (accuser la construction) means ‘emphasizing construction’ (mettre en valeur la construction).” Le Corbusier,Decorative Art of Today, xix.
31. Ibid., 134.
32. Georges Duby,Saint Bernard, l’art cistercien (Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1976), 94.
33. Karl Marx, “The Dual Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities,” inCapital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1976).
34. Le Corbusier,Decorative Art of Today, 49.
35. Ibid., 96.
36. Leon Battista Alberti,On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1956), 67.
37. Ibid., 64.
38. Leon Battista Alberti, “Ornament,” inOn the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Josephy Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 183.
39. Françoise Choay,The Rule and the Model: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism, ed. Denise Bratton (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 121.
40. Ibid., 156.
41. Ibid., 204–205.
42. Alberti,On Painting, 3:89. See Hubert Damisch,A Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 116–117.
43. See “The Column, the Wall,” chapter 2, this volume.
44. Gombrich,Sense of Order, 34–35.
45. Henri Matisse, “Interview with Dorothy Dudley,” inMatisse on Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 110–111.
46. Henri Matisse, “Notes of a Painter,” inMatisse on Art, 38.
47. Henri Matisse, “Transformations,” inMatisse on Art, 128.
48. Matisse, “Notes of a Painter,” 38.
49. Marcel Mauss, “L’art et le mythe d’après M. Wundt,”Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger 66 (July–August 1908); reprinted in Mauss,Oeuvres, ed. Victor Karady (Paris: Minuit, 1969), 197.
50. Wilhelm Wundt, “Die Sprache,” inVölkerpsychologie: Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprachen, Mythus und Sitte, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1904), 220; cited in Mauss, “L’art et le mythe,” 200.
51. Mauss, “L’art et le mythe,” 199.
52. Gottfried Semper,Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, or, Practical Aesthetics, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Michael Robinson (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2004), 219.
53. Joseph Rykwert, “Semper and the Conception of Style,” inThe Necessity of Artifice: Ideas in Architecture (New York, Rizzoli, 1982), 124.
54. James Février,Histoire de l’écriture (Paris: Payot, 1959), 20–23.
55. Wundt, “Die Sprache,” 186, cited in Mauss,L’art et le mythe, 199.
56. Meyer Schapiro, “Nature of Abstract Art,” inArt of the Twentieth Century: A Reader, ed. Jason Gaiger and Paul Wood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 30.
57. Owen Jones,The Grammar of Ornament (London: Day & Son, 1865), 13–16; emphasis mine.
58. Bronisław Malinowski,Coral Gardens and Their Magic (London: Routledge, 2002).
59. Sigmund Freud,Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 23.
10 Against the Slope
1. Sérgio Ferro, Chérif Kebbal, Philippe Potié, Cyrille Simonnet,Le Couvent de La Tourette (Marseille: Parenthèses, 1987).
2. Colin Rowe, “La Tourette,” inThe Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), 85–203.
3. Sigfried Giedion’s statement, “Construction plays the role of the subconscious,” from hisBauen in Frankreich, Eisen, Eisenbeton (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1928), was quoted by Benjamin in the following context: “Just as Napoleon failed to understand the functional nature of the state as an instrument of domination by the bourgeois class, so the architects of his time failed to understand the functional nature of iron, with which the constructive principle begins its domination of architecture.” Walter Benjamin, “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, inWalter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 3,1935–1938, ed. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002), 33.
4. Minutes of a meeting dated April 23, 1955, Archives de la Fondation Le Corbusier, quoted in Ferro et al.,Le Couvent de La Tourette, 29.
5. Iannis Xenakis, “The Monastery of La Tourette,” inLe Corbusier, ed. H. Allen Brooks (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 143–162.
6. Ferro et al.,Le Couvent de La Tourette.
7. Ibid., 41.
8. “In conceptual art, the idea or concept is the most important aspect of a work. When an artist practices a form of conceptual art, this means all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes art.” Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,”Artforum 5, no. 10 (Summer 1967): 79–84; reprinted in Alexander Albero and Blake Stimson,Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 12.
9. Alison Smithson, “Couvent de La Tourette, Éveux-sur-l’Arbresle, near Lyon, France,”Architectural Design 28, no. 11 (November 1958): 482.
10. Le Corbusier, interview with the Dominican community (October 1960), “Le Couvent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette construit par Le Corbusier,” inL’Art sacré, nos. 7–8 (March–April 1960); reprinted in Jean Petit,Un couvent de Le Corbusier (Paris: Cahiers Forces Vives-Editec, 1961), 28–29.
11. Le Corbusier, “Conversation avec Savina,” inAujourd’hui, no. 51 (1965): 98; quoted in Stanislaus Von Moos,Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979), 282.
