architectural representation beyond perspectivism

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Architectural Representation beyond Perspectivism

Author(s): Alberto Prez-Gmez and Louise Pelletier

Source: Perspecta, Vol. 27, (1992), pp. 21-39

Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1567174

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Architectural Representat ion Beyond Perspect ivismAlberto Pe rez- Gdmez and Louise Pelletier

We use "meaning" in a sense derivedfrom the phenomenology of EdmundHusserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.In this sense, meanin g is a given in theprereflective engagement of man (withhis body) in the world. There is noquestion here of mea ning as the effectof association. Hum an meaningremains, primordially, a mystery where-by we recognize an order in the speci-ficity of the perc eption. It is the object-ified, enfiamed perception of objectsthat makes it so difficult for us tounderstand that this perception withmeaning is indeed the very go un d ofour thoughts and actions.

From a phe nom enolog ical perspec-tive a "symbol" is not a contriv ance orinventio n. Symbols are of course histori-cally determ ined bu t possess a transhis-torical dimensio n, as we today haveaccess to the meanings of the past. Thesymbol is also not necessarily a repre-sentation of absolute truths or transcen-dental theological values. It affords usa glimpse of our transhistorical embod-ied reality (never fixed or reducible to aformulation such as the transparentBeing of Western metaphysics) and thusmakes it possible for us to en dure inthe world despite our ~ers on almortali-ty. It is our position that such under-standin g of symb olization as a realityimmanent in the world of man survivesboth the critique of philosophicalnihilism and relativism, and as a goal ofarchitectu ral design overcomes theesthetic formalism that is usually theresult of this view in th e self-referentialproducts of postmodern architecture.

Com puter -aided design an d technical drawing have become p art of the everyday lifeof the architect . Wh ile their un disputed precision has ma de the architect's task intosom ethin g akin to applied science, and their efficiency is now deem ed to be a proofof quality, the pr oble m o f architectural representation still begs discussion. Tools ofrepresentation underlie the conc eptual elaboration o f a project an d the whole processof the generation of form. Even tho ugh most enligh tened architects would recognizethe l im itations of tools of projection such as plans, sections, and elevations an dpredictive planning in relation to the actual mea ning of their buil t work, ' no alterna-tives are seriously considered outside the do main of mo dern perspectivism, whichhas deeply conditioned ou r knowledge and perception.T he functional motivations of a technological world have helped to transfo rm per-spectival tools into pragmatic projections that are unable to translate into the realmof representation the symbolic order o f the world.z Today, the process of creation inarchitecture often consists of a formalist ic approach tha t assumes that th e design orrepresentation of a building d ema nds a set of projections. These projections aremea nt to act as the repository of a complete idea of a building, a city, or a technolog-ical object . For purposes of descriptive docu men tation , depiction, constru ction, orany im parting of objective inform ation, the architectural profession has generallyidentified architectural drawings as projections. These reductive representations relyon syntactic connections between images, with each piece only a part of a dissectedwhole. Representations in professional practice, then, are easily reduced to the statusof efficient neutral instruments devoid of inherent value. Devices such as drawings,prints, models, p hotographs, and com puter graphics are perceived as a necessary sur-rogate of the buil t work. I t is therefore crucial to see the implications of such areductive att i tude o n th e creative process in architecture.Th is descriptive set of projections th at we toda y take for granted is in fact our inheri-tance from the geometrized, homog eneous space of the nineteenth century. O u rimplicit trust i n the application of a scientific methodology to architecture derivesdirectly from the techniques prescribed by Jacques Nicolas Louis Du ran d in hisPrPcis des Lecons dlArch itecture (1802 and 1813).3 Durand's legacy is the objectificationof style an d tech nique, an d th e establishment of app arently irreconcilable alterna-tives: technological construction (functional) versus artistic architecture (formal), thefalse dichotomy of necessary s t ruc ture and contingent ornament .


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z ae West alvador DaO c 1934.


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J N L Durand gave us the firstarchitectural theory whose values weredirectly extrapolated from the aims ofapplied science and technology. Neverbefore Durand had the concern formeaning been subordinated to the pur-suit of efficiency and economy in theproduction of design. For the purpose ofthis article it is particularly crucial tokeep in mind the connection betweenthis system of values and its tools, i.e.,Durand s MPcanisme t l Composition,the first design methodology thoroughlydependent on the predictive quality ofthe projections of descriptive geometry.

This statement recognizes the politi-cal and public aspect of architecturalmeaning. The technological vision, theenframed vision, is our vision. The firststep for the architect interested inretrieving an ethical praxis is to acceptthe necessity of self-transformation, of arecollection of being through ourembodiment. The terms embodimentand embodied reality are used in theirphenomenological sense. Embodimentrefers specifically to a nondualistic, post-Cartesian understanding of conscious-ness where mind and body are not in afunctional, mechanistic relation, and theboundaries between the external andinternal worlds of experience vanish.

short list of philosophers followingthis path could start with FriedrichNietzsche and include E. Husserl,Martin Heidegger, Jose Ortega y Gasset,and, more recently, George Gusdorf,David M. Levin, and Hans Blumenberg.The implications of myth are obviouslycomplex and often contradictory in thework of these writers. We don t use mythas a false story aimed at perpetuatingthe abhorrent exploitative political struc-tures of our history. Myth cannot simplybe added to form to make some kindof meaningful architecture. Our conten-tion with Blumenberg is that myth isultimately unavoidable in humanculture and that it is our only means ofarticulating a truth grounded in ourmortality and rationality. Even contem-porary scientists now realize that narra-tives are crucial to the substantiation ofspecific theories; that the greatest precisionleads to uncertainty. This mythopoeticarticulation must be the point of departureof our fictive and historical narratives aswe try to develop an ethical praxis. This isindeed the basis of a theory of architecturethat is not a methodology.

Though the formalization of descriptive geometry promoted a particularly s~mplisticobjectification, the projective tool is a product of our technological world grounded in amodern world-view that we cannot simply reject. But a different use of abstraction,related to modern art, has been generated from the same historical situation. Its inten-tion, the model of which, as we will show, is closer to a film montage, is t o transcendperspective, to transcend dehumanizing technological values (often concealed in aworld that we think we control) through the incorporation of a critical position aboutthe contemporary situation tha t might allow a new creative process t o emerge.The objectifying vision of technology denies the possibility of realizing in one drawingor artifact a symbolic intention tha t might eventually be present in the built work. Thefact is that the process of making the building endows it with a dimension that cannot be reproduced through the picture or image of the built work. Reciprocally, archi-tectural representations must be regarded as having the potential to embody fully anintended order, like any other work of am4Today we recognize serious problems with our postindustrial cities and our scientisticway of conceiving and planning buildings. Man y philosophers and cultural historianshave described the crisis of modern science and emphasized the necessity of transcend-ing reductionist thinking i n all disciplines of human endeavor. They have acceptedthe ultimate need for a mythopoetic dimension of discourse, a narrative that involves anaccounting of the existential anxiety that is the transhistorical nature of our mortalhuman life.5 similar intention must be incorporated into architecture. It is imperativethat we not take for granted certain assumptions about architectural ideation, and tha twe redefine our tools in order to generate meaningful form. Our professional res-ponsibility demands our concern for the making of a world that is not merely a com-fortable or pragmatic shelter, but that offers the inhabitant a physical, formal orderthat reflects the depth of our human condition. In this essay we will explore theconception of building as a poetic translation rather than as a prosaic transcription ofits representatiom6

__ 1

Port D Ostie, JN.L. Dumnd 1800.

