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Current reading: Palladio (continued)

Villa Monsingor Paolo Almerico

Villa Almerico-Capra by Andrea Palladio, "La Rotunda," Vicenza, Italy

I completed Palladio’s Second Book of Architecture last week. I’ve decided to take a break and read Le Courbusier before finishing Palladio’s Four Books. A Courbusier/Palladio comparison might be interesting.

The Second Book book is primarily comprised of 45 short analyses of Palladio’s designs for city and country residences. Although these analyses are all cursory, combined they provide a definition of Palladio’s architecture, philosophy, and rules for precise mathematical proportions. His most famous villa, for Monsignor Paolo Almerico, known as “La Rotonda,” (plate 13 in the Second Book) is included, accompanied by an single-paragraph analysis. This one building inspired architects for hundreds of years, including the design of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

Architecture, especially Palladian architecture, is metaphorically described as “frozen music,” and I can understand this metaphor thanks to the overview this book provides. I began writing music when I was six years old, and began to develop my interest in architecture and drawing shortly thereafter, and have heard many comparisons between architecture and composition but only considered it conceptually. But it seems that there are really more literal similarities.

The most striking aspect to his design system is the fact that everything is related to everything else. All aspects of the design are proportional to each other. If one piece of a design changes, the rest of the design must change in kind. Palladio makes this clear in his detailed descriptions of the Five Orders of architecture in his First Book. All the details of the orders, including the ornamentation, must be in proportion to each other. The Second Book demonstrates this notion applied to the spaces of the overall design. Additionally, Palladio establishes a hierarchy of spaces, primary and secondary spacial sequences like primary and secondary lines of musical counterpoint.

A weekend of opera, design, and food

I was called away to New York to attend Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, have dinner with Sam Sifton of the New York Times, view the Eero Saarinen exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York and the Bauhaus exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, and, of course, spend time with my sister, brother in law, and my boyfriend, then delivered into an exhausting work week.

The Met’s prodution of Turandot was flawless and astounding. There’s little more that can be said for it than that. I only hope I can remember it clearly enough to reminisce for a long time. The space, however, is in dire need of rejuvenation. Another Manhattan building designed by Wallace Harrison, the United Nations Headquarters, is currently under renovation. My hope is that the Met shall enjoy soon enjoy similar treatment.

Viewing a thorough retrospective of Eero Saarinen’s work was fascinating. I will have much to write about him after I have time to devote further study to his work, but I can see that he was simultaneously inspired by the possibilities inherent in Modern architecture and frustrated by its limitations. I believe postmodernism owes much to the way he pushed and challenged Modern design.

And to see so much of the mythical Bauhaus school and movement gathered in one place filled me with inspiration and a sense of merriment, but also of loss. A study of the educational writings of Itten and Albers is, I feel, vital for my development. But if only the Bauhaus had continued to function through 1933 and beyond. I wonder what it might have grown into. Again, I’ll have much writing to do after further study of the school.

Current reading: Palladio

I’ve long had an interest in Renaissance architecture, beginning, I think, when I was in fifth grade and learning about world history. Andrea Palladio’s influence is still strong in, especially in regards to the visual image of American government. This influence trickles down to smaller public buildings and housing as well. I’ve also been curious about his philosophies of architecture and techniques for creating proportion and balance in his overall designs.

I’ve completed the first book, which focuses on period materials and techniques for building, which is not terribly useful unless one is focused on architectural history. Palladio also details the characteristic features of the “Five Orders” of architecture, Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite, plus designing structures such as ceilings, windows, doors, and stairs.

He includes some interesting thoughts on design and architecture that are still applicable and important, although often forgotten during the design process.

That work cannot be called perfect, which should be useful and not durable, or durable and not useful, or having both these should be without beauty.

Herein, perhaps, lies the difference between “building” and “architecture,” something which may be lacking in contemporary practice. Durability, Usefulness, and Beauty must all be accounted for in the design. A building that is Durable and Useful but not Beautiful, likely the most common sort of building found today, is lacking in architecture and does nothing more than serve a purpose, e.g. a storage shed. A building that is Durable and Beautiful but not Useful is, well, is it a building? Would this be better described as, say, a sculpture or a monument? A building that is Useful and Beautiful but not Durable simply isn’t properly engineered, and therefore not properly designed. But if only one of these points is in place, let alone none of them, it could hardly be in description of a building at all. Beauty, however, is the point that most resists description, but Palladio aims to define it.

…the structure may appear an entire and complete body, wherein each member agrees with the other, and all necessary to compose what you intend to form.

Palladio makes it clear that his architectural philosophy revolves around this point. It is very important to him that all aspects of the design reflect each other consistently and in balance. He is thinking of architectural design as a production of  a single “Fabrick,” much the way in which a composer thinks of his craft as the production of a single piece. The alternative is a collection of forms clumsily bound together.

I say therefore, that architecture, as well as all other arts, being an imitation of nature, can suffer nothing that either alienates or deviates from that which is agreeable to nature; from when we see, that the ancient architects, who made their edifices of wood, when they began to make them of stone, instituted that the columns should be left thicker at the bottom than at the top, taking example from the trees, all which are thinner at the top than in the trunk, or near the root.

I just found the comparison between architecture and nature interesting. Mankind’s contemporary built environment, the city in particular, is the nature that we have created for ourselves, and I would extend this notion to design in general and into industry. For Palladio, it is important for architecture, and art, to imitate nature. Over the centuries since Palladio architects have pushed this notion to designing nature for mankind.

…that the void may be over the void, and the solid upon the solid, and all face one another, so that standing at one end of the house one may see to the other, which affords both beauty and cool air in summer, besides other conveniences.

An interesting goal left unattended by most architects. It seems that Palladio aimed, at very least, to define a single space within a design, and to not lose the sense of that overall space when dividing it into separate rooms. His floor plans suggest this, given their sense of traffic flow, the fact that the facade tends to define the rooms found within, and the sensation of an endless series of rooms.