12. Petit,Un couvent, 20.
13. On the subject of “slopes,” Jacqueline Salmon writes this to me: “It seems hard not to see Ronchamp, because there they [slopes] are more complex and do not have the same function as at La Tourette. They are there to enlarge the visual space. Without any relationship to the terrain, practically flat. The floor of the nave has been dug out of the ground from the entrance right up to the altar, where it then rises again. But in contrast the ground sinks again toward the back and in particular along a different axis at 45 degrees only to die away toward a secondary altar. There is nothing remarkable apropos in Le Corbusier’s drawings published in different books.” Personal communication, undated.
14. Petit,Un couvent, 28–29.
15. Ibid.
16. Philippe Potié’s otherwise excellent little monograph,Le Couvent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette (Paris: Fondation Le Corbusier, 2001), 59. Note the resonating effect of the date of publication of this booklet and the title of Stanley Kubrick’s film2001: A Space Odyssey, in which a parallelopedal UFO plays the role we are all familiar with.
17. Ferro et al.,Le Couvent de La Tourette, 13, 31.
18. Le Corbusier, interview with Dominican community, quoted in Petit,Un convent, 28.
19. Le Corbusier apparently never tired repeating: “Composition begins with the roofline, a great wide horizontal, and ends with the downward slope of the ground on which the building rests by means of pilotis.” Echoing this paradox, I cannot resist recording here an anecdote that José-Luis Sert told me years ago. After months of work during which Sert consulted Le Corbusier several times a day about the slightest problem posed by the Carpenter Center building site at Harvard, from the position of a door knob to the texture of a form, the day of the inauguration arrived, followed by a visit to the building during which Le Corbusier did not utter a word. Sert finally broke the silence by asking him what he thought, to which Le Corbusier replied: “Perfect, everything is perfect, but why did you put it the wrong way round?” Sert was stunned and thought Le Corbusier might be having a dig at him as a way of paying him back for his excessive zeal—unless La Tourette is the beginning of an answer to that question.
20. Edmund Husserl, “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does Not Move,” trans. Fred Kersten, in Maurice Merleau-Ponty,Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, ed. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 117.
21. Ibid., 126.
22. Edmund Husserl, “The World of the Living Present and the Constitution of the Surrounding World That Is Outside the Flesh,” trans. Bettina Bergo, revised by Leonard Lawlor, inHusserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, 151.
23. Petit,Un couvent, 20.
24. “It is a great modern word. Architecture and urbanism are all about circulation.” Le Corbusier,Précisions, sur un état présent de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (Paris: Éditions Vincent Fréal, 1960), 128.
25. Frances A. Yates,The Art of Memory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).
26. Ferro et al.,Le Couvent de La Tourette, 49.
27. Edmund Husserl, “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1, no. 1 (1940–1941): 21–37.
28. Husserl, “World of the Living Present,” 150.
11 The Slightest Difference
1. Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, trans. John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 220; emphasis in original.
2. Manfredo Tafuri,Teorie e storia dell’architettura (Bari: Laterza, 1973), 112;Theories and History of Architecture, trans. Giorgio Verrecchia (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 91.
3. See Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, 117–130.
4. Peter Eisenman, “miMISes Reading,” inEisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings 1963–1988, ed. Mark Rakatansky (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 194.
5. Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, 219.
6. Ibid., 113.
12 Architecture and Industry
1. Benedikt Huber and Jean-Claude Steiegger, eds.,Jean Prouvé, Une architecture par l’industrie (Zurich: Éditions d’architecture Artemis, 1971).
2. Ibid., 8.
3. Ibid., 14.
4. I will not expand here on the relationships between the modern movement and industry. Let me just say that it is no accident that the first buildings designed according to industrial construction standards were not residential buildings but factories. Industry no doubt expected greater profits from the “design” ideology than from practices that, deliberately or otherwise, went against the accepted division of labor. That was, in any case, the line jointly taken by the members of the Deutscher Werkbund, who were unsparing in their support for the sameFührer who shortly after strove to persuade German industrialists that one of the strongest bastions of the established order was the so-called traditional thatched cottage.
5. “L’avenir lui révéla cruellement sa confiante ingénuité” (The future was to show how naively trusting he had been). Huber and Steiegger,Prouvé, Une architecture par l’industrie, 193.
6. Ibid., 24.
7. Ibid., 203.
8. Figures put forward by Jean Prouvé within the framework of his teaching at the Conservatoire national des art-et-métiers, 1970–1971. The reference to the Bauhaus experiment is instructive for what it reveals about the opposition between the interests of so-called light industry—the processing industry—represented by the institution’s backers, and those of heavy industry, in which Nazism found solid support.
9. William Marlin, “The Evolution and Impact of a Teacher,”The World of Buckminster Fuller,Architectural Forum 140 (January–February, 1972): 72.
