Architecture as Drawing

Author(s): Alberto Perez-Gomez

Source: JAE, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter, 1982), pp. 2-7
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1424613
Accessed: 23-03-2020 21:15 UTC

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 ARCHITECTURE AS DRAWING

O
LZl Lt o TE zRo. 6
Ctr -Y" Fort rta it; .** * srara , ';b* '
During lld s ori;fteC
thearchitectur
Renaissanc in@". ;. dq
Alberto Perez-Gomez studied
M adua atwswdta con etrvecCbia. L4 patti lguala B, 1 la Chief di San Pietro in moffieerio/Ro-
rvdi RnO.W&Lparte r ta.4A, i " tbieff Vrccbid.Zefia parse di mt e xdxNqs cofs ardl' Bra-
Mexico and received liberal
maxt?, es acemmoda~dtom topera tccbtA . L parse feguata C, dnota vns loggia con qxtro ca. a Ph.D.art
in History and
because it w
1pellette x gh aoli. La parte D, d cortitle. La prte E, I xo tetmpiettoplqpale feceldre prefa.

rdqofTheory fromcol : the

acRd,University
nRoactivity of
of Essex, Engla
the intellect
to Ifamar. t le. L m f p, del x d Ym/a forma nhele leguesti car.
cc j r , d.ns"e qno. D pjta not diCeo
folanceitt
[er~tsrc.
it I b hfated per He dell&
is quafe
I'i'meit?, currently an Associate
tlarcuettto fipotry Professor
mathematics. of
Disegno
Architecture at the University ordering ofof Houston.
the lines a
book Architecture and the
the Crisis"Image"
mind." of Modernen
Science (MIT Press) will appear
thought, in concepti
and July 19
ciated with the newly
g ? ebe
PC s The distance
betweenasarchitectural
a magus.7 The drawin
"im
X
and building has always
turalbeen opaquethe
idea (from and ro

0a?~ ambiguous. Indeed, much

strictof
etymological
the confusion
"semblance,"
faced by contemporary architectsand
sen
and"for
edu
seems to be linked toalso analogous in deriv
a misunderstanding
drawing as a tool of to "species" This
reduction. (from spe
article
attempt to cast somealludes
light upon
to the
this
original
proble
examining historical order
evidenceof that will
reality lead
Thus
0b
a discussion of prevalent prejudices
to embody which
a transcend
hamper our perceptionrical)
of order,
modern in accorda
architect
true potential. Aristotelian hierarchy

%cu
Vitruvius understood While the traditional
drawing, at best, asb
(from of
minor part of the practice the Greek poesi
architecture,
thoughts
"theory" explained "the into building
productions of arch
tecture on the tion of
principles of proportion."'
an operational g
Al
as we know, was the sense of distinguish
first to giving human be
structure reality), the constituen
design
as the two Renaissanand
The plan of Bramante's Toempietto in the courtyard of S. Pietro
parts ofthis
in Montorio, Rome. Serlio reproduced architecture. the
original "idea" necessarily
The
in his opening "abstr
pages
De Re Aedificatoria
treatise Architettura et Prospettiva openings,
(1519), in spite of contend
the fact and design
that columns co
sists
that only the central structure "inactually
(E) was a right and by
built. means
exact of plans
adapting and(ich
joi
together the lines and (orthographia),
angles which and pro
comp
defining the urban con
and form the face of the building":' The ro
of design was "to appoint through to "images,"
the edificethean
its parts their traditional
proper sense of pl
places, determinate
number, just thatand
proportion spoke to man
beautiful abo
order
Design, however, was understanding of life
in Alberti's mind "in
arable from matter",beyond
so thatmedieval
drawing determ
was p
never in
ceived as the embodiment ofcontradiction
architectural
of Creation.
distinct from perspectives that represented
painting), the reality of a building.5
Renaissance architectural drawing was per-
ceived as a symbolic intention to be fulfilled
in the building, while remaining an autonomous
realm of expression. Hence, the building, i.e.,
meaning given in the immediacy of embodied
perception, was always accepted as primary.
Instead of dictating a set of instructions that
were to be actualized by implementing neutral
technological processes, the architect, still
primarily a builder, knew that the "distance"
between idea and matter, between design and
construction, would be reconciled through his
own involvement in building. In Filarete's

