AGAINST THE CLASSICIST PARADIGM

Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation marks the boundary between the classical and modern paradigms of architectural knowledge. Since the Italian Renaissance, the reciprocity between structure, function, and art in architecture had always been problematic. Yet, up until the eighteenth century, architectural theorists broadly agreed on Vitruvius' dictum that architecture “must be built with due reference to durability, convenience, and beauty.” With classical treatises, the Vitruvian trinity portrayed architecture as an objective system. The most important element of this doctrine was the belief that all architectural forms and relations were rooted in the imitation of nature.

Economic and intellectual upheavals during the eighteenth century recast the foundations of architectural knowledge from objective nature to the subjective mind. Individual drives and behavior were increasingly studied as the key to understanding architectural form. The Vitruvian trinity, however, did not work as well as a mirror of the human mind as it did of nature. By Schopenhauer's time, in the wake of new discourses on utility and pleasure, rule and imagination, and cognition and perception, the Vitruvian trinity began to seem outdated. The modern aesthetic brought down architecture's classical edifice. In particular, Schopenhauer's aesthetic annexed architecture to the subjective Will and in turn redefined the classical notions of function, beauty, and structure.

Working from the non-instrumental framework developed within late eighteenth-century German philosophy, Schopenhauer denied artistic meaning to architecture's functional role.