The Projective Cast Architecture and Its Three Geometries Robin EvansIntroduction: Composition and Projection cometry has an ambiguous reputation, associated as much with idiocy as with cleverness. At best there is something desperately ‘uncommunicative about it, something more than a little removed from the rest of experience to set against its giant claim of truth. Flaubert, in The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, defines a geometrician as “travelling on strange seas of thought—alone."? And when Joseph Conrad wished to characterize the futile effort of concentration made by the earnest but mentally retarded youth Stevie in The Secret Agent, he would describe him as “seated very good and quiet at a deal table, drawing circles, circles, Circles; innumerable circles, concentric, eccentric, a coruscating whirl of circles that by their tangled multitude of repeated curves, uniformity of form, and confusion of intersecting lines suggested a rendering of cosmic chaos, the symbolism ofa mad art attempting the inconceivable.”? There have been, and there still are, architects with seemingly unlimited faith in the power of geometry. They search for shapes and measures which they hope will divulge the mystery of their calling and at the same time lock the mystery into place as a professional secret, of even a per sonal secret. We may arm ourselves against such naivety and yet concede that all architects will from time to time adopt the posture of Stevie, looking much the same as he when embroiled in the reveries of design work. In this posture they may become susceptible to the same delusions of which we can so readily imagine Stevie to have been victim. There are‘good reasons why they might. Without the architect’ faith that geomet- rically defined lines will engender something else more substantial yet discernible through the drawing, without faith in the genetic message inscribed on paper, there is no architecture. It has often been said that architecture is more than mere building. In this sense itis considerably less. Geometry is one subject, architecture another, but there is geometry in architecture. Its presence is assumed much as the presence of mathemat- ics is assumed in physics, or leters in words. Geometry is understood to be a constitutive part of architecture, indispensable to it, but not depen- dent on it in any way. The elements of geometry are thus conceived as comparable to the bricks that make a house, which are reliably manufac tured elsewhere and delivered to site ready for use. Architects do not produce geometry, they consume it. Such at least would be the inevitable conclusion of anyone reviewing the history of architectural theory. Sev- «ral key Renaissance treatises commence with a brief résumé of geomet- ric figures and definitions borrowed from Euclid: point, line, plane, triangle, rectangle, and circle. Sebastiano Serlio, for example, began his First Book of Architecture (1545, English translation 1611) by affirming “how needfull and necessary the most secret Art of Geomettie is.” With- out it the architect is no more than a stone despoiler, he said, and then INTRODUCTION wavi‘went on to explain how what he called the flowers picked from Euclid’s garden would endow building with reason.‘ His peculiar metaphor, whereby what we understand to be at the root of architecture is described as its ornament, gives the impression that the foundation is in some sense an accessory or afterthought; an afterthought because buildings could and did exist without it, a foundation in that geometry offers certainty in situations beset by doubt. ‘The job of a foundation is to be as firm as a rock. It is supposed to be inert, Dead things are easier to handle than live ones; they may not be so interesting but they are less troublesome, From the point of view of the architect seeking firmness and stability, the best geometry is surely a dead geometry, and perhaps that, by and large, is what architecture is made with. What I mean by a dead geometry isan aspect of geometry no longer under development from within. Triangles, rectangles, and cit- cles as defined in Euclid have been pretty well exhausted as subjects of geometrical enquiry. As these elements lose their mystery, interest in them subsides, but in this state of devaluation they become more valuable elsewhere because their behavior is completely predictable. Conse- quences can be foreseen. Dead geometry is an innoculation against un- certainty, COMPOSITION AND FROIECTION madYet the architect's attitude to this stabilizing geometry has always been ‘two-faced. Toward the lay world its presence is traditionally advertised with pride, while within the profession architects tend to be suspicious of its power over what they do. Its value may be in its deadness, but if it is not kept under control it may revive, like a monster, or the morbidity may spread, like a disease, ‘The ideal is ofa vital and creative art supported on the dead certain truth of geometry. The very statement is enough to make us think twice. Is the geometry in architecture ‘really so reliable? It is, as we shall see, difficult enough to say where the geometry in architecture is exactly. Reports come from several locations. Either it is mobile, which is a sign of life, or itis multiplied and harder to categorize. But the entrenched idea of the firm foundation has itself been under~ pinned by other definitions that may be no less insupportable. For in- stance, it fits neatly with the perception that geometry is a rational science, while architecture—the at of architecture—is a matter for intu- itive judgment. According to this credible-sounding distinction, geome- try gives architecture a reasonable ground but does not confine it to rationality. The creative, intuitive, or rhetorical aspects of architecture can therefore ride on the back of its geometric rationality. That is what INTRODUCTION sedi‘Guarino Guarini, the seventeenth-century mathematician and architect, conveyed with his concise definition: “Architecture, though dependent ‘on mathematics, is nevertheless an art of adulation.”