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6 Addressing the problem of language,Heidegger recognized that the representa-tive hnction of (scientific) prose hasbeen exhausted. To transcend the resultingsilence we must recognize the primacyof poetic speech, a saying that revealswhile concealing; aktheia, a dtferent say-ing of the truth.7 See Alberto Perez-Goma, Architecturnand the Crisis of Mo drm Science(Cambridge: M TPress, 1983), introductionand ch. 9, and Abstraction in ModernArchitecturen n W 9 (Philadelphia, 1988).8 Paul Ricoeur thoroughly develops thecomplex notion of the world of the workin several works, particularly History andTmth (Evanston, Illinois: NorthwesternUniversity Press, 1965) and The Confictof Intqretation s (Evanston, Illinois:Northwestern University Press, 1974).

9 Gothic architecture in particular was aquestion of construction, operatingthrough well-established traditions andgeometrical rules that would be directlyapplied on the site. Their expression wasthe result of changing labor and diversemethods supplied by itinerant bands ofstonemasons who migrated with weatherpatterns to work on various buildingprojects around Europe. The multiplicityof styles, such as in the cathedral ofChartres, was not perceived as an inconsis-tency but as a layering of varied solutionsby different hands for a number of specificstructural problems over the course oftime. The famous discussion around theideas and building of the Milan cathedralconstitutes an excellent example of thecomplex process of building ideation inthe Middle Ages.1 See Filarete's Trattato (reprint, Milano:I1 Polifilo, 1972)~n which he discusses inthe form of a symposium the constructionof the city of Sforzinda.

11 The medieval treatises on perspective,from Ibn Alhazen and Alkindi to Bacon,and Peckham to Vitello and Grossatesta,examine, principally, the physicaland physiological phenomenon of vision.In the cultural context of the MiddleAges its application was specifically relatedto mathematics.

There is an intimate relationship between architectural meaning and the modusoperandi of the architect, th e nature of his techne.' We must learn to recognize the dif-ferences among the representational artifacts in o ur architectural history. Sincethe Renaissance, t he relationship between the intentions of architectural drawings andthe built objects that they describe or depict has changed. Though subtle, thesedifferences are nonetheless crucial. They can only be perceived if the objects are under-stood hermeneutically, in the world of the works, i.e., in the context of theirrespective cultural worlds and particularly the conceptions of space and time on whichthey are grounded.'O n examining the most important architectural treatises in their respective contexts, wehave concluded tha t the systematization that we take for granted in architectural draw-ing was once less dom inan t in the process of maturation from the architectural idea tothe actual built work. Prior to the Renaissance, architectural drawings were rare. In theMiddle Ages architects did n ot conceive of a whole building idea, and the very notionof a scale was unknown.' Filarete, discussing in his treatise the four steps to be followedin architectural creation, was careful to emphasize that in each translation from propor-tions to lines, to models, and to buildings, the problem is autonomous, and that theconnection between the different steps is analogous to an alchemical transmutation, notto a mathematical transformation.I0 Architectural drawings could not therefore be con-ceived as instrumental artifacts that mig ht be unambiguously translated into buildings.Dur ing the Renaissance, architecture came to be understood as a liberal art, and archi-tectural ideas were thereby increasingly conceived as geometrical lineamenti, asbidimensional, orthogonal projections. gradual and complex transition from the clas-sical theory of vision to a new mathematical and geometrical rationalization of theimage was taking place. But the new understanding of a perspectival image remaineddirectly related to the no tion of classical optics as a science of the transmission of lightrays. T he pyramid of vision, the no tion on which the Renaissance idea of the image as awindow on the world was based, was inherited from the euclidean notion of the visual

3 Detail offi ntis piece to the 1572 kztinedition of Opticae Thesaurus byIbn-al-Haitham Ahaze n 96~-1039).

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12 Albertib central point (punto centrico)of the perspective construction is oftenwrongly associated with the vanishingpoin t projected at infinity. In fact thepoint of convergence in the construzionekgittima is determined an d fixed by thepoin t of sight as a counter-eye on thesurface of the window.13 'T his is obviously a complex issue. Th epainter's interest in mathematical depth,in a m easurable order of experiencethrough layers of events, had as a corollarythe use of architectu ral backdrops as theideal means to express this concern. Itwould be naive to deny the often-statedconnection between Renaissance paintingsand the wo rk of architects. However, as wewill contend here, the use of pen pec t imarti cialis is particularly the province ofpainters. These complexities are the sourceof many simplistic misinterpretations oflinear perspective as the origin o f architec-tural ideation in the fifteenth-century.The construzione lcgtm'ma as developed byBrunelleschi and Alberti for th e art ofpainting was associated with arc hitecturalconstruction because the subject of repre-sentation had to be architectural for theperspective depth to appear.4 Alberti had also emphasized the differ-

ence between drawings of the painter andthose of the architect. In De Re Aedijcato-ria or mBooks, Book z h. I Albertipointed out, in the context of the usehl-ness of rough, undecorated models indesign, that the architect and the painterboth revealed depth (prominentids/rilievr)in very different ways. While the paintertakes pains to emphasize th e relief of

objects in paintings with shading anddiminishin g lines and angles (indeed,through the methods of linear perspectivethat he discussed in D e b Picturn), thearchitect recognizes depth (rafiigurn irilieuz) by means of drawing the plan(mediante il disegno della pai nta hfirn du-menti descriptioni)and represents in otherdrawings the shape and dimensions ofeach elevation without altering the linesand maintaining the true angles. Thearchitect draws as one who desires hiswork to be judged not by the apparentperspectiv en (James Leoni's translat ion,London : Alec Tiranti, 1965), or deceptiveappearancesn Uoseph Rykwert, Lond on:MIT Press, 1988), but valued exactly onthe basis of controllable measures (ourtranslation). In attem pting to grasp thedifficulties involved in th e argum ent,

4 Perpectr'ue machine with an illustrationof binocular vision reduced to a sin gkpo int,J B. ah Vignola,1743cone. T he eye was believed to project i ts visual rays ont o the object , with perceptionoccurr ing as a dynam ic act ion of the beholder up on the world . Renaissance perceptionremained primari ly tac t ile . T he hypothesis of a vanishing point was bo th unnecessaryfor th e construction of perspective , an d u lt imately inconceivable as th e real i ty o f percep-tion in everyday life. ' 'Even though f if teenth-century pain ters were experimenting with metho ds of l inear per-spective , the geom etr izat ion of p ictorial d epth was n ot yet systematized and d id no timmediate ly inf luence the experience of th e world o r th e process o f architectural cre-a tion .13 I t was impossib le for the Renaissance architect to conceive that the t ru th of th eworld cou ld be reduced to i ts v isual representa t ion , a two-dimensional d iaphanoussection o f the py ramid o f vis ion . Brunelleschi , to w ho m w e at tr ibute the earl ies t exarn-ple of linear perspective, worked most ly from m odels in his architectural practice.I4Thi s transi t ion between perspcctivus nacuralis a n d per s pcc t im ar t@al i s consti tu ted af irs t s tep toward a greater ra tionalizat ion o f the v isual image and the detac hmen t frommedieval t radition . Natural perspective had f irs t been in troduced in to the quadriv iumof sc iences together with music w ithou t even referr ing to the ar t of drawing. Sain tTh om as Aquinas associa ted perspective with m usic , considering i t as a v isual harmony,no t a graph ic method.15

it is interesting to compare the twoEnglish translations of the text with theItalian translation by Giovanni Orlandi(Milan: I1 Polifilo, 1966) and the Latin

