Perspective, Projections and Design: Technologies of Architectural Representation (review)

In their introduction to Perspective, Projections and Design: Technologies of Architectural Representation, Mario Carpo and Frédérique Lemerle note that the essays in this book were prompted by the awareness of an extended field of interaction between the new digital technologies of vision and the history of perspectival representations. Overall, the 14 chapter essays, which are presented in chronological order, examine various aspects of image-making technologies, geometrical knowledge and tools for architectural design, focusing in particular on two historical periods (the Renaissance and the contemporary rise of digital technologies), both of which are marked by comparable patterns of technological and cultural change. The range is impressive. Jeanne Peiffer offers a compelling discussion on how 16th-century craftsmen in Nuremberg, notably Hirshvogel and Lencker, claimed to draw inspiration from Dürer and yet developed a radically different relationship to geometry. Thierry Mandoul looks at how August Choisy's axonometric drawings generated images of global synthesis by combining the plan, elevation and section of a building into a single view. Phillippe Potié's article on Sebastiano Serlio, which equates the shapes of the baroque with the generative power of computer software, proposing that the work of the 17th century will help us grasp the transformations now occurring in contemporary architecture, is complemented by an article on Serlio by Sabine Frommel and Pietro Roccasecca. Particularly thought provoking are the several articles that articulate how recently developed tools for digital imaging offer new ways to investigate and analyze traditional perspectival renderings. I was also taken with the papers that asked whether digital image-making technologies are creating a new visual environment that is an alternative to, rather than an enhancement of, the perspectival model that characterized the visual culture of the West from the Renaissance to our present day.

One extraordinary contribution that I am still pondering is "The Theory and Practice of Perspective in Vitruvius' De architectura," by Pierre Gros, which opens the collection. This fascinating look at Vitruvius, a Roman writer, architect and engineer who lived in the 1st century BC, emphasizes that in reading him today we must assess his actual practice without key visual materials, because none of the drawings in the treatise have survived. (No doubt there were few illustrations to begin with, since there are few references to them in the work.) Despite our lack of sketches by Vitruvius's hand, Gros carefully argues that researchers today have given the vanishing point too much importance when evaluating Vitruvius' contributions. The interpretation of Vitruvius's idea of Taxis (or organization), which essentially deals with the ground-plan, elevation and perspective, is at issue. Vitruvius says that the groundplan is made by the proper successive use of compasses and a ruler, by which we get outlines for the plane surfaces of buildings. The elevation is a picture of the front of a building, set upright and properly drawn in the proportions of the contemplated work. The perspective is a depiction of the front with the sides receding into the distance, the lines converging at the circular center. Although some say that Vitruvius's analysis expresses the concept of the unified vanishing point, and perhaps far more accurately than any writer of the Quattrocento, Gros holds that this architect used the vanishing point to draw a three-dimensional image of a building but not to unify the diversity of depicted objects within a geometricized space, and that the common interpretation reveals the anachronistic nature of any attempt to endow ancient theory or practice with a perspective system heralding the one employed by architects and humanists of the 15th century. An author can only cover a limited amount in an article and, in this chapter, I was often disappointed to find that fascinating ideas were summarized in a sentence or two, with footnotes pointing readers to sources where they can find more details. As a...