* Whilst this divi- sion between base and superstructure has been constructed into a de~ monstrable truth in a large quantity of historical buildings, it is neither universal nor necessary. Serlio’s lowers suggest as much, and Guarini’s ‘own architecture threatened the dependence he had announced by bringing a new and far less predictable geometry into play. Either science ‘was interfering with art or it was hard to tell the difference between sci- cence and art. Geometry used to be called the science of space. For various reasons this definition was discarded, so geometry no longer has an obvious subject matter. The question arises, how then is it a science? Whats it a science ‘of? Some mathematicians have even proposed that geometry, together with the rest of mathematics, should be reclassified either as a humanity or as an ar, since it is said to be guided by an aesthetic sense. “A mathe- matician, like a painter or a poet is a maker of patterns,” wrote G. H. Hardy, typically:* The role of intuition in mathematics has also been ex- tensively discussed over the past century.” As a result, many professional mathematicians are not oily possessed of the idea that the ultimate justi~ fication of their work is not mere truth but beauty; they also regard intu- COMPOSITION AND PROJECTION sanition as essential to the performance or appreciation of mathematics of any sort, There is no need to justify these ideas. I only want to present them as running counter to the ordinary understanding of what geome- try is, and running parallel to the ordinary understanding of what artis. ‘The most fleeting acquaintance with recent writings on the nature of mathematics will convince anyone that the definition of architecture as ‘an art born of science because founded on geometry would make little sense viewed from the mathematicians’ side of the fence. Viewed from that side there does not appear to be much of a fence. From the mathe- ‘matician’s point of view the definition might be rewritten thus: architec~ ture is an art born of another art because itis based on geometry, which is a visual art, This rewritten definition should not pass unchallenged, because we cannot be certain that architecture isan art, or that geometry is basic to it, or that the beauty in geometry has anything to do with the beauty in architecture, but at least it allows us to disabuse ourselves of a prejudice that still directs the understanding of geometry from within architecture. ‘The following chapters show that geometry does not always stabilize ar- chitecture; that the geometry in architecture was not always dead at the time of its employment, although it may have died later; and that inarchitecture expired geometry sometimes gained a life after death. They show also that the perception of geometry’s role has been vastly affected by a collective oversight. The first place anyone looks to find the geome- try in architecture is in the shape of buildings, then perhaps in the shape of the drawings of buildings. These are the locations where geometry has been, on the whole, stolid and dormant. But geometry has been active in the space between and the space at either end. What connects think- ing to imagination, imagination to drawing, drawing to building, and buildings to our eyes is projection in one guise or another, or processes that we have chosen to model on projection. All are zones of instability. I would now claim that the engaging questions of architecture's relation to geometry occur in these zones. Composition, which is where the ge- ometry in architecture is usually sought, may still for convenience be considered the crux of the matter, but it has no significance in and of itself. It obtains all its value via the several types of projective, quasi- projective, or pseudo-projective space that surround it, for it is only through these that it can be made available to perception. That is the thesis of this book. The distinction between composition and projection in architecture has its counterpart in mathematical geometry. First came a geometry whose idealities were well adapted to the measuring of things. This was orga- COMPOSITION AND PROJECTION xxlnized into a consistent body of propositions by the Greeks and obtained its classic exposition in Euclid’s Elements. Euclidean geometry was con- cerned with the ratios and equalities of lines, areas, and angles. However abstract, however contemplative in spirit, however remote from practical application, it must surely have arisen from, and easily translates back into, the tasks of shaping artifacts, laying out buildings, and surveying Jand. Later came a geometry no longer concerned with measuring the intrinsic properties of objects: projective geometry. Attention shifted, a frst slowly and cautiously, from the object per se to its images: shadows, maps, or pictures. It is easy to appreciate intuitively that any rigid objece will propagate a variety of possible images of itself in space, that these images will alter by continuous deformation, not by fits and starts, and that while there can be no fundamental image, we ‘would nevertheless expect to recognize some kind of permanent identity from several such images. It is equally easy to appreciate intuitively that the images of this rigid object are elastic. Though consistent in their de- formations, they do not conserve measured lengths or angles. In Euclid- ‘ean geometry it is always as if the figures in the books could be applied like templates directly to a material, whereas the figures of projective ge- cometry belong to some absconded, mercurial item that remains out of reach. The key realization in the development of projective geometry was Inteopuction mamithat while figures deform according to the point of view lines of sight do not deform. So rigidity is transferred from objects to the medium of their transmission, which is most easily imagined as light, That is why Henri Poincaré put the contrast in terms of physical subject matter: “One would be tempted to say that metrical geometry is the study of solids, and projective geometry that of light.”