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original. The translation of prominentia asprojection from the ground plan by

Rykwertl Leach1 Tavernor is particu larlyproblematic.5 Robert Klein elaborates upon the

problem of transition between penpectivucnatumlis and penp ettivu s artij5cialisin hisarticle Pomponius Gauricus onPerspective, Art Buhtin 43,1961, 211-13.Klein draws opposite conclusion s withregard to the co nstructive quality ofRenaissance perspective, emphasiz ing thecomm on rea ding of perspective as the ori-gin of architectural ideation to w hich wehave referred.16 The best examples of this mathemati-cal treatment of perspective are to befound in Egnazio Danti's commentary onJacopo Barozzi da Vignola's Due Regolr

/la hp et t i va P ra tt ica (Rome, I&$,and Guidobaldo del Monte's MontisPenpectivae libri sex (Pesaro, 1600).17 Th e distance point that determinedthe foresho rtening was projected on thesame picture plane on the horizon line ata distance from the central point equal tothe distance between the eye of theobserver and the plane of the image. Inother words, Vignola's method introduceda second observer at the same distancefrom the central point who looked per-pendicularly at the beholder, therebyadding an element essential tbr the repre-sentation of stereoscopic vision. Prior tothis, with the apex of the cone of vision sa simplified eye, perspective had beenmonocular.18 Diirer's machine is a wonderhlmetaph or for the objectification of realitythat is brought about by scientific mental-ity. Philosophically, this coincides w iththe inception of what Heidegger calls theage of the world picture, the substitutionof presence (or openness to a transcenden-tal Being) with a represented reality thatnecessarily conceals its ground o f truth ,i.e., the horizo n of the object, excluded bythe h e .

In treatises on perspective as the art of drawing, starting with Alberti's Della Picturabinocular vision was reduced to a fixed point that was the apex of the cone of vision.The necessity of stereoscopic vision to perceive depth, however, required the introduc-tion of a second element that would determine the foreshortening. In Alberti's methodof perspective, this new element became an abstract screen (known today as thepicture plane) intersecting the visual rays at a given distance. Foreshortening, however,remained the result of intuition. There was no systematization in fifteenth-centuryperspective treatises.During the sixteenth century, treatises on perspective tried to translate the primarilyempirical understanding of this phenomenon into a system, and became increasinglydistanced from treatises on optics. These, however, remained theoretical or mathemati-cal elucidations and had almost no practical use in perspectival representation.I6 InVignola's Due Regoh defh Prospettiva Prattica a second observer was introduced andbecame the distance point. To create a perspective, the artists of the Renaissanceabstracted themselves from the experienced world; the geometrization of depth in paint-ing was a sign of an increasing rationalization of perception in general. Albrecht Diirer'sperspectival apparatus, composed of an eyepiece and a glass panel, established a rigidmethod by which to copy nature. The image as a bidimensional section of the cone ofvision was thus made literal.''

J Perspective machine Albrccht Durn 15x4Sketch of the head in pmpec tive

Albrecht Durn 1~x4

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Even though the drawings by Diirer and Philibert de I'Orme may be seen as the originof the reductionism of computer graphics, just as these artists' interest in projectionsmarks the origin of our own belief that reality can be represented via geometrical per-spective (and, later, through journalistic photography), it would be wrong to imaginethat perspective always existed, either as a pictorial representation or as the assumedtrut of real space. Renaissance drawings are not simply the same as modern drawings intheir relationship to the built place. Plans and elevations were not yet systematicallycoordinated within the framework of descriptive geometry. These drawings were notinstrumental and remained much more autonomous from the building than those thatresult from typical contemporary practice.Before Diirer, a plan was generally conceived as a composite footprint of a building,and an elevation as a face. Vertical or horizontal sections were not commonly used

The head conshucted y means of thtransfer method Albrecbt Diim 1528

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19 Michelangelo's entire emphasis wasupon life and movement, qualities thatwere most often excluded from architec-tural theory in the Renaissance. Architects

before the s ix teenth century , just as anato my rare ly involved the actual d issection ofcadavers unti l the early mod ern era . In t he s ix teenth century Michelangelo unde rstoodthe l iv ing hum an b ody as the fou ndation o f a ll ar t , and cr i tic ized Diirer 's a t te mpt t o ixa s t a ti c im a g e o f t h e h u m a n b o d Y 1 V n o n tr a st t o a g r ow i n g n u m b er o f h is c o n t e m p o-raries , Michelangelo was res is tant to the possib il i ty of making architecture through pro-ject ions, as he cou ld only conceive of the hum an bo dy in motion. 'O H e could s t il l ,nonetheless , perceive a s imple sketch as th e symbo l of a wh ole architectural in tention ,the seed of the whole work. '' Michelangelo's architectural work, perhaps the m ost out-s tanding of h is century , is remarkably original , founded o n an em bodied approach tothe task of build ing and re ject ing project ions a nd lineamenti. Th a t we a te to d ay d eep lyinspired by Michelangelo 's arch itecture may be precise ly because h is wo rk is based o na nonperspectival app roach t o designin g places.

were increasingly concerned with the clar-ity and fixity of measure and proportion s.Th is is M ichelangelo's criticism of Durer'sFour Books on Human Proportions(Nu rem berg , 1528): ...[he] treat s only ofthe measure and kind of bodies, to whicha certain rule cannot be given, formingthe figures as stiff as stakes; and what mat-ters more, he says not one word concern-ing human acts and gestures. (FromCondivi's Lifr ofMichelangelo,quoted byDavid Summers, Michelangelo and theLanguage ofArt, Princeton UniversityPress, 1981), 308; and Helmut W Klassen,Michelangeb: Architecture and the

on ofAnatomy (Montreal: McGillUniversity, 19 90) ~ 3.2 Michelangelo achieved the hn da -mental dimension of depth by capturingthe movement of a figure through fore-shortening. Foreshortening as understoodin the tradition of Renaissance perspectiveconsists of the visual construct o f a frontalgeometrical plane within whose frame thedepth of a body might be articulated.Things and their proportions are flattenedto correspond to the intelligibility of thisframe, so s not to be distorted. Theextreme understan ding of this is Durer'scoordinated system of projection . Fore-shortening as developed by Michelangelonegates the reality of this fram e field byincluding peripheral vision as well s whatfrontally stands out. This quality of visionis what also defines the conception andexperience of Michelangelo's arch itecture.On e senses in his work that our bodilypresence haunts the built place in that thearchitecture moves with us. Including theperipheral experience, his architectureremains intelligible even when disto rted.(Klassen, Michelangelo: Architecture a ndthe ofAnatomy,85-86.)21 It is well established that no co mpletedrawings of his m ajor works wereproduced before the ex ecution of the pro-jects; the Camp odoglio in Ro me is agood example. For a very extended anal-ysis of Michelangelo's work see James S.Ackerman, The Architecture o fMichekangeh (London: A. Zweimmer,

Sketchesfir the staircase and v estibuk i n theLuurentian L ib m v Michekangeb, 1525

