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Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order
This fascinating introduction to classical art and architecture is the first book to investigate the way classical buildings are put together as formal structures. It researches the generative rules, the poetics of composition that classical architecture shares with classical music, poetry, and drama, and is enriched by a variety of examples and an extensive analysis of compositional rules. The 205 line drawings make up a discourse of their own, a pictorial text that serves as an introductory theory of composition or basic design aid. Drawing from Vitruvius, the poetics of Aristotle, the theories of classical architecture, music, and poetry since the Renaissance, and the poetics of the Russian formalists, the authors present classical architecture as a coherent system of architectural thinking that is capable of producing a tragic humanistic discourse, a public art with critical, moral, and philosophical meaning.
- GenresArchitecture
306 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 5, 2021
“in the writings of the Renaissance, this anthropomorphic aspect of classical architecture frequently becomes, one might say, eroticized, the object of carnal desire. Poliphilo, the hero of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna, is infatuated with the proportions of the portal of a temple because they remind him of his beloved, Polia. Consumed with passion, he is irresistibly drawn to penetrate, as he says, the orifice (p. ciiii). More recently, Paul Valery (1921) places into the architect Eupalinos's mouth the following declaration:
Unbeknownst to all, this delicate temple is the mathematical image of a young maiden of Corinth whom I once sweetly loved. It faithfully re- produces her particular proportions. It feels alive to me.
A certain degree of erotic content can be read into the very names, clearly of anthropomorphic origin, of some of the members of the genera. The concrete forms of the genera themselves might appear no less suggestive: the thickening and the thinning of the fleshlike little waves of matter on a Lesbian cymation; the shallowly grooved cylin- ders of the coluinns; the gently curved ovolo and apophyge, swollen as if by smooth caressing. Indeed, if one leans against a column on a summer afternoon, it really can make the heart quiver, the skin tighten, the cheeks flush, breathing quicken.�
Unbeknownst to all, this delicate temple is the mathematical image of a young maiden of Corinth whom I once sweetly loved. It faithfully re- produces her particular proportions. It feels alive to me.
A certain degree of erotic content can be read into the very names, clearly of anthropomorphic origin, of some of the members of the genera. The concrete forms of the genera themselves might appear no less suggestive: the thickening and the thinning of the fleshlike little waves of matter on a Lesbian cymation; the shallowly grooved cylin- ders of the coluinns; the gently curved ovolo and apophyge, swollen as if by smooth caressing. Indeed, if one leans against a column on a summer afternoon, it really can make the heart quiver, the skin tighten, the cheeks flush, breathing quicken.�
April 11, 2012
A serviceable introduction to classical architecture that is, sadly, dry as toast.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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