‘Finding San Carlino adds substantially to the understanding of Borromini’s

iconic masterpiece while signposting new terrain in the ever elusive

phenomenal experience of geometry and proportionality.’
– John Abell, Associate Professor, Architecture,
Washington State University, USA

‘A polyhedric masterpiece scrutinized through a kaleidoscopic lens.’

– Joseph Connors,
Professor of History of Art and Architecture,
Harvard University, USA

‘The nuanced writing and analysis of Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi’s
Finding San Carlino offers a wealth of new insight into Borromini’s masterwork.
While the book can be savoured as a fundamental historical reference, it also
has a striking resonance with the deeply interwoven geometries and complex
systems of today’s changing world. The writing retraces original models
and drawings and combines this with acute observation of tangible spaces
in the immersive interior and iconic dome exterior, and with wide-ranging
examination of the philosophy, cultural history and politics surrounding
the project. This generous portrait of the building evokes constantly-
shifting creativity and intelligence, testifies to the fundamental depth and
contemporary relevance of this extraordinary work of architecture.’
– Philip Beesley, Professor of Architecture,
University of Waterloo, Canada
Finding San Carlino

The church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, also called San Carlino,
is an architectural artefact that continues to attract numerous hypotheses and
geometric analyses attempting to explain its form and meaning. Numerous
investigations have attempted to reveal its underlying geometrical principles,
without, however, reaching a consensus. Finding San Carlino presents an
edited collection of perspectives on Borromini’s famous Baroque church from
a range of established and emerging scholars in architectural history and
theory, including Werner Oechslin, Karsten Harries, Michael Hill, and Lauren
Jacobi amongst others.
This book offers the reader different means of engaging with, enjoying,
and articulating San Carlino’s complexity, non-consensus, and ambiguity.
It is precisely such a unique disposition that motivates this book to explore
multiple modes of architectural enquiry and delve into a series of theoretical
and historiographical questions such as: why was Borromini not able to post-
rationalize his architecture with his drawings? What is San Carlino’s exemplary
value, and why does it continually engender exegetical and hermeneutic desire?
What is the role of geometry in architecture, in history and today?
Written for researchers, scholars and postgraduate students in architectural
history and theory, the book uses San Carlino as an enigmatic centering
point for a set of significant contemporary voices to explore new modes of
confrontation and comparison.

Adil Mansure is an architect, writer and educator based in Toronto. He

has taught studios and seminars based on his research at the University of
Toronto, OCAD University and the University at Buffalo. He has practiced
in New York, Toronto and Bombay. He holds degrees from the University of
Cambridge, Yale University and Mumbai University.

Skender Luarasi is an architect and writer. Luarasi has presented his research
in numerous ACSA conferences and has published in Haecceity, A+P Forum
and other journals. He holds a Master of Architecture from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Wentworth
Institute of Technology. He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Research
and Development at Polis University in Tirana, Albania.
Routledge Research in Architectural History
Series Editor: Nicholas Temple

Books in this series look in detail at aspects of architectural history from an

academic viewpoint. Written by international experts, the volumes cover a
range of topics from the origins of building types, the relationship of archi-
tectural designs to their sites, explorations of the works of specific architects,
to the development of tools and design processes, and beyond. Written for
the researcher and scholar, we are looking for innovative research to join our
publications in architectural history.

Time, History and Architecture

Essays on Critical Historiography
Gevork Hartoonian

The Rise of Academic Architectural Education

The Origins and Enduring Influence of the Académie d’Architecture
Alexander Griffin

Finding San Carlino

Collected Perspectives on the Geometry of the Baroque
Edited by Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi

For a full list of titles in this series, visit: www.routledge.com/architecture/

series/RRAHIST
Finding San Carlino
Collected Perspectives on the Geometry
of the Baroque

Edited by Adil Mansure and

Skender Luarasi
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Adil Mansure and Skender
Luarasi; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mansure, Adil, editor. | Luarasi, Skender, editor.
Title: Finding San Carlino : collected perspectives on the geometry of
the Baroque / Adil Mansure, Skender Luarasi, eds.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Research in architectural history | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Summary: “The church of San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, also called San Carlino, is an architectural
artefact that continues to attract numerous hypotheses and
geometric analyses attempting to explain its form and meaning”—
Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019039093 (print) | LCCN 2019039094
(ebook) | ISBN 9781138313002 (hbk) | ISBN 9780429457876
(ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Chiesa di S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (Rome,
Italy) | Borromini, Francesco, 1599–1667—Criticism and
interpretation. | Geometry in architecture. | Symbolism in
architecture—Italy—Rome.
Classification: LCC NA5620.C32 F56 2020 (print) | LCC NA5620.
C32 (ebook) | DDC 720.9456/32—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039093
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039094

