The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa - Colin Rowe

The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa

Colin Rowe

1976

For this week’s reading we explore the essay "The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa" by Colin Rowe, a Historian and Postmodern Theorist. The essay compares the works of Andrea Palladio and Le Corbusier.

The text first describes Palladio's "Villa Rotonda" in Vicenza, Northern Italy. Villa Rotonda (built between 1566  - 1571) is completely symmetrical, based upon a square plan, each of the four sides identical to one another, and each side having its own projecting portico. The building is the ideal centralized space, situated prominently upon the crest of a small hilltop in rural Italy.

In comparison to Villa Rotonda, Rowe describes Le Corbusier's "Savoye House", built in the 1930's and situated in Poissy, in the western suburbs of Paris. The Savoye House is described as a machine for living in, an arrangement of interpenetrating volumes and spaces, and an asymmetrical building in contrast to Palladio’s Villa Rotondo.

Palladio's landscape for Villa Rotonda is much more agrarian and bucolic than Le Corbusier’s Savoye House, and writing in other texts Palladio describes the "ideal life of the Villa".

Palladio believes that the owner of Villa Rotonda will enjoy and reflect on the geometric order and harmony established at the villa. Rowe quotes that "if architecture at the Rotonda forms the setting for the good life, at Poissy it is certainly the background for the lyrically efficient one".

Perhaps the most important comparison made between the two Architects works is the comparison of Palladio's "Villa Foscari" in Mira, near Venice, Italy, and Le Corbusier’s “Villa Stein” the house in which Le Corbusier designed for Mr and Mrs Michael Stein at Garches, in the western suburbs of Paris, in 1927.

Upon first viewing of these two buildings, they may seem so entirely unalike that to compare them against one another may seem fruitless. However, when looking at them in their simplest forms, as volumetric blocks, they display similar attributes in size - both blocks measuring 8 units in length, 5 units in depth, and 5 units in height. Furthermore, each building is set out on a similar grid with horizontal proportions of both buildings reading in sequences of 2,1,2,1,2. 

However, whilst there are similar proportions in the horizontal plains, the vertical plains front to back are somewhat different. With Villa Foscari reading 2, 2, 1.5 and Villa Stein reading 0.5,1.5,1.5,1.5,0.5, Le Corbusier's use of the half unit allows for compression of the central bay transferring interest elsewhere. Whilst Palladio secures a dominance for his central division with a progression towards the front portico, focusing attention on these two areas.

Palladio believes that the use of solid walls requires absolute symmetry, whereas Le Corbusier's use of a more framed structure allows for a more free-arrangement.

Rowe identifies another prominent distinction between the two buildings being the roofs, with Palladio's Villa Foscari forming a pyramid superstructure amplifying the volume of the house, Le Corbusier's flat roof, swiftly terminating the building's enclosure and perhaps diminishing from the house's volume?

The interesting idea demonstrated in Rowe’s writings is how forms we may think are very similar can end up being very different to one another once they have been separated and purposed. The key example of this being Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein and Palladio’s Villa Foscari, two very similar structural grids, but the use of solid walls, openings and supports can result in the two spaces feeling completely opposite from one another.

A Work or a Product? - Henri Lefebvre

The Production of Space

Henri Lefebvre

Social Space - Parts 1 & 2

In the Chapter "Social Space" of Henri Lefebvre’s book "The Production of Space", Lefebvre discusses the differences between a "Work" and a "Product". Lefebvre describes a Work as having something “Irreplaceable and unique about it" whereas a Product could "easily be reproduced exactly, and is in fact the result of repetitive acts and gestures".

When delving into some rather philosophical thinking, Lefebvre proposes that something is only a Work when it is not purposely trying to be a Work....

In fact the very purpose of attempting to create a Work results in, and detracts from achieving the creation of a “Work”. It is a ‘Work” because it simply is. Lefebvre uses the analogy of nature when proposing this idea.

Similarly  this reasoning can also be applied to Art.  The intent of creating Art actually detracts from the concept of “Art”.

Lefebrve quotes that “no work has ever been created as a work of art”, one can interpret this statement to mean that the inherent processes used in trying to create a work, will detract from the overall goal of achieving a work.

Lefebvre goes on to question whether “Art” as a specialised activity, has destroyed works and replaced them by in fact “Products” destined to be exchanged, traded, sought after, valued and reproduced. One example of this, may be the discovery of a beautifully decorative Vase. Let’s assume that once this vase was used with a purpose, but since its discovery it is now to be stored and observed in a Museum, where it has now become an object, only to be observed.

If it's functional use has stopped, has it has now become a product? An un-purposed, perhaps over valued (depending on how one assesses it’s “value”, if we are to associate its value to mere capital attribution alone?) object. That in turn, has now become linked with all kinds of attributions that society is now agreeing that this Vase warrants. Is it now a product of society?