10. Huber and Steiegger,Prouvé, Une architecture par l’industrie, 23.
11. Ibid., 11.
12. Projects by Georg Muche and Richard Paulick. See Hans Maria Wingler,The Bauhaus, ed. Joseph Stein, trans. Wolfgang Jabs and Basil Gilbert (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 417.
13. Walter Gropius,Scope of Total Architecture (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1956), 15–16.
14. Sigfried Giedion,Walter Gropius, l’homme et l’œuvre (Paris: Albert Morancé, 1954), 193–200.
15. Huber and Steiegger,Prouvé, Une architecture par l’industrie, 30.
16. Ibid., 142.
17. In a feature film made by Jean-Marc Leuwen for the Plastic Arts Department of ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française), Jean Prouvé agreed (at my insistence) to step up to the blackboard—a drawing board as it happened—to give us a few moments of his teaching again. There is a really beautiful edited version of this in circulation, twenty minutes long end to end. Since then, the course has been published in its entirety, all of Prouvé’s drawings having been found.
18. Huber and Steiegger,Prouvé, Une architecture par l’industrie, 25.
19. Indeed, Le Corbusier was so persuaded by this that he included Prouvé in the preliminary studies for the Cité Radieuse in Marseille.
20. Huber and Steiegger,Prouvé, Une architecture par l’industrie, 185–186.
21. A public and stupefying demonstration of this is provided by the Corning Glass Center in New York, which is visited in order to “deconstruct” a number of naive associations when it comes to architecture.
22. It is no longer a question here of scaffolding—another cherished metaphor of structural theory—because the skeleton itself serves as scaffolding at each stage of the building process, just as it once did in the Greek temple.
23. Huber and Steiegger,Prouvé, Une architecture par l’industrie, 203.
24. Ibid., 108.
25. Royston Landau,New Directions in British Architecture (New York: Studio Vista, 1968), 77.
13 Architecture Is . . .
1. Gillian Naylor, “De Stijl: Abstraction or Architecture?”Studio International 190, no. 977 (September–October 1975): 98–102.
2. “In tota re aedificatoria primarium certe ornamentum in columnis est.” Leon Battista Alberti,De re aedificatoria, trans. G. Orlandi (Milan: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 1966), 6:3.
3. “Prese l’architettto, se io non erro, pure dal pittore gli architravi, le base, i capitelli, le colonne, frontispici e simili tutte altre cose.” Leon Battista Alberti,De pictura, ed. Cecil Grayson (Bari, 1975), 48.
4. Greg Lynn,Animate Form (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 41.
5. Jean Dubuffet,Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, ed. Hubert Damisch (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 1:636n176.
6. Ibid., 241.
7. Jean Dubuffet, “Edifices” (1968), inProspectus, 3:342.
8. “The time has come for architects to respond to questions—notably the question of restoring to architecture its character of art, long ago forgotten. Of art, and what that notion connotes of caprice and invention, the architecture of our time is dismaying—completely devoid of imagination, dependent on sordid considerations of economics and on the least effort, relying strictly on the rectilinear, on such a poor invention as the parallelepiped box.” Letter from Dubuffet to Marcel Cornu, January 12, 1969, inProspectus, 3:497n51.
9. Jacques Derrida, “Point de folie—Maintenant l’architecture,” inPsyché: Inventions de l’autre (Paris: Galilee, 1987), 480.
10. Ibid.
11. Roland Barthes, “Sur le cinema,” interview with M. Delahaye and J. Rivette,Cahiers du cinema 147 (September 1963). Reprinted inLe grain de la voix, interviews (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 22.
12. Hubert Damisch, “Le signe et la function,” inModern’signe: Recherches sur le travail du signe dans l’architecture moderne (Paris: CORDA, 1977), 2:13, a report on the research carried out by Le Cercle d’HistoireTheorie de l’art de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in the account of the Department of Architecture.
13. Derrida, “Point de folie,” 517.
14. “[The question] of what it is that projects in front or in advance in the project (projection, program, prescription, promise, proposition) of everything that belongs, in the architectural process, to the movement of throwing, or of being thrown (jacere, jacio/jaceo). Horizontally or vertically: foundations for the erection of an edifice that always jumps toward the sky—there where, in an apparent sense of mimesis, there was nothing.” Ibid., 514.
15. Walter Benjamin,Das Passagen-Werk (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982); French trans.,Paris, capitale du XIXe siècle: Le livre des passages (Paris, 1989), 182; English trans., “Iron Construction,” inThe Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 160.
16. The Arcades Project, 155.
17. Ibid., 162.
18. FromTower with Figures, Dubuffet continued to say that the work was not conceived “with a view to furnishing a lodging in the form actually in use in our homes,” but as “an occasional home for retirement and reverie.” Dubuffet,Prospectus, 3:336.