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22 In the original Vitruvian context, theGreek word idea refers to the three aspectsof a mental image (per haps akin to theAristotelian phantasm), understood as thegerm of a project. These ideas allowed thearchitect to imagine the disposition of aproject's parts (Vitruvius, The Ten BooksofArchitecture, Book I, ch. 2; Morris28 Hicky Morgan's translation, New York:Dover Publica tions, 13-14).Ichnographiaand orthographia would eventually betranslated as plan a nd elevation b ut donot originally involve the system atic cor-respondence of descriptive geometry23 Sciagraphy, or sciography, derives ety-mologically from the Greek skia (shadow)and graphou (to describe). It thus becomesrelated to the proje ction of shadows inlinear perspective. In the ar chitectura l tra-dition, how ever, sciagraphy mea nt adraugh t of a building , cut in its length

and breadth, to display the interior, inother w ords, the profile or sec tion. Thisuse of the term was still present in thenineteenth century Encyclopedia ofArchitecture, London: T he Caxton Press,1852). Mod ern Latin dictiona ries translatescaenographia (the actual term as itappears in the first existing Vitruv ianmanuscript) as the drawing of buildingsin p erspective, and generally assume thatthis word is synonym ous with sciagraphia.Th e fact is that perspective was unknow nin ancient Rome, and even whenVitruv ius speaks about the three typesof stage sets appropriate to tragedy,comedy, and satire (Book v, ch. 6 , thereis no mention of perspective in connec-tion w ith classical theater. Vitruviusdescribes the fixed scaena as a royal palacefaGadewith periaktoi, triangularpiecesof machinery which revolve, placedbeyond the doors, and whose three faceswere decorated to correspond to eachdramatic genre.

In n orthe rn I taly Daniele B arbaro, Palladio 's fr iend a nd p atron , was also very careful toempha size that perspective was no t an arch itectural idea in t he Vitruvian sense.I2 Its usewas mainly recommended for painters and stage-set designers. Barbaro believed thatsciographia (the third Vitru vian idea), translated as perspective, resulted fro m a mis-reading in the original text of the word scenogvaphia, whose application was importa ntonly in the building of stage-sets. Indeed, the frontal perspective used in scenographywas concerned with the surface of the picture plane and did n ot involve the three-dimensiona li ty of l iv ed space, which explains i ts restr ict ion to painting and theater . I tis in such media that perspective fulfilled its symbolic function as a means to disclose anontological depth. I4 Such dist inctions, the no rm rather than th e exception during theRenaissance in Eu rope, reveal the difficulties involved in conceiving a work o f architec-ture in terms o f a two-dimensional set of projection^.^'Indeed, i t was only in the seventeenth centu ry that perspective became a tr ue Vitruvianidea. T he incept ion of the Car tes ian m odern w or ld and the revolu t ion o f modern sci -ence introduced durin g the baroque period a confl ict between symbolic and m echanis-ti c v iew s o f t he ~ o r l d . ' ~his dualistic conception of reality mad e i t possible forperspective to become a mo del of hu ma n know ledge, a legit imate and scientific repre-sentat ion of the infinite world. Baroque perspective in art an d architecture, however,was a symbolic configuration, on e that al lowed reali ty to k eep the quali t ies that i t hadalways possessed in an Aristotel ian world. D urin g the seventeenth centu ry the spaceoccupied by ma n was not homoge nized, and the primacy of perception as the founda-t ion o f trut h was hardly affected by th e implications of this new science and philosophy.Thus perspective, as an architectural idea, became a privileged form of symbolization.T h e architecture ofVersailles, for example, is not expressed m erely in the plans an d sec-tions of the palace; its mean ing rests primarily in the im plied (perspectival) order of thegarden, the city, and the world, and in the epheme ral stage sets and theatrical f ireworkstha t were a part of palace life. Similarly, the architecture of the Jesuit church in Vien naby Andr ea Pozzo can ha rdly be red uced to its section an d elevation. Pozzo's fresco isinextricably t ied to th e three-dimensionality of the architectural space. Rather thanremaining in the two-dimensional field of representation, the perspective is projectedfrom a precise poin t si tuated in actual space, and fixed permanen tly on the pavem ent ofthe nave with a bronze marker. Th e spatial order of th e dom e is revealed on ly at the pre-cise mo me nt th at a hu ma n presence occupies the stat ion poin t of the i l lusionisticquadrat tura fresco.Even tho ugh the theory o f perspective, as an offspring of the ne w science, allowed ma nto co ntrol an d do min ate th e physical reality of his existence, the arts , gardening,and architecture d uring the seventeenth centu ry were st i ll concerned with the reconcili-at ion of subject and object an d with the revelat ion of an ordered cosmos. W h i l e m a nconsidered himself auton omo us from external reality, perspective al lowed him to dwell

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In B ook I, ch. 2, Vitruvius describes thisscaenographiaas 3o nti s et laterum absce-dentium adumbratio a d circinique centvumom niu m lin earum responsus. Both FrankGrange r (London : Harvard UniversityPress, 1931) and Morris H icky Morga n(New York: Dover Publications, 1960) intheir translations of Vitruvius read this as'perspective." Granger's translation reads:"Scenography (perspective) [is] theshading of the front and the retreatingsides, and the co rresponden ce of all linesto the vanishing po int (sic ) which is thecentre of the circle." Hic ky Morgan'stranslation is also problematic: "Pespectiveis the method of sketching a front withsides withdrawing into the background,the lines all meeting in the c entre of a cir-cle." These modern translations fail to dojustice to the original text, in which the reis no allusion to a vanishing point or tolinear perspective. Even if scaenographiameans "to draw buildings in perspective,"the Latin o rigin of perspective, perspicere,is a verb that m eans simply "to see clearlyor carefully, to see throu gh."Barbaro argues that scenographia,which is"related to the use of perspective," is thedesign of stages for the three dram aticgenres. Approp riate types of buildingsmus t be shown dim inishing in size andreceding to the horizon. H e does notagree with "those that wish to understandperspective (perspettiva) as one of theideas that generate architectural design(dispositione)," ascribing to i t thedefinition Vitruvius had given tosciographia. In his opinion it is plain tha t"just as animals belong by n ature to a cer-tain species," the idea that belongs withplan ( i~ h n o ~ ra p h ia )nd elevation(orthographia),is the section (profio) , im-ilar to the other two "ideas" that consti-tute architectural order (dipositione). InVitruvius's conc eption, th e section "allowsfor a greater knowledge of the quality andmeasurement of building, helps with the

control of costs and the determination ofthe thickness of walls," etc. Barbaro, infact, assumes that in antiquity "perspec-tive" was applied only to the painte d rep-resentations o n the side of the periaktoi.(La Practica della Perspettiua, 130).24 A subtle distinction was often drawnbetween prospettiua, generally unde rstoodas the art of drawing complex geometricalvolumes constructed from their planimet-ric elaborations (so as to represent themthree-dimensionally), and perspettiva,which dealt mainly with the surface of thepicture plane. Both words come originallyfrom the Latin verb spectare, to see.Perspicere,mean ing t o see clearly or care-fully, seems to have more passive conn ota-tions than propicere, meaning to look outat, to iook forward or tow ard an object.O n the other hand, the Italianpropettivaand perspettiua were often used inter-changeably to name the new linear per-spective. Piero della Francesca declaredpainting a mathematical art in DeProspectiua Pingen di (Parma: BibliotecaPalatina, MS 1576; reprint, Florence, 1942).He introduced the problem of construct-ing regular and irregular bodies (th e latterbeing more important for painters) as partof his treatise on linear perspective. LucaPacioli in De Diuina Proportione (Venice,ryoq), after empha sizing the sacred(Christian) character of the golden section,most useful for architects, adde d fifty-ninef ~ l l - ~ a g eoodcuts o f regular and irregularbodies drawn in perspective and based onmodels re pared by Leonardo.Interestingly, Pacioli explained tha t thetwo mo st imp ortan t solids for architectswere the 26-faced solid and the 72-facedsolid, both capable of approximating theconstructive reality of domes a nd vaults.Barbaro mad e a distinction between, thecontent of his published book, La Practica