ISBN: 978-1-138-31300-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-45787-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of illustrations ix
List of contributors xii
Acknowledgments xv
Preface xvii
AD IL M ANS URE AND SKEND ER LUARASI

Foreword xix
M ARK J ARZOMBEK

Introduction: after San Carlino 1

AD IL M ANS URE AND SKEND ER LUARASI

1 On Borromini’s drawings and “practical geometry”: voleva

dentro una cosa cavare un’altra, e nell’altra l’altra senza
fi nire mai 8
W ERNER OECHSLIN

2 Toggling through San Carlino: a speculative inquiry into

the geometry and process in San Carlino and its
interpretations in history 25
S KEND ER LUARASI

3 The deep structure of San Carlino 49

J OHN HEND RIX

4 Architecture, geometry, and the sacred 65

KARS T EN HARRIES

5 Baroque constructive geometry? Borromini’s design for the

elevation at San Carlino 73
J ONAT HAN HALES
viii Contents
6 From string to volume 86
KARL DAUBMANN AND LAUREN J ACOBI

7 A part of the whole: the Crucifix chapel in San Carlo alle

Quattro Fontane 96
M ICHAEL HILL

8 San Carlino as Surface 112

AD IL M ANSURE

9 The Xenophora Principle: finding San Carlino . . . in a shell 129

NIKLAS M AAK

Conclusion: the future pasts of San Carlino 142

AD IL M ANSURE AND SKEND ER LUARASI

Bibliography 148
Index 176
Illustrations

Figures
2.1 Skender Luarasi, “Transformation Diagrams of the
Gometrical Structure of San Carlino”, 2018 34
3.1 Athanasius Kircher, frontispiece of Musurgia
Universalis sive Ars Magna Consoni et Dissoni,
Romae: Ex Typographia Haeredum Francisci
Corbeletti, 1650 56
3.2 Peter Paul Rubens, “Vignette for Book VI”, engraving,
in Franciscus Aguilonius, Opticorum libri sex,
Antwerp: Officina Plantiniana, 1613 57
3.3 Athanasius Kircher, “Ars Magna Consoni et Dissoni”
engraving of an oval, in Musurgia Universalis sive
Ars Magna Consoni et Dissoni, Romae: Ex
Typographia Haeredum Francisci Corbeletti,
1650, p. 450 59
5.1 Jonathan Hales, “Constructive Geometry Diagrams” 75
6.1 Karl Daubmann, “Studies of Borromini’s domes”,
2015–16 89
6.2 Karl Daubmann, “Window” San Carlino, 2015 91
6.3 Karl Daubmann, “Time lapse photograph of
San Carlino”, 2015 92
6.4 Karl Daubmann and Domenico Cortese, “Borromini
pasta for the American Academy in Rome”, 2016 94
7.1 Michael Hill, “Entrance to Crucifix Chapel”,
photograph 97
7.2a Michael Hill, “Axes of dormitory openings, ground
floor, superimposed on Borromini, Plan of San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane, 1634, pencil and red chalk,
52 × 37cm, Az Rom 171” 99
7.2b “Axes of dormitory openings and Crucifix chapel,
superimposed on Borromini, Plan of San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, 1660, pencil, 47 × 31cm,
Az Rom 173” 99
x Illustrations
7.3 Michael Hill, “Chapel interior”, photograph 101
7.4 Michael Hill, photograph of Crucifixion, Maestro
Giuseppe, oil on canvas, 1653, in the Crucifix chapel 103
7.5 Michael Hill, “Chapel vault”, photograph 104
7.6 Michael Hill, “Entrance to Madonna Chapel”,
photograph 106
8.1a Francesco Borromini, “Studies of vault coffering” of
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1634.
Az Rom 171. 52,3 × 37 cm 114
8.1b Adil Mansure, “Diagrammatic analysis” of Francesco
Borromini’s drawing Az Rom 218 114
8.2a Adil Mansure, “Diagrammatic analysis: Plan” of
Francesco Borromini’s drawing Az Rom 173 117
8.2b Adil Mansure, “Diagrammatic analysis: Vaulting Plan”
of Guarino Guarini’s Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Turin. 117
C.1 Adil Mansure, “photograph of Spirotype”
(designed and built by Phillip Daniels)
Toronto, 2018 143
C.2a Phillip Daniels, “Diagrams: Rosette Sc(roll)” stills
from animation, Toronto, 2017 145
C.2b Phillip Daniels, “Medallion manifold”, digital drawing,
Toronto, 2017 145
C.3a Simon Rabyniuk, “cyanotype” of a dome model 146
C.3b Adil Mansure, “photograph of 3D printed domes” 146