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 H
tIir o #s Coy bo. 14
r

Trattato, for example, Platonic overtones as a neutral collection of information for its
notwithstanding, the architect was well aware construction. The road was certainly open for
that the building would change in the course of the transformation of the builder into an effi- r?ur

construction, and that it could be enriched and cient designer, capable of controlling practice ?r

even improved.8 The primacy of synesthetic, through prescriptive methods and precise draw- i
i

embodied perception was recognized. Nothing ings. But the transformation did not happen ?Itll
r I:
can replace the meaning of experiencing a overnight. Perhaps more importantly, this
building, regardless of how sophisticated the historical evidence shows that the perception I r\t ll\I I ---Y
reduction of a building into other mediums of theory as method, and of drawing as its tool ;Lf j I
i nr \i
might appear. Phenomenological psychology of reduction, should not be taken for granted.
I
teaches us that such embodied experience is Only modern architects after Durand have i
r

the ground for all other perception of meaning. assumed such a role of drawing as primary ii I I i
I~ I I ri II II i

and unquestionable. i t
i II ii ii I 1
In La Pratica della Perspettiva (1569), Daniele i II II ;I I I

Barbaro, the philosopher and mathematician, Toward the end of the 18th century Gaspard i
I i i II II ii I I r
friend and patron of Palladio, made some inter- Monge developed his descriptive geometry, r

esting comments about Vitruvius's architectural which became a basic discipline of Durand's E

~t I

"ideas" Barbaro emphatically disagreed with school, the Ecole Polytechnique. The problem i
t

the claim that linear perspective (perspectiva of describing an object through its projections
artificialis), along with plan (ichnographia) and on three planes had been a concern of archi- I

elevation (orthographia), was one of the archi- tects before Monge, but the invention of "-t ..
i

I
tectural ideas referred to by Vitruvius in the descriptive geometry was more than a systema- r

second chapter of his Book One." The inter- tization of known methods. Descriptive geometry t ~llc~- ~U
t

pretation of Vitruvius's sciographia remains opened the way for a functionalization of the i

problematic, and the most sensible commenta-
tors and translators of the text have always
struggled with the passage.10 It is clear that
Vitruvius was not referring to linear perspective,
but rather to a perception of the building's
totality in depth, a view which reconciled the
internal and external orders, the plan and the
elevation. Vitruvius had posited his three
"ideas" as the means of expression of archi-
tectural order or disposition, and Barbaro
contended that sciographia should not be
misunderstood as scenographia, or stage
design, which was the true province of perspec-
tive. Instead, he proposed adding the section or
profile to the plan and to the elevation that
had been recommended by Vitruvius.
For the most part, 17th century architects
"lived world," i.e., for the inception of non-
ITirr(r
Euclidean geometries. It became an effective
instrument of power, and an absolutely essential
tool of precision during the Industrial Revolu- SSerlio's illustration for a perspective construction. His treatise,
Architettura et Prosp-ettiva (1519), was the first book on archi-
tion. The original architectural ideas were
tectural theory to include a chapter on perspective.
transformed into universal projections that
could then, and only then, be perceived as
reductions of buildings, creating the illusion of
drawing as a neutral tool that communicates
unambiguous information, like scientific prose.
Don't we even today see architectural educators
stand in front of projects in a review and ignore
architectural ideas, pretending instead to
criticize "buildings," assuming that it is pos-
sible to predict their objective meaning?14
Although seemingly reacting against the "engi- .. .
neers" of the Ecole Polytechnique, professors Wit/.

continued to distinguish between architecture,
which depended upon geometrical operations
and combinations, and perspective, which acted
as a tool of illusionism." Perhaps only in the
early 18th century treatise of Ferdinando Galli-
Bibiena was the task of the architect identified
with that of the stage designer.12 The ambiguity
concerning the use of perspective as a means
to embody an architectural intention is ex-
tremely revealing. During the Renaissance
drawing could be more or less precise, making
sometimes use of tools like grids or scales,13
but the drawing was evidently not perceived as
a "picture" of the building, as its reduction, or
and students at the Ecole des Beaux Arts
regarded drawing as an implicit manifestation
of descriptive geometry. This understanding
has always been taken for granted and makes ii
for a crucial and extremely complex problem.
The depth and extension of its ramifications
can be grasped by remarking its connection i \\ ?
to what Edmund Husserl described as the
crisis of European science,'5 and to the incep-
tion of non-Euclidean geometries in the early
19th century. Il Cylindrical anamorphosis of S. Franci
Curious Perspective (1638), showing the
perspective as a tool of illusionism.