della Perspettiua (Venice, 1569), and anunpublished manuscript of practically theidentical title, a Practica &Ila Prospettiua(Venice: Biblioteca Marziana, M S . IT I V39-5446). In the former he teaches how torender buildings in perspective in order toconstruct stage sets, starting from detailedinstructions concerning polygons andpolyhedra, while in the latter he dealsmostly with the study of geometrical bod-ies and their relationship to perspective.Prospettiua, according to Barbaro, ad-dressed the practical co ncerns of artistsand architects, assuming that the essenceof built architectu re was evidently thegeometrical lineamenti of these construct-ed bodies.

25 These crucial distinctions standdespite the well-docum ented interest ofarchitects in the theater and the often per-ceived continuity between the "tragicstage" an d the city of classical architecture,as exemplified in Serlio's famous engrav-ings and Palladio's Teatro Olimpico. Thisambivalence is in our opinion not a logicalfault but an asset. It is, in fact, a funda-mental character of Renaissance architec-tural intention and m ust be understood ashaving co ntributed to the magical depthof many architectural works and represen-tations as we know them today.26 Th e radical changes brought abou t inthe realm of think ing by the scientific rev-olution cannot be overemphasized.Alexander Koyre has shown in hisMetaphysics an d Measurement (London:Cha pma n Hall, 1968) how a world offixed essences and mathem atical lawsdeployed in a homogeneous, geometrizedspace, much like the Platonic model of theheavens, was assumed by Galileo to be thetruth of our experience of the physicalworld. As an example, Galileo believed,after postulating his law of inertia, thatthe essence of an object was no t altered by

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IUusmtion of aprojectedf;.sco ona ceding Andrea Pozzo 1707.zo ew of the quadratturn i c o on a shallowdome a t the Jesuitenkirche Andrea PozzoVimna 1705

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motion. This notion, now an obvioustruth, was at odds with th e traditionalAristotelian experience of the w orld, inwhich percep tion was our prim ary accessto reality. Th is new conce ption eventuallyled to a skepticism regarding the physicalpresence of the external world. In theterms of Descartes, man became a subjectconfronting the world as t rs a tema , as anextension of his thinking ego.27 Anamorphosis as a projection ofbr m s beyond the limits of the image wasalready known by the p ainters of theRenaissance. In fact, one o f the earliestreferences to the art o f anamorph osis canbe foun d in V ignola's Due Regok & laPenpettiva Practica,where he described abasic method th at follows the same laws ofvisual rays that he applied to develop histheory of linear perspective. But themanipulation of imagesw s still perceivedas an act of magic, and the technique ofanamorp hosis remained secret. It is onlyduring the seventeenth century that Jean-Fra n~o is iceron systematized the tech-nique as a geometric construction andmade it in to a method. For a detailed his-tory of anamo rphic art, see JurgisBaltrusaitis,Anamorphic Art (New York:Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1976).28 This is also revealed in the aims ofphilosophical systems throughout the sev-enteenth century. For example, inhis Studies in Geometry of Situation 1679),G . W.Leibniz proposed a science ofextension that, unlike Cartesian analyticgeometry, would be integral and notreducible to algebraic equations. But thisproject of a descriptive geometry moreuniversal than algebra could s till magicallydescribe the infinite q ualitative variety ofnatural things. This transcendental geom-etry was part of L eibniz's lifelong dream topostulate a universal science, called byhim at various times lingua univenalis, sci-entia uniunalis, calculusphilosophincc, andcalculw univenalis. From all the disci-plines of human knowledge, he tried toextrapolate the simplest co nstitutive ele-ments that would allow him to establishrules of relation by which t o organize thewhole epistemological field into a calcu-lus of concepts.29 Niceron considered perspective as atool partly m agic, partly scientific. Ratherthan a technique of reduction, it was forhim a vehicle by which to attain truth. Inthe context of the Cartesian revolution,Niceron's Thaumaturgur O pticus (Paris,1646) as his reflection on appea ranceand reality.

mea ning hlly i n the physical world by changin g i ts geometric dimension. In th eextreme, anamorphosis , anoth er type o f perspective projection, involved th e dis tort ionof th e reali ty i t represented. H ere a geometrical theory, no w clearly domi nant, subject-ed no rm a l pe rcep t ion to i t s own s t ructu re by p lac ing the po in t o f v iew in unexpectedplaces, often on the surface of t he draw ing or painting i tselK2' By geometriz ing theworld in such a confoun ding way, man gained access to a new transcendental tru th .T h e dual nature o f baroque perspective is evident in anam orphic works, whose per-spective both revealed the t ruth of reality an d reflected m an 's power to m odify i t ; that is,i t was a kind of magic.2Even tho ugh perspective becam e increasingly integ rated with architecture, perspectivalsystematization remained restr ic ted t o the creation of a n i l lusion, quali ta t ively dis t inctfrom t he constructed reali ty of the world. Perspective marked th e mom ent o f anepiphany, the revelation of meanin g and the God-given geom etric order of the world .For a brief t ime, i l lusion was the locus o f r i tual . T he revelation o f order occurred at thep reca r ious mo men t when the van ish ing po in t an d the pos i t ion o f the obse rve r me t.

II Conical anamo'phosis of Louis XIII,J.E N i cmn, 1638.

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12 Simpl edperspectiue methodGkulrdDesargue, 1648

30 For an extended analysis of the workofG. Desargues and a complete biogra-phy, see RenC Taton,L OeuvreMathkmatique de G. Desargues (Paris:P.U.F., 1951). See also A. Pera-Gomez,Architecture and the Crisis ofModernScience (Cambridge: M T ress, 1983).31 Parallel lines did not converge ineuclidean space, where tactile considera-tions, derived from bodily spatiality, werestill more important than purely visualinformation. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty,Phenomenology of Perception, Part I chap-ters 1 3.32 Kepler had already introduceda pointat infinity in a work on the conic sections,Ad Ktelionem palalipomena quibwmtronomiaepars optica traditur (1604).Hewas interested in the laws of optics andgenerally in the nature and properties oflight. Desarguesw s in fact the first toapply that notion to different theories onperspective and stereotomy. Such anaccomplishment remains difficult to ap-preciate from a contemporary vantagepoint, which regards visual perspective asthe only true means of comprehending theexternal world.33 Orthogonal projection as we under-stand it today was for Desarguesa simplec se of perspective projection where theprojective point was located at an infinitedistance from the plane of projection.