Plates
1 Francesco Borromini, “plan” of San Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane, Rome, 1634, Az Rom 171. 52.3 × 37 cm 157
2 Francesco Borromini, “plan” of San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1638–60s, Az Rom 172r.
56,1 × 39,9 cm 158
3 Francesco Borromini, “plan” of San Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane, Rome, 1660, Az Rom 173. 47 × 31 cm 159
4 Francesco Borromini, “plan of the façade” of
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1666–67,
Az Rom 176. 40,7 × 52 cm 160
5 Francesco Borromini, “partial plan, main interior
space” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome,
1638–70, Az Rom 178v. 25,3 × 18,7 cm 161
6 Francesco Borromini, “façade studies” of San
Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1640–41,
Az Rom 187r. 22,9 × 18,1 cm 162
7 Francesco Borromini, “plan of lantern” of San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, Rome, Az Rom 192. 16 × 27,3 cm 163
 Illustrations xi
8 Francesco Borromini, “sketch section of the dome”
of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome,
Az Rom 196v. 13,2 × 19,7 cm 164
9 Francesco Borromini, “architectural details of the
interior”, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome,
Az Rom 203. 40,2 × 26,3 cm 165
10 Francesco Borromini, “Studies on wall and conching
in the interior” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane,
Rome, 1640–41, Az Rom 208r. 26,6 × 20,3 cm 166
11 Francesco Borromini, “Studies on vaulting and dome
fencing”, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane,
Rome, 1639–40, Az Rom 224. 27,9 × 20,6 cm 167
12 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the façade of
San Carlino”, Rome, 2016 168
13 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the chapel in the crypt
of San Carlino”, Rome, 2016 169
14 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the interior of San Carlino”,
Rome, 2016 170
15 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the interior of San Carlino,
taken from the dome lantern”, Rome, 2016 171
16 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the apses and dome of
San Carlino”, Rome, 2016 171
17 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the interior of San
Carlino, taken from the dome lantern”, Rome, 2016 172
18 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the entrance apse and
dome of San Carlino”, Rome, 2016 173
19 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the entrance apse and
dome of San Carlino”, Rome, 2016 174
20 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the pendentive
medallion”, Rome, 2016 175
Contributors

Karl Daubmann is an architect at the forefront of digital design. He is Dean

of the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technological
University. His design practice DAUB (design, architecture, urbanism,
building) focuses on expanding the relationship between design, technol-
ogy and practice. Daubmann is a fellow of the American Academy in
Rome. Between 2010 and 2014 Daubmann was Vice President of Design
and Creative Director for Blu Homes where he led a multidisciplinary
team that developed prefab housing.

Jonathan Hales trained and worked as a fine arts practitioner and psy-
chotherapist before developing an interest in architectural history. His
training as a painter first alerted him to the underlying proportions he
noticed in visits onsite to Borromini’s various projects. This prompted
his research into medieval and post-Renaissance proportional design. His
background as a psychotherapist perhaps helped him make connections
across a number of disparate systems. He currently works as a counsellor
and brief therapist at the University of Brighton, while pursuing further
research into the proportions that inform Borromini’s architecture.

