Lesson 2.5- Aesthetics and Design 2
Beauty, Style, and Vision
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Architectural beauty: correct use of a design language
Even uneducated viewer would see something is wrong
Each order is designed to function as a system
Surface sensation? Or perception of a deeper quality? … more abstract
Image and Reality
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Ex). Elm tree:
o Concepts exist forever
o Remembering, recognizing that ideal tree
Plato: beauty = “recognition” of transcendent ideal
Platonic solids: cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, pyramid
Idealism: earthly “beauty” just reflects “true” beauty
Gothic Proportions:
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Villard de Honnecourt, 1230s
Medieval design: geometry, proportion, and magic
Numbers link design to the spiritual realm, religious symbolism
Alberti: continues belief that numbers = beauty
Alberti: In Search of the Orders
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Trying to understand order through: scholarship (Vitruvius) vs. empiricsm (what was in Rome
already): the “truth???”
Roman buildings: don’t match Vitruvius
The Colosseum would be confusing to him:
o Columns: front porches, flat wallpaper
o Orders aren’t doing structural work: instead they are decorative
Alberti and Beauty:
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What is good design? Use style in an authentic way… but what is authentic??
Beauty= powerful (preseves reputation): even protective
Alberti’s definition:
o Universal, important: lack = “offensive” (building without beauty is offensive)
 Poor values, disrespectful
o Beauty: objective, absolute: aesthetics “perfected” over time
o Harmony: proportion, geometry, bilateral symmetry
o Ornament: (he distinguishes this): added on, “complements” beauty (order)
Alberti’s designs: reveal his belief in geometry, proportion
o Building can be beautiful just with these two ideas
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“Beauty is that reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be
added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse.”
Ancient and Modern
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Renaissance style: modified hybrid
Blends orders, ancient models, and abstract ideas of harmony
Tempietto: old columns, new uses
o Serlio said it was “as good as the ancients”
o Bramante designed this in Rome
Classicism
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Ancient-style architecture = new “standard”
“Classic”: model, prototype that transcends time
Architectural classicism: follows ancient model
Power of association: banks and stability, treasure
W. Strickland, Second Bank of the U.S., Philadelphia, Doric Temple Style
Classical architecture: “outside” time and place
o Like a bank in a strip mall; takes you somewhere timeless and dignified
Mobile Architecture
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Books: take antiquity, All’antica style anywhere
Measured drawings = build your own classical temple!!!
Serlio’s most popular: the orders, ancient examples
Spread classicism to Northern Europe (esp. France): everyone needs to appreciate ancient
beauty… if you don’t its your fault!!!
France: Be Sure We’re Sure
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French: first to officially adopt new Italian style
Academy System: devoted to classical aesthetics
o Louis 14th: authority, image, certainty, eternity
 He wanted to be sure everyone knew he was in authority, look at his portrait!!!
o Vs: philosopher Rene Descartes: reason and truth, plain dude
o French adademies used TRUTH
The Rules
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Francois Blondel: first director, Academy of Architecture
Background: mathematician, engineer, classicist (NOT architect)
Course on Architecture (1675):
o All great architecture derives from classical tradition
 Greeks and Romans
o Bad: Medieval architecture, “individual fantasy”
o One valid standard of “universal beauty” through proportions
If you wanted a good building, follow the rules
One Small Problem
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Serlio: The Five Orders (1537)
Renaissance “doctrine”: five orders
But: published drawings inconsistent
French Academy said the Italains were wrong!
o King sends emissaries to measure (Italians = “unreliable”)
o French survey: still no “right” proportions
Was there a right way to ensure that beauty was as perfect as possible?
Perrault: WHO CARES!?
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Claude Perrault: doctor, scientist
Rational solution: use the average of all known examples, stop worrying if it’s perfect
Authority, perfection – impossible
Renaissance “antiquity”: vague, huge
French insistence on precision = uncertainty
Which antiquity?
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“Classical” becomes more complex during the 1700s
Birth of archaeology: scientific study of past
New access to Greece: a different classicism
o At least 2 very different and distinct flavors of classism
Classical Confusion
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Temple of the Olympian Zeus, Athens vs. Temple of Concordia, Akragas (Siciliy)
o Which of these temples is actually “Greek”
o The Roman one!! Oh shit
o Figuring out history: highly complicated!
The Best Art Ever
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Architecture, you have to understand which field you’re studying
Birth of Art History: analysis of style and culture …. Sculpture is huge here
Johann Winckelmann, German Librarian, curator of Vatican sculpture collection
History of Art of Antiquity (1764): Greek art = best
Seeks “ideal” vs. “natural”, imperfect beauty
Peak: 5th-4th C. BCE: “Classical” period
Hellenistic and Roman art: “Art of the Imitators”
Debate: Greece vs. Rome
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“Classicism”= not just one authoritative system; multiple, evolving uses of a flexible language
Two alternate, competing measures of beauty
Judging Classicism
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“Classical style” requires difficult decisions
Is there anything stable, absolute left to use?
What is really embodied by classical beauty?
What made something beautiful was its overall form
Classical Ideals
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Le Corbusier: obsessed with classicism, beauty, perfection
Goal: capture abstract aesthetic essence of classicism
Simple surfaces, pure volumes, harmonic proportions
He hated all the decorative stuff in architecture
“Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of volumes in light.” – Le Corbusier
Basically the Same
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Comparisons of Le Corbusier’s villa Garches and Palladio’s Villa Malcontenta from Colin Rowe,
“The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa”, 1947
Act of design was still pursuit of qualities that resonate with the eyes and soul
Beauty and Design
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Le Corbusier: beauty = result of “rationality” in design
Maillart: concrete bridge design = strictly economical
Saw the architect as an artist, their job was to make something beautiful, different
Beauty: formula, or instinct? What about creativity?