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 Euclidean
and Cass
intuition
are impr
S,. \'""*S~
An
realm of
purely o
reality o
tution o
.. ?L-- i i.. laws of o
have sta
not fully
drawing
? :.i .. ",:i~" "' ." '- '..t / X \ " projectiv
"figure"
ceived as
1 0.41: cisely be
??~ ~ "~;:c-?J' c?' / / '
Even dur
?~ , ,. , \I.. ,, tactile p
had prim
tivism as

When pe
to becom
.... ? .. t -2.: ,. ' - of the E
. . 4 ...... . 7., 7,_ %; ---" ' . the Baro

.~.... ?1
,
....- r ,. ..
/ ".4 garden.
perspect

j"l l .. ? ., . It, I.I I , .-<_... - , , - ,. parallel l

i ... ij i
of algeb
".~ ~~~~~ ~~ ., ., ", , , ? ? |., . . .. . ...... systems
1. 7 U1tr~-
I ?A, identical
gous wit
homoge
figures l
its geom
. . ..
of transf

The mod
reductio
implicati
ing scien
architec
carpente
ing draw
SSection of Guarini's ch
treatise having
Architettura tC
depended on the combi
itself.20
and its stability.
contemp
ture and
prejudic
who reg

Durand w
of descr
In his le
declared
as long a

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nomic manner the pragmatic requirements for
shelter. This amounted to a denial of symbolic
order as the crux of architecture. For Durand,
the building had to provide maximum pleasure
with minimum means. In his Precis, myth and
metaphysical concerns were excluded from
architectural theory, and architecture became a
game of formal combinations facilitated by the
grid of his "mechanism of composition."21
Thus, design was, in essence, a logic devoid of
absolute meaning, in which only the syntax of
style could be controlled by reason.
Modern "professional architects" have taken
for granted Durand's understanding of "design"
as reduction. Consequently, they continue to
create mute and uninteresting functional build-
ings. One follows from the other: the means are
not neutral. What is inessential, in fact, is
whether the material skin of a building is gothic,
classical, a melange of styles, or a denial of
styles. The Beaux Arts tradition was as rooted
in functionalism as the Bauhaus, if one under-
stands functionalism as a reductionistic
attitude, whereby architecture is the function
of a combination of variables, i.e., the mathe-
matization of human needs and values.22 This
issue is more profound than "post-modern"
architects seem to suspect. And although the
belief in a one-to-one correspondence between
the drawing and the building is ludicrous, con-
fusion has prevailed.
The true architect's concern for meaning cannot
be properly embodied in a drawing whose
explicit or implicit role is the reduction or
"picture" of a building. Drawing must serve as
the expression of a symbolic intention in the
form of architectural ideas. Because very few
architects in the last two hundred years have
made their own buildings, the importance of
drawing has been emphasized. Architects have
been either unable to build a symbolic order,
or have intentionally avoided building because
a) they did not comprehend their primordial role
as makers of a symbolic order, hence their
willingness to accept the irrelevant task of
filling the world with sterile and inhuman struc-
tures dictated by consumerism or economics;
and b) because society is apparently not inter-
ested in a symbolic order. Individuals seem
capable of postponing ad infinitum their press-
ing existential problems, living instead under
the illusion of absolute rationality, without
sight of objectives, and focusing only on the
efficiency of means.
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The rejection of reductionism in architecture
. . . .... ...... . ...... .. . .. ... .. ..
must bring about a recognition of the value of ! " " " vD \' T E M P i. I, F. V .ES. . -A K (0 l .
theoretical projects as drawing (or model):
projects which, by definition, question the
possibility of their execution in a prosaic world.
Prior to Piranesi, Boullde and Ledoux, this
"t t
notion of a theoretical project would not have
made sense. During the 18th century, reason
became powerful but never excluded myth. The
natural philosophy of Newton, prototype of all
knowledge, was ultimately motivated by the
possibility of the revelation of God through a
better understanding of His works.23 Art, poetry,
and science therefore, were not contradictory.
All disciplines were envisioned against the
same epistemological horizon dependent on a
belief in a harmonious, rational cosmos, re-
vealed to man through the perception of Nature.
After Durand, the reconciliation between form
and content became the paradigmatic problem
for architects concerned with meaning. Abso-
lute validity of any one style was questioned
and architecture was reduced to its pragmatic
function, that is, the making of material
commodities. The architect was thus forced to
choose between art and science, between the SA typical plate from A. Desgodetz's Les Edifices Antiques de
Rome (1682) illustrating the full architectural "idea" of a
false extreme of an absolute objectivity Roman building.
(universal mathematical reason) or that of an
absolute subjectivity (personal poetic myth).
The history of Western architecture in the last
two hundred years is thus a description of how
architects have tried to come to terms with
this issue. Clearly, an architecture gnawed down
to its bones, one that speaks only about tech-
nological process and not about human values
has often been deemed unacceptable, by both
architects and society at large. True, architects
have often added "referential" ornament to
their buildings, trying to make their utilitarian
and deterministic structures more "human',"
but the success of such buildings has been, at
best, partial: witness the irreconcilable contra-
dictions evident from Labrouste's Biblioteque
Ste. Genevieve to post-modernism. If the solu-
tion is not the abstract order of technology, it is
also not embellishment.
Meaning, we must remember, is given in per-
ception; it is not a product of "association"'
Phenomenological studies have shown that
meaning is not primarily or solely an intellectual
construct.24 Architecture is an order that
addresses our ambiguous, finite, human reality,
it is not merely a vehicle for scientific "truths"
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 The technological world-view can easily deny
The paradox here is that architecture, by defini-
-A'
the necessity of architecture as a symbolic
tion, is both abstract, and a mimesis of a trans-
order. But human reality is ambiguous. Irrespec-
cendental reality. But modern man has generally
T ,1