Karsten Harries is Howard H. Newman Professor of Philosophy Emeri-

tus at Yale University. He is the author of The Meaning of Modern Art
(1968), The Bavarian Rococo Church: Between Faith and Aestheticism
(1983), The Broken Frame (1990), The Ethical Function of Architecture
(1997), Infinity and Perspective (2001), Art Matters: a Critical Com-
mentary on Martin Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art (2009),
Die bayerische Rokokokirche: Das Irrrationale und das Sakrale (2009),
Between Nihilism and Faith: A Commentary on Either/Or (2010), Wah-
rheit: Die Architektur der Welt (2012) and The Antinomy of Being (2019)

John Shannon Hendrix wrote his dissertation on Borromini and has been a
professor for twenty years at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.
He has also been a professor at John Cabot University in Rome, the Rhode
Island School of Design, the University of Connecticut and Lincoln Uni-
versity in the UK. Besides the dissertation on Borromini he has written
 Contributors xiii
ten books and 32 articles, and he has edited six books. Books include
Architecture and the Unconscious, The Contradiction between Form and
Function in Architecture, The Cultural Role of Architecture, Renaissance
Theories of Vision, Architecture and Psychoanalysis, Neoplatonic Aes-
thetics and Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures.
Michael Hill is head of Art History at the National Art School in Sydney,
Australia. With Peter Kohane, Michael has published a number of articles
on decorum in architectural theory. His interest in San Carlo was sparked
by a teacher who said that the interior was like music; Michael’s work on
Borromini has also led him to study the writing of the art historian Leo
Steinberg. He is currently researching how civic space can be shaped by
the siting of public sculpture.
Lauren Jacobi is Associate Professor of architectural history in the History,
Theory + Criticism section of the Department of Architecture, MIT. A
scholar of early-industrial and early modern Europe, she has published
a book that probes historical relationships between banks and religious
behavior, exploring urban geographies and architectural forms that
unveil moral attitudes toward money during the birth of capitalism. Her
research has been supported by the Kress Foundation, the Getty Research
Institute, the Morgan Library and Museum, the American Council of
Learned Societies and the American Academy in Rome.
Skender Luarasi is an architect, writer and educator. His PhD dissertation,
received at Yale, focuses on how design processes end and how the ques-
tion of finitude intersects with style, geometry and parametricism in his-
tory. Luarasi has published in Log, Haecceity, Forum A+P and other
journals. Skender Luarasi holds a Master of Architecture from Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Architecture from Went-
worth Institute of Technology. He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of
Research and Development at Polis University in Tirana, Albania. He has
previously taught at the Yale School of Architecture, Rhode Island School
of Design, Washington State University and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology among others. His practice is based in Boston and Tirana.
Niklas Maak, born in 1972 in Hamburg, is a writer and an architecture
theoretician. Since 2002, he has pursued parallel careers as an educa-
tor, curator, novelist and arts editor of Germany’s Frankfurter Allgeme-
ine. Maak studied art history, philosophy and architecture in Paris and
Hamburg. He was a visiting professor at Frankfurt’s Städel School and
teaches at Harvard. For his essays and books, Maak has been awarded
numerous prizes. His most recent publications include The Living Com-
plex (2016), an investigation of the effects of fundamental technological,
demographic and societal changes on housing, the experimental novel
Durch Manhattan (2017, with Leanne Shapton) and the novella Tech-
nophoria (2020).
xiv Contributors
Adil Mansure is an architect, writer and educator based in Toronto. He has
taught studios and seminars based on his research at the University of
Toronto, OCAD University and the University at Buffalo. He has prac-
ticed in New York, Toronto and Bombay. He holds degrees from Cam-
bridge University, Yale University and Mumbai University. His current
projects include a book titled The Architecture of Cliché, Viscous Space,
an exhibition titled Instrumentality of an Eternal Baroque and the proj-
ect Finding San Carlino of which this book is a part.
Werner Oechslin studied art-history, archeology, philosophy and mathemat-
ics; taught at MIT, Harvard, RISD, Berlin, Tonji/Shanghai; professor
in Bonn (1980–1985); at ETH Zurich (1985–2010), headed the Insti-
tute for History and Theory of architecture (1986–2006); coeditor of
DAIDALOS 1981–1998; founder of the Bibliothek Werner Oechslin in
Einsiedeln (www.bibliothek-oechslin.ch). Oechslin had numerous pub-
lications mainly on architecture and architectural theory from 15th to
20th century: Stilhülse und Kern: Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos und der evo-
lutionnäre Weg zur modernen Architektur (1994; engl.ed. 2002); Kunst-
denkmäler des Kt.Schwyz: Einsiedeln I/II (2003; with Anja Buschow
Oechslin); Palladianismus (2008); Architekturtheorie im deutschsprachi-
gen Raum 1486–1648 (2018; with T. Büchi, M. Pozsgai).
Acknowledgments

