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.