19. Paul Valéry, “Histoire d’Amphion,” a lecture read at a concert performance ofAmphion at the Université des Annales, January 14, 1932. First published inConféréncia, August 5, 1932.
20. Walter Gropius, “Architect—Servant or Leader?,” inScope of Total Architecture (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1956), 94.
21. See Manfredo Tafuri,Architecture and Utopia, trans. Barbara Luigi La Penta (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976).
22. Peter Eisenman,Recent Projects, 25, as quoted in Fredric Jameson,The Seeds of Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 170–171.
23. Jameson,The Seeds of Time, 143–144.
24. Session of December 30, 1926, as quoted in Frederike Huygen,Het mueum Boijmans van Hannema: Gebouw, geschiedenis, architectuur (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 1992), 78.
25. Adrian Dannatt,United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: James Ingo Freed (London: Phaidon Press, 1995), 5.
26. The Architecture and Art of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995), 9.
14 Blotting Out Architecture?
1. “But yesterday I made the first negatives other than matter-of-fact records—negatives with intention. A quite marvelous cloud form tempted me—a sunlit cloud which rose from the bay to become a towering white column.” Edward Weston,The Daybooks of Edward Weston, 2nd ed., ed. Nancy Newhall (New York: Aperture, 1990), 14.
2. “Life here is intense and dramatic, I do not need to photograph premeditated postures, and there are sunlit walls of fascinating surface textures, and there are clouds! They alone are sufficient to work with for many months, and never tire.” Ibid., 21.
3. Mark Wigley, “The Architecture of Atmosphere,” inDaidalos 68 (1998), 18.
4. Ibid., 25.
5. Le Corbusier,Toward an Architecture, trans. John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001), 109.
6. “Adunque l’orlo e dorso danno suoi nomi alle superficie.” Leon Battista Alberti,Della Pittura (Florence: Sansoni, 1950), book 1, section 5. For the English translation, see Leon Battista Alberti,On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 45.
7. Edmund Husserl,The Origin of Geometry (Stony Brook, NY: N. Hays, 1978). First published in 1939 asFrage nach dem Ursprung der Geometrie als intentional-historisches Problem.
8. Paul Valéry, “Eupalinos, ou l’architecte” (1923), inŒuvres, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1960). For the English translation, see Paul Valéry,Eupalinos; or, The Architect, trans. William McCausland Stewart (London: Oxford University Press, 1932).
9. See myL’Origine de la perspective (Paris: Flammarion, 1987). For the English translation, seeThe Origin of Perspective, trans. John Goodman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).
10. Antonio di Turchio Manetti,Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi, ed. D. Robertis and G. Tanturli (Milan: Il Polifilio, 1976). For the English translation, see Antonio di Turchio Manetti,The Life of Brunelleschi, trans. Catherine Enggass (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1970). See also myThéorie du /nuage/. Pour une Histoire de la peinture (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972), 157–171. For the English translation, seeA Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
11. Robert Smithson, “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan” (1969), inThe Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 119–133.
12. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio,Blur: The Making of Nothing (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002).
13. Ludwig Wittgenstein,Culture and Value, ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 41e.
14. Jacques Lacan,Le Séminaire, livre IV,La Relation d’objet (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1994), 48.
15. Diller and Scofidio,Blur, 3.
16. Henri Atlan,Entre le cristal et la fumée. Essai sur l’organization du vivant (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1979).
17. John W. Cloud,Steel for Bridges (Philadelphia, PA: 1881).
18. See Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky,Coop Himmelb(l)au Austria: From Cloud to Cloud (Klagenfurt: Ritter, 1996) andConstruire le ciel (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1993).
19. See Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.),Pavilion, ed. Billy Klüver, Julie Martin, and Barbara Rose (New York: Experiments in Art and Technology, 1978).
20. I am referring here to the work conducted by Pierre Rosenstiehl at the Centre de mathématiques sociales of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris, under the title of “taxiplanie.”
21. Walter Gropius,The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, trans. P. Morton Shand (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), 30.
22. Matteo Ripa,Views of the Chinese Imperial Palaces and Gardens–Jehol; 1713). There are eight known copies of this album, one of which is in the collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
23. See Lai Sing Lam,Origins and Development of the Traditional Chinese Roof, Mellen Studies in Architecture, vol. 5 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).
24. Oswald Siren, “Histoire des arts anciens de la Chine,” inL’Architecture, vol. 4 (Paris: G. van Oest, 1929), 24.
25. Lam,Origins and Development, 51.
26. Smithson, “Incidents of Mirror-Travel,” 132.
27. Cesare Ripa,Iconologia, overo Descritione delle imagine (Rome, 1593). For the English translation, see Cesare Ripa,Iconology (New York: Garland Publishing, 1979).