This project was born out of questions emergent from two research papers:
a PhD seminar research paper by Skender Luarasi under the guidance of
Kurt Forster and an independent research project by Adil Mansure under the
guidance of Nicola Suthor (with Anthony Vidler and Michael Szivos), both
conducted at Yale University. Our research dealt with Francesco Borromini’s
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane: on the numerous geometrical interpreta-
tions it has attracted and on inadequacies resultant thereof. During and
in conclusion of these projects it became clear that this topic compelled
additional investigation from voices such as the one presented in this collec-
tion. This book has been in the making for the three years, and it consists
of contributions from historians, writers and architects such as Karl Daub-
mann, Jonathan Hales, Karsten Harries, John Hendrix, Michael Hill, Lauren
Jacobi, Werner Oechslin and Niklas Maak, including the editors of this vol-
ume. We thank them all, not only for their insightful and thought provoking
essays but also for engaging in and helping several other conversations. We
thank Deborah Berke and the Yale School of Architecture for generously
contributing to the project: their efforts made possible the required transla-
tions and the image copyrights of Borromini’s drawings at the archive of the
Albertina Museum, Vienna. We also thank the Albertina Museum for their
support. We thank Mario Carpo, Kurt Forster, Alan Plattus, Nicola Suthor,
Anthony Vidler, Mark Jarzombek and Luke Bulman who provided us with
support and inspiration during the long process of putting this collection
of essays together. We thank the staff and clergy at San Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane for permitting us into restricted parts of the church, especially the
lantern. We thank several other Borromini scholars who added much to the
conversation by way of recommendations, especially to Joseph Connors. We
thank Adil Mansure’s students at the University of Toronto and the univer-
sity at Buffalo for engaging in conversation and for their laborious experi-
ments in ‘finding San Carlino’ through media other than drawing, especially
Phillip Daniels, Simon Rabyniuk, Kirby Tobin, Weixin Zhao, Omar AlSaleh
and Kenzie McNamara. We thank David Lieberman at the University of
Toronto. We also thank Ryerson University, Toronto for hosting our exhibit
Instrumentality of an Eternal Baroque: San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, the
xvi Acknowledgments
production of which provided impetus for some key ideas of this project.
We thank all our professors and colleagues at Yale – with whom we may
or may not have discussed San Carlino in particular – but who nourish and
sustain that atmosphere from which ideas are likely to come about. Finally,
we thank our families for their love and patience, without whom this project
could not have arrived at its culmination.
Preface
Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi

This preface is the invitation prompt to which our authors have responded
with their essays:

Francesco Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, or as it is com-

monly called, San Carlino is an unusual architectural artefact that
continues to attract numerous hypotheses and geometric analyses
attempting to explain its form and meaning; among these Borromini’s
own drawings housed at the Albertina. Commissioned by the Span-
ish Trinitarians in 1634, the construction of the church commenced in
1638 and was completed in 1667. With the exception of drawing Az
Rom 171 that dates back to 1630s, Borromini reworked or re-drew the
other drawings around 1660, well after the construction of the church
commenced. These drawings and the church itself has been extensively
analyzed since the second half of the 19th century, most of these analy-
ses attempting to reconstruct with a degree of finality an ideality of the
church through its design evolution. Why this abundance of differing
readings? What is common about the mode of inquiry and analytical
frameworks that produce these differences?
Geometry was many things in addition to a tool for planning and
building: an analogic framework of comparison, a symbolic system of
signification, a code that clarified ideas of buildings rather than describ-
ing their construction, and a meta-project of architecture that sought
to root a building, a style or even an epoch in some form of origin. In
an age of mechanical [and digital] reproduction this assumes a renewed
relevance by bringing into question the geometrical scheme, ideality, or
programmability of the [historical or industrial] object. The geomet-
rical interpretations of San Carlino have centered on the geometrical
scheme underlying the form of the church and its symbolism. It has been
observed, however, that certain parts of the church correspond neither
with these interpretations nor with the geometry shown in Borromini’s
drawings. Not only do these parts of the church fail characterization in
terms of their formal and architectural identity, but also in the rules that
xviii Preface
dictate their means of coherence. These inadequacies have brought into
question the very role of geometry in architecture.
The questions we pose are both theoretical and historiographical:
Why San Carlino? What is its exemplary value, and why does it con-
tinually engender exegetical and hermeneutic desire? Is the geometrical
lack particular to its geometrical interpretations, or is this lack universal
insofar as these interpretations are geometrical? What motivated these
interpretations then; and what motivates them now? And why default
to geometry? Are there other modalities at work in the design and con-
struction of San Carlino? What we seek then are new terms and frame-
works of analysis that change the terms of the debates on San Carlino,
and steer the discourse in new directions. What technical frameworks
might be offered to investigate such architectural artefacts? Can they
expound the seemingly dissonant logical systems that constitute San
Carlino and their means of coherence?

Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi,

June 2016, New Haven
Foreword
Mark Jarzombek

San Carlino is a small building. It fits into one of the piers of St. Peters.
And yet it packs quite a punch. On any given day, one will find architects,
students, cognoscenti and tourists crowding through its narrow door. Some
take out a sketchbook, but most simply gaze at its vaults and take a few
pictures. The scholars among us are told of the great triangular geometries
that govern its design, and Borromini even drew them in a plan, though
apparently only after the building was constructed. But there is clearly some-
thing unsettling about these geometric overlays since they hardly seem to
explain much about the building. No one is convinced that that is the whole
story. A gothic cathedral, which might be even more complex from a geo-
metrical point of view, by way of contrast, seems more orderly than this.
Walls seem here to have softened into rubbery surfaces, with empty framed
areas and aedicules of various sizes and shapes pushing – with uncomfort-
able closeness – against the stately but elongated columns. The interior is,
of course, made of stucco covered brick. It was all a lot cheaper than stone,
and one need only walk down the street to San Andrea by Bernini to see the
difference. No awkward joints in San Carlino! No surfaces shimmering with
moisture! No harsh echoes. Walls, columns, moldings – apart from a few
lintels – are uniformly white. The beautifully carved but almost forbidding
surfaces of San Andrea are a stone-mason’s dream; the surfaces of San Car-
lino are a stucoteur’s nightmare. But the effect is profound. The building’s
inner luminosity defies expectations as do openings in unexpected places
that allow one to see into shadowy recesses. Unlike St. Andrea, which is
clearly Pantheonesque – and purposefully so – this building with a dome
and two half domes on axis seems more related to the distant Hagia Sophia,
but its ‘ideological’ message is not clear and depending on interpretation can
be seen as everything from ambiguous to the unknowable. Architecturally,
the lower register clearly carries indebtedness to Michelangelo, except that
here the aedicules and frames seem to want to crowd out the columns. In
fact, there is no ‘wall’ anywhere in the areas between the columns. The eye is
never allowed to rest, as it moves from one architectural ‘thing’ to another, a
column, an aedicule, a niche, a molding, an empty panel. The aedicule mold-
ings act like pointed elbows aiming with only an inch or so to spare at the
xx Foreword
rib cage of the columns. To label this building as ‘Baroque’ is to insult it with
a cliché, and yet how exactly should one understand its architecture; how
even should one frame the building in the broader context?
It has been a long time since San Carlino has been in the scholarly lime-
light, losing some of its lure, perhaps, with the demise of postmodernism in
the 1990s. But that does not mean that scholars are not still drawn to the
building. These essays are certainly proof of that. They give us fresh slices
through the problem of interpretation, which is brought to the fore by not-
ing not just how we might be imposing a false sense of subjectivity on the
building but even how the plans made by Borromini might not say as much
about the building as about multiple possible readings in history. We should
not try to find out what Borromini did in designing the building but allow
the building to give us multiple possible ‘readings’. Some papers debate the
elusive, visible/concealed nature of the building’s geometry by drawing and
thus interpreting it. Meticulous measurements by these authors show that
despite much being unknown about Borromini’s working process, it is highly
likely that he employed multiple geometric traditions. Other papers point
to a mustখrion of architecture, operating in the very space between idea and
building, which is indeed the space of drawing and different representational
and modeling techniques. Several papers also address the symbolic aspects of
geometry, some discuss Neo-Platonic thought – and others – biblical themes.
As a group, these articles are satisfyingly inconclusive, anticipating that
we will be revisiting the building for a long time to come. The first step to
make sense of all of this is, therefore, to visit the building, especially if you
have not done so before; otherwise what is the point? But bring this volume
and start your journey there.
Introduction
After San Carlino
Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi

In 1634, the Spanish Trinitarians in Rome, Italy, commissioned Francesco

Borromini, a relatively unknown mason, architect and sculptor from Bis-
sone, to design a small church dedicated to the Saint Carlo Borromeo –
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Located at 23, Via del Quirinale, Rome,
the church, cloister and garden are cornered by buildings on two sides and
narrow Roman streets on the other two. Referred to as San Carlino – the
petite San Carlo, it harbored a simple ambition – to carve an opening into
Baroque Rome, an opening much larger than its geographical coordinates
would permit. Stepping into the church, one is denied a total image of the
space. The undulating convex and concave walls, pivoting columns, con-
trasting shallows and depths of relief work and the swollen dome – all shape
a space whose exact coordinates and dimensions elude the viewer. Anamor-
phic perspectives, produced by scrolling gazes of the beholder, create distinct
vantage points for one to be in the church. One wanders and wonders about
the many distinct images that are San Carlino. If it cannot be held in place
by our gaze, how can its place be held in history?
Having destroyed most of his drawings, Borromini has left us with little
description about his aspirations, methods and processes that motivated
the genesis and evolution of San Carlo. The few remaining drawings (now
housed at the Albertina Museum in Vienna) and the church itself have been
extensively analyzed since the second half of the 19th century. Beginning
with Borromini’s own a posteriori drawings of the church’s geometrical
schema, (for example, drawing Az Rom 173, Plate 3), to the historical inter-
pretations and geometrical analyses of Eberhard Hempel, Dagobert Frey,
Max Dvorák,ࡊ Francesco Bellini, Anthony Blunt, Rudolf Wittkower, Hans
Sedlmayr, Leo Steinberg, Joseph Connors, Paolo Portoghesi and Michael
Hill among others, have all proposed vastly different geometric origins and
genealogies of San Carlino. Their interpretations have attempted to uncover
a geometrical scheme believed to underlie the form of the church. For exam-
ple, Sedlmayr proposed that the original inspiration of the design evolution
was Vignola’s oval shaped plan of San Anna de Parafraneiri, which Bor-
romini effectively inflected and deformed with oscillating concave/convex
continuous curves like those of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli.1 For Portoghesi, the
2 Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi
rhombus and the quatrefoil motif were the primary symbolic and practical
geometric operatives in the plan.2 In his extensive doctoral dissertation on
the church, Leo Steinberg explained the complexity of San Carlino through
a tripartite metaphor: that built into the idea of the church itself was the
simultaneous trinity of the circle/oval, hexagon and cruciform – a geometric
armature that explained its form, space and symbolism.3 Like Steinberg,
Wittkower embraced the Trinitarian ethos of the equilateral triangle and
further argued for Borromini’s geometrical and proportional principles to
be of medieval origin; given his upbringing in Bissone and that the fact that
he resorted to ‘triangulation’ to resolve his plans and elevations.4 Clearly,
there has been no consensus about San Carlino’s geometric evolution or
genealogy, and we in this book do not attempt to change that. Instead, we
seek to engage with the provocation of non-consensus, and like Sedlmayr
and, in his words, “use the works of Borromini to recognize something else
through them”.5
It is the variety of frameworks to investigate such non-consensus and
the multiplicity of viewpoints regarding San Carlino, rather than the much
argued-for accuracy of any one exegesis that interests the authors writing
this volume. They confront San Carlino’s disposition to continuously be per-
ceived to be other than what it is. Through the fond sobriquet ‘San Carlino’,
they allude not only to an affinity towards its peculiar ‘affective’ qualities
and spatial experience but also to all that calls San Carlino out in history.
Thus, the ‘object’ of investigation here is not just the building in Rome but
also the totality of its representations and reinterpretations through history.
Such plural ‘offsetted’ aspects of San Carlino were literally there from its
very origins. With the exception of a few drawings such as Az Rom 171
(Plate 1), that date back to the 1630s, Borromini reworked or redrew several
drawings around 1660, well after the construction of the church had com-
menced.6 Not only is the actual built geometry of the building different from
the geometry of the drawings, but the geometries of the drawings themselves
differ from one another: a difference that in the subsequent reinterpretations