* One would be tempted to add, following William Ivins and others, a sensual discrimination: metrical geometry is a geometry of touch (haptic) because congruity of figures is assessed by whether they feel the same when put together, while projec- tive geometry is a geometry of vision (optic) because congruity is assessed by whether they look the same from a given standpoint.’ Neither charac terization is completely true, as Poincaré himself went on to show," but, they give a first rough indication of the difference, and they enable us to see why architectural composition is such a peculiar enterprise: a metric organization judged optically, it mixes one kind of geometry with the other kind of assessment. Perhaps this is reason enough for the confusion surrounding it. For several centuries (from the fifteenth to the eighteenth) the develop- ‘ment of projective geometry derived some of its impetus from architec- tural procedures and even from architects. However, my main concer in this book is not with the once fertile relation between architectural COMPOSITION AND PROJECTION salprojection and mathematical geometry, but with the relation between projection and architecture, which is less well understood. I never in- tended to write a summary history of geometry and architecture through the ages. It could be argued that the most intense interaction between the two subjects occurred during the seventeenth century, which is touched on but not dwelt on in what follows. Instead of a synoptic survey chose to concentrate on several quite specific kinds of interaction, often focusing on individual buildings to do so. The scope is largely confined to Europe from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. Coverage is lim- ited and incidental, but it is not intended as accidental or arbitrary. An episodic treatment ofthis sort has no advantage unless the episodes inti- mate something other than the fact of their own unique occurrence. I hhave sometimes tried to indicate aspects of this extra intelligence, but my hope would be that the reader might more easly gain in the reading what have been unable to state as conclusions in the writing, and I say this not to exonerate myself from the task of generalization, but merely to express the hope that it will be a book like so many others I have read. The history of architectural projection is just beginning to be investi- gated. It has played a very small part in the development of architectural theory. Only two well-known architects gave ita significant place in their writings—Philibert Delorme and Guarino Guarini—and modern com- IntroouctioN maamentaries on their work have consistently ignored or marginalized this aspect of what they did. General discussions on the subject have never- theless developed to the point where a consensus can be identified: inso- far as projection alters architecture it is to be regarded with suspicion, ‘This consensus has been reached because projection is thought to be an agency proper to the science of engineering and alien to the art of archi- tecture. Either projection is acceptable because it is transparent, or it passes between the creative imagination and the item created like a dark cloud, reinforcing the already enormous prejudice against anything tech~ nical. This view is challenged by a historical narrative that extends fur- ther back than the nineteenth century. It is wise for architects to remain cautious of projection, but it would be foolish of them to disregard it. Is this not reminiscent of things heard elsewhere? The way that architec ture is divided between geometric drawing and building may be com- pared to the division between writing and speech. And has it not been demonstrated that there is a tremendous philosophical prejudice against writing that encourages us to think of speech as authentic, with writing a questionable copy of speech, secondary, second-hand, second-rate de- spite its universal currency? Has not this prejudice been challenged? And are we in architecture not just as prejudiced against geometric drawing? Yes, on all counts. We would nevertheless be well advised at this stage to COMPOSITION AND PROJECTION xxvresist the temptation that presents itself and which has already proved inresistable to some. We must not assume that a certain resemblance gives us leave to treat the two situations as identical, taking terminology, arguments, and conclusions lock, stock, and barrel from literary theory, plastering them onto architecture, and calling the result a theory of our subject. Likeness is not identity; orthographic projection is not orthog- raphy; drawing is not writing and architecture does not speak. ‘A lot can be learned from literary theory, not least circumspection, also 1 sufficient confidence that the subject for which a theory is being sought is itself worthy of some modest consultation in the matter. In architec ture the trouble has been that a superior paradigm derived either from mathematics, the natural sciences, the human sciences, painting, or liter~ ature has always been ready at hand. They have supplied us with our needs at some cost. We beg our theories from these more highly devel- ‘oped regions only to find architecture annexed to them as a satellite sub- ject. Why is it not possible to derive a theory of architecture from a consideration of architecture? Not architecture alone but architecture amongst other things. If we take the trouble to discriminate between things, it is not just to keep them apart but to see more easily how they relate to one another, Aschitecture can be made distinct but it is not autonomous. It touches so much else, and across its borders there is con- INTRODUCTION maetinuous activity. A crucial source of intelligence for such a theory would therefore be the numerous transactions between architecture and other topics, for instance geometry. COMPOSITION AND PROJECTION same