tive of how long modern man may wish to post-

denied myth and poetry as the primordial reve-
lation of reality We have become insensitivepone coming to terms with Being, with the
F oG. 1.2 le FIG. 1.2.1d
. ~

meaning of his existence, and regardless of

and blind, preferring the logical explanation of
vp
how long he may wish to conceal emptiness
science simply because it is the source of tech-
nological power. Durand, for one, ridiculed the
with the illusion of progress, he must ultimately
x traditional concept of the column as the bodyconfront
of his limits: the dilemma of his finite
life and his power to embody divinity. The
man, pointing out that it was nothing more than
v B ASHT perception of meaning remains universal, and
a cylinder of matter. Our modern world is super-
FIG. 1.2.1e FiG. 1.2.1f
ficially rational and deterministic, embodying man's humanity endures through the crisis.
What then must the architect's attitude be?
technological utopia; it constitutes no place for
humanity. Our cities represent chaos rather than
The orthogonal planes and quadrants of descriptive geometry
order, our structures restrict freedom rather Traditionally, the abstract Euclidean order put
which allow for a reduction of three-dimensional reality into a
than enhance it.
system of coordinates and their manipulation independently forward by the architect possessed an inter-
from intuition, from R.G. Robertson's Descriptive Geometry subjective dimension. Today, however, abstrac-
(by courtesy of Sir Issac Pitman and
In view ofSons
all thisLtd.).
it is crucial tion in art is often identified with hermetic,
to recognize the
role of drawing as the embodiment of architec- solipsistic intentions. Although it is true that
tural ideas. In a manner of speaking, particularly
even numbers (the epitome of the ideal) are
after Durand, the drawing is the architecture,necessarily "colored,' and that most specific
a priviledged vehicle for expressing architec- phenomena are taken in perception within a
tural intentions: intentions that are poetic in framework of categories, in the last two hun-
a profound traditional sense, as poesis, as dred years architects concerned with meaning
symbol making. Such architectural drawings have had to take to the extremes. This is,
may assume the character of poetic images indeed, a condition derived from the crisis itself,
.. TT: "
T~r ....I ft
-7
generated by a metaphor, by a program that and carries with it the dangers implied in exces-
embodies an understanding of dwelling, like sive abstraction (art for artists, excessive
1 .:L - . i+t
John Hejduk's projects for Venice. Or they mayoriginality, criticism rather than poetry) or in its
criticize architectural ideas and the abstractdenial (art for society, excessive referentiality,
elements of architecture (e.g., plans, sections,
communication rather than poetry). The tradi-