While most seventeenth-century philosophers were still striving to formulate theappropriate articulation of the relation between the world of appearances and the abso-lute t ruth of modern science, the work of Gerard Desargues appeared as an anomaly.30Desargues disregarded the transcendental dimension of geometry and the symbolicpower of geometrical operations, and he ignored the symbolic implications of infinity.He sought to establish a general geometric science, one that might effectively becomethe basis for such diverse technical operations as perspective drawing, stone andwoodcutting for construction, and the design of solar clocks. Until then, theories ofperspective had always associated the point of convergence of parallel lines with theapex of the cone of vision projected on the horizon line. Desargues was apparently thefirst one in the history of perspective to postulate a point at in fin it^. ^ He maintainedthat all lines converged toward a point at an infinite distance. Thus any system ofparallel lines, or any specific geometrical figure, could be conceived as a variation of asingle universal system of concurrent lines.Desargues's method allowed for the representation of complex volumes before construc-tion, implementing an operation of deductive logic. Perspective became a prescriptivescience that controlled practice. The scientific revolution had witnessed in Desargues'ssystem the first attempt to endow representation with an objective autonomy.Nevertheless, the prevailing philosophical connotations of infinity, always associatedwith theological questions, as well as the resistance of tradition-minded painters, crafts-men, and architects, made his system unacceptable to his contemporaries. Desargues'sbasic aims would eventually be fulfilled by Gaspard Monge's descriptive geometry nearthe end of the eighteenth century.Once geometry lost its symbolic attributes in traditional philosophical speculation, per-spective ceased to be a preferred vehicle for transforming the world into a meaninghlhuman order. Instead, it became a simple representation of reality, a sort of empiricalverification of the way in which the external world is presented to human vision. Pozzo'streatise Rules a nd Ekamples ofprope r Perspective fi r Painters andAr chitectsoccupies aninteresting, perhaps paradoxical, position as a work of transition. From a plan and anelevation, his method of projection is a step-by-step set of instructions for perspectivedrawing that establishes the absolute proportional relationship of those elements seenin perspective. The last part of the book develops the method of quadrattura, whereinthe three-dimensionality of architectural space is subjected to the law of geometry.The consequential homology of lived space and the geometric space of perspectivalrepresentation led the architect to assume that the projection was capable of truly de-picting an architectural space, and therefore supported the possibility of actually design-ing in perspective. The qualitative spatiality of our existence was now identical to theobjectified space of perspective.In the eighteenth century artists, scientists, and philosophers lost interest in perspective.The process of geometrization that had started with the inception of modern sciencewas arrested by the focus on empirical knowledge spurred by Newton's work and theidentification of inherent limitations in euclidean ge0metry.3~Architects seemed readyto accept the notion that there was no distinction between a stage set constructed fol-lowing the method per angolo of Galli-Bibiena, one where there was no longer a privi-leged point of view, and the permanent tectonic reality of their craft. Reality wastransformed into a universe of representation. The baroque illusion became a delusionin the rococo church. Even the vanishing point of the frescoes became inaccessible tothe spectator, while the building appeared as a self-referential theater, one in whichtraditional religious rituals were no longer unquestionable vehicles for existential orien-tation.%Despite all this, and in addition to the early eighteenth-century academic at-tempts to ridicule the secrets of the guilds and the ensuing systematization of construc-tion after 1750 he primacy of the built work over the h i s the comprehensive projectwith specifications, still remained. Drawings were not yet mere predictive tools.

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34 Pozzo avoids the geometrical theory ofperspective, and his theo retical discourseamounts to a collection of extremely sim-ple rules an d deta iled examples of perspec-tive constructions. His work can appear~aradoxicalf we com pare his frescoes inquadrattuta, which involve an epistemo-logical recentering of man , to this very sys-tematic establishment of proportions thatseems related to Desargues's understand ingof geometry.35 Even though it is easy to recognize arelationship between P o d s perspectivemethod and Durand's use of projections,descriptive geome try could not have beenpostulated as a systematic science beforethe nineteenth century. Euclidean geome-try was conceived as a science of imm edia-cy whose principles had their o rigin inperception. Euclid's theorems are verifiableonly insofir as the things to which theymake reference are accepted as variableand imprecise. The achievements of seven-teenth-century geometricians had attaineda limit of abstractio n and were neverdeveloped further. Throughout the eigh-teenth century geom etry as a scientificdiscipline was becomin g obsolete. Did erotwrites in his treatise De I lntnprrtationde la Nature that before a hundred yearsthere will e scarcely three geometrician sleft in Europe. For more details aboutthis aspect of eighteenth-century philoso-phy, see Yvon Belval, La Cris e de laGQm etrisation de I'Univers dans laPhilosophie des Lumikres, R m e Inte r-nationalede Philosophie (Brussels, 1952 .36 Karsten Harries examines this prob-lem in his excellent study The BavarianRococo Church (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1983 .

13 and 14 Systematic cootdinationofplan and elevation with pmspectiw,Andrea Pozzo, 1707

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37 Contr ary to the post-Heideggerianunderstanding of m ythopoesis to w hichwe make reference in note (i.e., the artic-ulation of truth as aletheia , the Beaux-Artsatte mp t to retrieve the classical styleamounts to the imposition of a myth, inthe negative sense, as a fallacious represen-tation of repressive social hierarchies. Therendering of drawings in the B eaux-Artstradition does not change the essenceof the architecture it represents, nor doesit succeed in formulating an alternativeto the architecture of the E coleP ~ l ~ r e c h n i q u e .he Beaux-Arts does notretrieve myth through drawings, butrather, only formalizes appearances, indeedmuch the way post modern styles do. Th isis at odds with the possibility of retrievingmeaning through a phenomenologicalunderstanding of symbolization.38 Th e question concerning the applica-tion of computers t o architecture is, ofcourse, hotly debated an d as yet unre-

34 solved. The instrument is not simply theequivalent of a pencil o r a chisel that couldeasily allow one to transcend reduction. Itis the culmination of the objectifying men-tality of m odernit y and is, therefore,inherently perspectival, in precisely thesense that we have described in this article.Computer graphics tends to be just amuch qu icker and more facile tool thatnonetheless still relies on the projection asits base, a radical tool of industrial produc-tion. Th e tyranny of comp uter graphics iseven more systematic than any othe r toolof representation in its rigorous establish-ment of a homogeneous space and itsinability to combine different structures ofreference. It is, of course, conceivable thatthe machine would transcend its binarylogic and become a tool for a poetic disclo-sure in the realm of architecture. The factis, however, thar the results of compute rgraphics applications are always disap-pointing. The objectification of anotherreality appears more intense, and the toolseems clumsy at best to show animatedpictures of a fallacious building.39 Th e unnameable dimension of repre-sentation refers to a wholeness thar can berecognized but n ot reduced to words andis, in the context of Gadamer's hermeneu-tics, the signifi ed of the artistic symbol.See below, note 40.40 Hans-Georg Gadam er has given usone o f the clearest elucidations of thequestion of representation in art in TheRelevance of the Beautif il, (Cambridge:Cam bridge U niversity Press, 1986). Th ework of art , regardless of its medium or its