If we took people away from this reasoning, the object would go back to being a Vase with a simple function. It is society that produces these assumptions and transforms the vase into something more. 

Another example of this might be a Cathedral, there is nothing holy or spiritual in the place materialistically, the stone it is constructed from may be no different from the stone quarried out of the earth for a Kitchen worktop somewhere. The important factor in which defines the Cathedral as being a "Holy or Spiritual" space would be the use, the way in which the building is used, respected and worshipped in. It is the activity space that makes the place holy or spiritual.

To summarise, Lefebvre proposes that the production of space is not by done through the craftsmanship or choice of materials, or even the arrangement of said materials. But rather through the qualities and feelings that our society will associate with places.  

Howl - Allen Ginsberg

Howl

By Allen Ginsberg

1955-1956

For Carl Soloman

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness"

Mad is certainly one way to describe this reading. With themes of free love, drugs and creative freedom the poem was extremely controversial for its time. The poem was branded as obscene upon release and the distribution of the poem was even prohibited! that was, until the decision was later overturned in court and the poem was declared to be of "redeeming social importance".

The poem is written in three distinct chapters that can be better interpreted upon multiple readings.

I

The first chapter describes his friends, the "angelheaded hipsters" and outcasts of society. Ginsburg expresses throughout this first section how these people have been damaged by their inability to conform to the conventional society of Post-War America.

II

The second chapter of the poem talks of a figure who is continually referred to as “Moloch"

“Moloch whose love is oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the spectre of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch. Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!”

Moloch is portrayed as a force of evil and can be interpreted as Capitalism or the indeed the Establishment. Moloch is referenced as Banks, Oil, Electricity and Stone, all prominent items within our society and of Capitalism.

III

The third and last chapter is a much more personal addition to the poem, speaking to Carl Soloman (of whom the poem is dedicated to). Ginsberg met Soloman when he was admitted to the Columbia Psychological Institution in 1949, although he refers to the institution as Rockland in the poem.

The poem is now frantically  building up to a crescendo, in which each line  builds upon the previous line, the poem can be interpreted as taking the reader on a journey in to Carl Soloman's madness, perhaps a metaphor of Ginsburg and Soloman's relationship.  

Ginsburg gives a deep and meaningful social commentary through Howl, and more specifically expresses his views against it. Today Ginsberg is widely recognised as a prominent figure for the Beat Generation and one of America's most highly regarded poets. 

Geothe's Faust: The Tragedy of Development

Goethe’s Faust: The Tragedy of Development

Marshall Berman: All that is Solid Melts into Air

First told as Johann Spiess’s “Faustbuch” of 1587, and again the following year in Christoper Marlowe’s “Tragical History of Doctor Faustus”, there has been many adaptions of this iconic story, however the adaption that this text will be following will be the one written as a play by Johann Wolfgang von Geothe, commonly known as “Geothe’s Faust”, first published in 1808. It is often referred to as Faust Part 1 and Faust Part 2.

In the commentary provided in Marshall Berman’s “All that is Solid Melts into Air” the story of Faust can be traced through three metamorphoses:

·        The Dreamer

·        The Lover

·        The Developer

The Dreamer

The story starts with the Dreamer, Faust is a middle-aged man with no partner nor children, he finds himself detached from the world. As a doctor, Faust becomes depressed as he starts to doubt himself, his purpose, and his work. Feeling as though he has killed more people than he has saved, Faust conjures up some spirits through the use of magic.

Faust conjures a spirit named Mephistopheles who is commonly understood to be the devil.  

The Lover

In the second metamorphoses "The Lover", Faust meets Gretchen whom he develops a bond with. Gretchen can be seen as a representation of everything Faust has left behind.

Gretchens's brother Valentin (a soldier who is described as mean and vain) becomes jealous of Gretchen. However Faust's and Gretchen's love does not last.

The Developer

After the ending of his love with Gretchen, Faust becomes depressed and feels isolated again, not knowing what he will do next.

Faust starts developing an area of land but finds resistance in an elderly couple who decline his offers of compensation if they were to move. Faust is unable to fully achieve his new creation. However Faust in his fury tells Mephistopheles to get rid of the couple by any means, but does not want to know the details of how this is accomplished. When Mephistopheles returns and tells Faust that he killed the couple Faust is angry and feels upset with what has happened and banishes Mephistopheles.

After all this has come to pass Faust is visited by three spectres: Need, Want, Guilt and Care. Faust succeeds in driving the first three spectres away but cannot escape the fourth of these ghosts, being Care. After all he has accomplished Faust cannot bear to confront anything that might cast shadow upon his work.