1:7 1- 7-1- - tional middle ground where the ideal and the
elevations, or projections). This is the point of
Daniel Libeskind's Micromegas. The perception real, the intellectual and the bodily articulations
were reconciled, seems today incapable of
of such theoretical projects as self-referential
being the source and origin of architectural
can only occur if the reality of architecture past
and present is assumed to be the banal re- symbolic intentions. Man is either too insensi-
ductionism and pragmatic materialism that I tive or too humane.
Plate from Durand's Prcis showing the grid of his "mechanism
of composition" and his method of combinations.
have criticized.
The architect seems condemned to make either
The Vitruvian "ideas" cannot be implemented poetic (perhaps romantic) drawings or critical
today as if they had always been anonymous(perhaps senseless) ones. The risk is the pro-
duction of either screaming, an excessive
projections in a conceptual space, as if descrip-
tive geometry and our perspective world had dependence on context (the embodied world of
always existed. Nor can the modern architect man), and an unwarranted faith in the possibility
deny the power of abstraction or ignore the endof meaning-in-the-world, or babbling, an exces-
sive independence from context and an unwar-
of the traditional world. This paradoxical power
has led the modern "architect" to an effective ranted faith in the impossibility of meaningless
abstraction. When a romantic or surreal project
technological domination of building, to irrele-
is imagined in the world, often its intended
vant formal manipulations and to city planning.
meaning is lost. Does "collage" make sense in
Nonetheless, our rationality is also part of our
humanity, as well as the paradigm of modernour contradictory urban environments? Is poetry,
art: the necessary means for revealing a trulyin fact, still possible after Hiroshima? Isn't
modern architecture. metaphor anachronistic or, at best, irrelevant
now that the ultimate referential ground, the
cosmos, has been eliminated? By the same
token, a drawing about ideas runs the risk of

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 a
Notes Additional Suggested Readings

becoming a hermetic language, like much serial
music or abstract painting, which is removed
from the primary realm of experience, from the
shared world in which meaning is grounded.
Regardless of such boundaries, these two alter-
natives seem to be the only way of making
architecture. Ironically, these are the very
alternatives explored by modern art, but which
1 Vitruvius Pollio (Marcus) The Ten Books on Architecture
Dover Publications (New York) 1960, P.5.
2 Alberti, Leone Battista De Re Aedificatoria Tiranti (London)
1955, P.2.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Compare De Re Aedificatoria with Alberti's On Painting and
On Sculpture (London) 1972.
6 Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria, P.2.
7 See, for example, Agrippa Cornelius De Occulta Philosophia
(Antwerp) 1531.
Bannan, John The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty Hartcourt,
Brace and World (New York) 1967.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg Reason in the Age of Science MIT Press
(Cambridge, Mass.) 1981.
Holt, Elizabeth A Documentary History of Art Doubleday (New
York) 1957, vol. 3. This volume contains translated excerpts
from the primary sources quoted in the article.
Ivins, William Art and Geometry Dover (New York) 1964.

are seldom understood by architects. By
accepting the status quo of the architectural
practitioner and the "reality" of drawing as a
referential tool, one rejects architecture's place
8 Averlino, Antonio (11 Filarete) Tratatto diArchitettura II
Polifilo (Milan) 1972, P. 504.
9 Barbaro, Daniele La Pratica della Perspettiva Arnaldo Forni
(Sala Bolognese) 1980, PP 129-130.
10 See, for example, Fabio Calvo Ravennate's manuscript,
Heidegger, Martin Basic Writings Harper and Row (New York)
1977, chapters VI, VII and VIII.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice The Primacy of Perception Northwestern