On ly after the nineteenth century and a systematization of drawing methods could theprocess of translation between drawing and building become transparent. The keytransformation in the history of architectural drawing was the inception of descriptivegeometry as the paradigmatic discipline for the builder, whether architect or engineer.The Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, founded after the French Revolution, trained thenew, professional class of eminen t scientists and engineers of the n ineteen th century.Descriptive geometry, the fundamental core subject, allowed for the first time a system-atic reduction of three-dimensional objects to two dimensions, making the controland precision demanded by the Industrial Revolution possible. Without this conceptualtool our technological world could not have come into existence. Wi th Durand'smicanisme de l compositionand its step-by-step instructions, the codification of archi-tectural history in to types an d styles, the use of the grids and axes, transparent paper,and precise decimal measurements allowed for planning and cost estimates. Descriptivegeometry became the assumption behind all mod ern architectural endeavors, rangingfrom the often superficially artistic drawings of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to th e func -tional projects of the Bauhaus.?' Today computer graphics, with its seductivemanipulations of viewpoints and delusions of three-dimensionality, is simply a moresophisticated mech ani~ m.3 ~he grow ing obsession with produc tivity and rational-ization has transformed the process of maturation from the idea to the built work intoa systematic representation that leaves no place for the invisible to emerge from theprocess of translation.While descriptive geometry attempted a precise coincidence between the representationand the object, modern art remained fascinated by the enigmatic distance betweenthe reality of the world and its projection. Facing the failure of a modern scientific men -tality to acknowledge the unnameable dime nsion of representation, artists haveexplored that distance, the delay or fourth dimension in Marcel Ducham p's terms,between reality and th e appearance of the world. D efying reductionist assumptionswithout rejecting the modern power of abstraction, certain twentieth-century architectshave used projections not as technical manipulations, but to discover something at onceoriginal and re~o~nizable .40nature as figurative or non-objective mustreveal the presence of being, the presence ofthe invisibk in the world of the everyday.This dimension is perhaps the only con-stant of true a rt through history. Partakingof this conditi on, the architectural works ofthe city allowed for existential orientation,cultural belonging, and the perpetuation oftradition. They were never merely build-ings. Understood primarily as an abstractorder, architecture could be embodiedat the scale of the reliquary, the garden, theephemeral canvas-wood structure, or themachina for manifold celebrations andtheatrical events. This no tion is connectedto the original Greek understanding ofsymbol as a token that would allow an oldfriend to be recognized by members of thehousehold (or any institu tion) as a memberof the same group , a part of the whole,belonging to a cosmic place. (We mustremember thar the word agora meant botha place, and an assembly of citizens par-ticipating in the decision-making processconcerning the futu re of their polis. Asymbolic architecture is one thar repre-sents, one that can be recognized as part of

our collective dreams, as a place of fullinhabitation. Th is recognition is inherentlydifficult in a postmodern world where manis generally oblivious to his mortality an dhas grown accustomed to exploitation,simulations, and technological control; butit happens to be, whether intentionally ornot, the most striking feature of the mostadmired architectural artifacts in o ur tradi-tion, in w hich the manifold symbols revealan order that is immediately accessible tous. Thus, creation as representation mustbe the ultim ate objective of architecturalwork if our profession is to have any socialmeaning a t all. In a technological world,this objective can be attained only after rec-ognizing the fallacious neutrality of ou rtools for the generation of form.An understanding of the autonomy andpolysemy of the symbols employed by thearchitect is an importa nt first step in over-coming our predicament. On e object, onemodel, or one drawing may indeedembo dy the full intentionality of a build-ing. We can recognize the invisible (theground of existence in the sense ofGadamer, a glimpse of o ur place in a totali-

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IJ Marrel Duchamp and Katherine Dmimin ffitherineDm ieri living mom Leslie E.Bowman 1936 37.

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16 Tu M', Marcel Duchamp, 1918

ty) in the artist-architect's work, similar toour recognition in the spatial experience ofthe building.r When seen from the front, the shad-

ows cast by the ready-mades are seen asanamorphic projections stretched out onthe surface; the bottle brush, which is the

36 only three-dimensional object piercing thesurface of the canvas perpendicularly to itsplane, is reduced to a dot. But seen fromthe side, shadows of the ready-madesbecome corrected until they disappearagain in the thickness of the canvas. At thispoint, the brush releases itself from thecanvas and becomes the only visiblereality of the hidden picture. In a series ofessays on the work of Marcel Duchamp,Abeccdairc (Paris: Centre GeorgesPompidou, 1977),Jean Clair compares thepainting Tu m to classid theories onanamorphosis.4 The Grrcn Box (a written thought pro-cess for the Large Glass) reveals Duchamp'sinterest in scientific developments in thefield of noneuclidean geometry.43 In the W;hiteBox Duchamp asserts thatall form is the projection of another form

according to a certain vanishing point anda certain distance. By analogy with thisnotion of projected reality, all solid bodieswould constitute the possible projection ofan infinity of four-dimensional entities.The entire visible domain is for Duchampan incessant flow of anamorphosis generat-ed by those invisible entities.44 To understand the fundamental dis-tinction between the two uses of projectionin art and architecture,it is essential tograsp the difference between truth as exact-ness in the Platonic sense (the absence ofshadow of Western science and meta-physics) and truth as alrtheia, the unveilingof being never given in its totality, such asHeidegger posits it in his late philosophy.

Marcel Duchamp also explored the paradigm of projection and investigated theambiguous dimension between illusion and reality. His last oil on canvas,Tu m'(1918),is a recapitulation of all the perspectivist deceits allowed by an opaque medium. It is hismost explicit study on anamorphosis, the perspectival distortions that writers of theearly seventeenth century believed dangerous in their capacity to manipulate andchange the given appearance of the world. In Tu m Duchamp questions the distinctionbetween appearanceand apparition. The painting is constructed as an anamorphosis,though in contrast to all traditional works of this kind, the truth of the image is nolonger revealed to the beholder from a fixed position. s one walks around it, certainelements of the composition become visible, while others vanish.41The Bride Stripped Bare y Her Bachelors, Even (Large Glass)(1915-23) and theEtantDonns (1916) embody Duchamp's life-long struggle to reveal an invisible dimension ofprojection, one beyond the conventional boundaries of Renaissance painting, sculpture,and architecture.42 The projection on the lower part of theLarge Glass (the realm of thebachelors) was conceived according to the rules of classical perspective, derived directlyfrom the Renaissance concept of painting as a window intersecting the cone of vision.The upper domain, however, addresses the ambiguity between illusion and reality interms of a four-dimensional object (the bride) projected in a three-dimensional world.43Duchamp's bride in the Large Glass is analogous to a shadow. The shadow, taken as aprojection or as an entity in itself, is in some way determined by the object that casts it.It, reveals the invisible side of the thing, outlines its h idden face as a negative vision. At adistance from the projecting light, however, the shadow becomes an autonomous entity(as in a shadow play), an abstraction of the object projecting its absence.Th e early twentieth century saw the recovery of aspects of projection that had been lostto the reductions of nineteenth-century industrialization. Like Duchamp's shadows,the shadows of cinematographic projection re-embodied motion and retrieved tactilespace from the perspective frame. Film offered a possibility to transcend the limitationsof the technological, enframed vision through the juxtaposition of different realities.previously invisible, uncharted aspect of experience found ex pr es si ~n .~The projection of the cone of light through the darkness of the cinema can be seen asan inversion of the Renaissance notion of the cone of vision. It illustrates the reciprocityof light and shadow as an analogue of the complementarity of presence and absence anddisrupts the fixed gaze of the perspective, which is theobjectifying vision of Westernscience and phi l~s op hy .~~uring the cinematographic projection, we sit immobilebetween the light and the projected images, in the enduring present of a space-time ofno fixed dimensions.46

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45 Western metaphysics emerges from aworldly vision which takes the gift of day-light for granted a nd assum es, deeplyunconscio us of itself and its projections,the permanent presence (parowia) of oursource of illumination: conditions of totalunconcea lment, making possible a visionof total lucid ity in perfect possession of its(transparent) object. Western metaphysicsreflects a worldly vision of tr uth which seesonly sharp boundaries and division, theopposition pe rmanently fixed in duality.. . .But this is a vision of truth whic h occlu sour experience with shadows and shades(of meaning); the enchantment of the sun-set hour, the uncanny light of the twi-light.. . David Michael Levin, TheOpening of Vision (London: Routledge,1988),350-51.46 We can only witness the extremes andrecognize their com plementa rity, at best(and here the quality of the film is impor-tant) the reciprocity of action and thinkingin Gehsenheit. (We use this term in thesense of Heidegger's late writings.) s inarchitecture, the spec tator is not passive,but rather, creatively participates in thereconstruction o f tactile space suggested bythe montage.

