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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Note on Dates and Translations
- Abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION: CHALLENGES OF ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
- 1 THE IDEAS OF ARCHITECTURE
- 2 VISION AND SPATIAL REPRESENTATION
- 3 THE GENESIS OF SCALE DRAWING AND LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
- 4 ARCHITECTURAL VISION
- Excursus: Envisioning Cosmic Mechanism in Plato and Vitruvius
- Appendix A Analysis of the Dimensions of the Blueprint for Entasis at Didyma
- Appendix B Analysis of the Hypothetical Working Drawing for Platform Curvature at Segesta
- Appendix C Analysis of the Hypothetical Working Drawing for Platform Curvature in the Parthenon
- Notes
- References
- Index
4 - ARCHITECTURAL VISION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Note on Dates and Translations
- Abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION: CHALLENGES OF ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
- 1 THE IDEAS OF ARCHITECTURE
- 2 VISION AND SPATIAL REPRESENTATION
- 3 THE GENESIS OF SCALE DRAWING AND LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
- 4 ARCHITECTURAL VISION
- Excursus: Envisioning Cosmic Mechanism in Plato and Vitruvius
- Appendix A Analysis of the Dimensions of the Blueprint for Entasis at Didyma
- Appendix B Analysis of the Hypothetical Working Drawing for Platform Curvature at Segesta
- Appendix C Analysis of the Hypothetical Working Drawing for Platform Curvature in the Parthenon
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
One of the chief aims of Vitruvius' treatise was to convey that architectura is more than a practical pursuit. In the words of Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, rather, it is “an expression of deep rational structures, of ordinatio and dispositio, of eurythmia and symmetria, that can give to the built environment a logic and order that is underpinned by the deeper logic and order of nature.” There is no reason to doubt that Vitruvius himself truly believed in this view of architecture and the ordering power of the procedures and principles of Greek origin (ordinatio, dispositio, eurythmia, and symmetria) of which architecture consists. Yet Vitruvius likely would have been surprised by the present study's suggestion that the structures and mechanisms of nature reflected in architecture were born of a particular way of seeing that itself came into being largely through repeated habits of drawing in the art of building. This final chapter continues this theme by focusing on Vitruvius' writing about the Greek methods and criteria of good drawing that define the ideai of architecture (ichnography, elevation drawing, and linear perspective) and the observable presence of these qualities in the physical products of the techniques that produced them. Lastly, it briefly addresses the shaping of space in Hellenistic and Roman buildings and complexes as an outcome of a particular kind of vision in the architecture leading towards and postdating Vitruvius.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Art of Building in the Classical WorldVision, Craftsmanship, and Linear Perspective in Greek and Roman Architecture, pp. 142 - 174Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011