as a primordial cultural institution, as the printed in Vitruvio e Raffaello Officina Edizioni (Rome) 1975, University Press (Evanston) 1964, chapters 2 and 5.
PP. 78-79.
embodiment of a pre-intellectual order whose
11 See Guarini, Guarino Architettura Civile II Polifilo (Milan) Merleau-Ponty, Maurice Sense and Non-Sense Northwestern
task is nothing more and nothing less than the University Press (Evanston) 1964, chapters 1 and 4.
1968, P. 242 ff. The first edition of this work was published
perpetuation of culture and its coherence. in Turin, 1737.
12 Galli-Bibiena, Ferdinando L Architettura Civile Benjamin Vycinas, Vincent Greatness and Philosophy Martinus Nijhoff

Our collective illusion is a reality that we take
for granted, a Platonic world devoid of mystical
connotations that Plato himself would have
repudiated. Can reality simply be our technolog-
ical non-sense? This was the question already
Blom (New York) 1971. First published in Parma, 1711. (The Hague) 1966.
13 This is clear in Filarete's treatise and in some of Antonio
da Sangallo's drawings for St. Peter's. See Thoenes, Christof
"St. Peter's: First Sketches," Daidalos 5, (September
1982), P. 81.
14 1 discuss this extensively in Architecture and the Crisis of

addressed by Piranesi, Boulle, and Ledoux Modern Science, Part IV.

during the 18th century. Particularly the two
French architects were explicit in their rejection
of mathematical reason as the structure of
architectural theory.25 Betraying an authentic
existential anguish, they struggled to transform
theory into an explicit metaphysics that ex-
plained the meaning of architecture through a
poetic discourse. Their drawings constituted a
set of theoretical projects that they assumed
to be true architecture, in opposition to their
actual buildings. Not surprisingly, both archi-
tects felt that architecture was deeply akin to
painting. Thus architecture became primarily the
making of the drawing (or the model), the same
poetic act that has always magically revealed
the truth of reality: a process similar to the
gnostic search for truth by the enlightened
architect. The true architect must pursue either
of two parallel alternatives in the hope of find-
ing a point of reconciliation: he must be a born
gnostic or a born phenomenologist. And when
the architecture of the modern world is built,
15 Husserl, Edmund The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology Northwestern University
Press (Evanston) 1970; and L'Origine de la Geometrie
Presses Universitaires de France (Paris) 1974.
16 Ortega y Gasset, Jos6 La Idea de PrinCipio en Leibniz Revista
de Occidente (Madrid) 1967, vol. I and Cassirer, Ernst The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Yale University Press (New
Haven) 1972. vol. 2, Part II.
17 Even geometricians found it impossible to prove the limita-
tions of Euclid's postulate during the 18th century. See
Saccheri, G. Euclides ab omni naevo. English translation
(London) 1920.
18 The basic principle of Poncelet's projective geometry had
been discovered in the 17th century by Girard Desargues.
See his Oeuvres (Paris) 1864. Desargues's work was never
understood by his contemporaries.
19 Poncelet, Jean-Victor Traite des Proprietes Projectives des
Figures (Paris) 1822.
20 This is very clear in Rondelet, Jean Traite Theorique et
Pratique del I'Art de Batir 3 vols. (Paris) 1830.
21 Durand, Jacques-Nicolas-Louis Precis de Leqons
dArchitecture 2 vols. (Paris) 1819.
22 This understanding of functionalism as an exclusive charac-
teristic of modern architecture is discussed extensively in
my forthcoming book. Toward the mid-19th century Gottfried
Semper would actually use the analogy of an equation to
illustrate the process of solving an architectural problem.

it will be (as it has been in exceptional cases)
founded upon the convergence of these two
perspectives: a future overlapping of poetry
and criticism, M
23 See Gay, Peter The Enlightenment An Interpretation 2 vols.
Wildwood House (London) 1973, vol. 2, PP. 126-166.
24 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice Phenomenology of Perception
Routledge and Kegan Paul (London) 1970, see especially
parts I and II.
25 Boull~e, Etienne-Louis Architecture. Essai sur I'Art Miroirs
de L'Art (Paris) 1968; and Ledoux, Claude-Nicholas
L 'Architecture Consideree sous le Rapport de L 'Art des
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