7 Th e Large Glass; The BrideStripped Bare By Her Bachelors,Marcel Duchamp, I~ZJ 23.

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47 Sergei Eisenstein describes his Intel-lectual Cineman as a structure of com posi-tion that defines the abstract and makes itappear. His me thod is based on analogy, ametaph or between the figurative image andhuman experience:The power of montage resides in that it

includes in the creative process the em o-tions and mind of the spectator. The spec-tator is compelled to proceed along thatsame creative road that the au thor traveledin creating the image. The spectator notonly sees the represented element of thefinished work, but also experiences thedynamic process of the emergence andassembly of the image just as it was experi-enced by the author. Sergei Eisenstein ,The Film m New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1942 .48 In this connectio n see M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception(London: Routledg e Kegan Paul, 1962 ~in which he establishes what e mbodied per-ception couldn be by disclosing its originalreality. Merleau-Ponty's thesis, togetherwith the posthumous notes publishedunder the title The Visibk an d the Invisibk(Evanston , Illinois: Northw esternUniversity Press, 1968 ,are still among themost crucial readings for the professionalarchitect.49 Sergei Eisenstein's interest in Piranesi'sexplosion of perspective is well know n.Piranesi's etch ings on th e Carceriare charac-terized by the entanglement of beams, stair-ways and hung bridges that emerge from thedepth of the image and are projected beyondthe limit of the frame. The contrast of shad-ows creates an am biguity between interiorand exterio r space. Th e structure of Piranesi'setchings is projected forwa rd, beyond the

From its inception, perspective has had a potentia l to unify the re la tive t ime o f ourworld with the absolute t ime of the image. T he surrealis ts a nd, mo re specifically , surre-alis t f i lmmakers , were a ttemptin g to redefine the dis tance between th e world an d i tsrepresentation, a d is tance that w ould allow m an to recognize his p lace in a new order.T h e cinematographic montage provokes a disruption o f the spatia l and temporal per-spective. I ts narrative confou nds the l inear s tructure of f i lmic t ime, d ewn stru ctinghomogeneous, geom etric space? ' T he projection of c inematographic monta ge is analo-gous to the experience of a n em bodied, subjective spatia l ity , to the experience of archi-tecture s it co ul d be. 48In the last two hund red years , g iven the diff iculties of building a sym bolic order in aworld preoccupied w ith pro duction and pragmatic shelter, architectural ideas have beenparticularly em bodied in theoretical projects of man y kinds. Architects such s GiovanniBatt is ta Piranesi questioned the basis of perspective an d sough t new modes o f meaning-ful representation. Piranesi's Gzrceri embod y the f ir st u se o f m on tage in a rch itec ture todeconstruct the l inear perspective of space and t ime.49 In the Gzrceri mean ing is savedat t he expense of perspectival logic. Th e mystery of his projective met hod dism embersspatial contin uity an d involves the beholder i n a represented space that invites inhabita-t ion b ut that u lt imately awaits the rebuilding of i ts d is located parts .

edge of the drawing, into the space of the 8 Carceri, no. XI second state),observer. Similarly, Eisenstein's intellectual G.B. Piranesi, 1761montage attempted to include the presenceof the spectator in the creation of the dynam-ic image.

Architcctuml Reprrsmtation Beyond Perspectivism


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jo Ther e is, of course, no way to define inabsolute terms the boundaries between paint-ing, sculpture, and architecture ; these haveshifted constantly through time and areclosely connected to their respective content.In the recent Venice Biennale (1990)a criticnoted that painters were doing sculpture,while sculptors were dealing mostly with flatsurfaces.5 Theoretical projects from Piranesi toDuch amp, including some works in filmmontage, establish a space tha t resists thedom inatio n of the rational/perspectivevision. Some of the most outstanding worksof architecture, such as examples by Ga udiand Le Corbusier, subverted the reductiveinstrumentality of architectural representa-tion and also aimed at transcending theenframing vision. These powerful worksunveil the true potential of architecture in apostmodern world.5 Piranesi actually rejected many comm is-sions and called himself an architect, whileBoullCe emphasized, in his Essai su I Art,that his architecture was of the sort ofNewton's cenotaph, and not his many build-ings. An important challenge that has beentaken up by John Hejduk is the implementa-tion o f fictional narratives as part of themontage in order to ground the theoreticalproject in the w orld of experience. This is acomplex and important aspect of the discus-sion that unfortunately cannot be pursuedhere.

This architecture represents a potentially different future order beyond the conventionalcategorization of the fine arts, now obviously 0bsolete.5~ uch architecture cannotbe seen as reduced to a syntactic set of projections. Theoretical projects have been bo thexperimental in scientific pursuit of discovery and poetic in artistic pursuit of theworld's given order. Neither intuitive n or irrational, these works are suffused with theLogos of m yth.5'Co ntinu ing in this tradition, recent theoretical projects have sough t the deconstruc-tion of the logocentric metaphysical heritage of mod ernity as it appears in architecture,while trying to avoid, through the implementation ofpoeisis, a mere acceptance of thenihilistic status quo of poststructuralist criticism. Thro ugh their author s' radical revisionof the task of making as it relates to architectural ideation, these projects attemp t torecover an architecture tha t mig ht reveal the presence of being. Such an architecturewould remove the objectifying, instrumentalizing screen of industrial technology andwould speak to ou r prereflective, embo died awareness.Th e critical dimension implicit in these projects is well kn0wn.5~ hey are not form alis-tic or self-referential games, nor are they merely unbu ilt w orks. Theoretica l projectsquestion the possibility of a truly poetic architecture in a prosaic world. In this sense theprojects are the architecture; they are not a surrogate for anything else.

In the context of our cities of shopping m alls and traffic networks, the images of fash-ion, whether of old Europe or m odern technology, are empty simulations. The y carryno mean ing except to weakly reaffirm the repressive structures of power of w hich thoseimages speak. To assume that the tools of projection and perspective are supported bysome sort o f transcendental tru th is equally nostalgic. A critical step toward our retrievalof an architecture throug h esthetic wonder is to question the hegem ony of perspec-tivism and its simulations. When projections function as surrogates of buildings, whensets of drawings attem pt to provide us with a picture of an architectural place orobject, the buildings prod uced by such techniques m ust necessarily reflect the predictivequality of their conception: the possibility of a revelatory dimension is abando nedand the actualization of the architect's imagination will inevitably be lost in the transla-tion. That this assumption of a literal relationship between the project and the build-ing is basic to industrial pr oductio n in the m odern city makes a critical reassessment ofthis issue all the more pressing.

Alberto PPrez-Gdmez and Louise Pelletier

architectural representation beyond perspectivism

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