of San Carlino in history never disappeared. And not only did most of these
analyses seek in geometry an ‘ideality’ of the form of the church through its
design evolution, but they also sought out geometry itself as ‘ideal’. Yet the
very effort to capture such geometrical ideality would yield a multiplicity
of geometrical interpretations in history. This brings into question the very
role of geometry in architecture: is this geometrical lack particular to its
geometrical interpretations, or is this lack itself universal insofar as these
interpretations are geometrical?
The geometrical exegeses, rebirths or reinventions of San Carlino have
occurred at moments of key stylistic and technological shifts in the history
of modernism: at the end of the 19th century, the inter-war period, the post-
modernist turn in the 60s and 70s, in the digital turn in the 90s and today.
There has been extensive research about the way the Baroque itself figured
in these moments in architectural history. For example, in The Baroque in
 Introduction 3
Architecture Culture, 1890–1980, editors Andrew Leach, John Macarthur
and Maarten Delbeke explore the Baroque in terms of ‘the intellectual
history of modern architecture and the modern history of architectural his-
toriography’.7 It is as if these large periods or epochal styles needed the
‘services’ of the Baroque, and in this case San Carlino, in order to institute
themselves in history by reclaiming this object as their own by redrawing
and reinterpreting it. Walter Benjamin argues that “the authentic – the hall-
mark of origin in phenomena – is the object of discovery which is connected
in a unique way with the process of recognition”.8 This seems to suggest,
rather paradoxically, that we can discover only those things that we already
know, that we can evaluate the representations of the idea only through
other representations of that idea and that the discovery is always-already a
re-discovery. Yet, such re-discovery is also unique and new, because it is not
purely epistemological but open to the contingencies of technical reproduc-
tion, time and history. San Carlino is an object that furnishes such openness,
that carves or reclaims time from the flow of time and that individuates in
history. To be sure, San Carlino is a construction made of stone and plaster.
Yet it is also that which prevents such construction to be perceived as a uni-
fied and conclusive totality; it is that which triggers the desire to re-construct
it again and again, in different historical contexts.
To repose the question: why the persistent default to geometry across this
multitudinous history of San Carlino? Such a question arises with urgency in
an age where the disciplinary rhetoric of architecture appears to be shifting
away from geometry. Such shifts, however, do have a history. In The Origins
of Baroque Art in Rome, Alois Riegl suggests that Borromini’s work was
perhaps more about fashion, the new and the lack of norms than it was
about method and a “restless search for rules”.9 This much is evident, for
instance, in Az Rom 176, which exhibits a voluptuous pleasure of drawing.
This partial drawing is less about an underlying geometrical structure than
about the desire to draw or about how the drawing overflows the schematic
representations. Such perceived or imagined ‘freedom’, however, is not free
of or exclusive of geometry. The latter persists, if not as an underlying struc-
ture, then as an ‘extra effect’ that results from the deployment of different
drawing techniques. In San Carlino, then, geometry is many things: a mode
of inquiry, a translating medium, a lexicon of lost origins, an effect and an
affect.
It is our premise that such a non-generalizable disposition towards mul-
tiplicity can be shown or demonstrated only on the level of the particular
object, in this case San Carlino, rather than the level of the ‘style of an age’,
in this case the Baroque, insofar as the latter is a generalized and generalizing
concept. Therefore, rather than proceeding from the general to the particular
in this book, in the spirit of Alfred North Whitehead’s thought, we propose
going from the particular to the general, from the object to the milieu, in
other words, from San Carlino to the Baroque. The term Baroque is thus used
in its most expanded sense, denoting an historical style, a stylistic modality
4 Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi
that recurs at different moments in history and a Modernist historiographic
methodology used to evaluate and asses the present.10 We zoom in on San
Carlino, this petite objet, without, however, wresting it completely from the
Baroque or wishing to claim that such wresting is possible in the first place.
In this volume, the authors examine the Style(s), Geometry(s), Symbol-
ism(s), Order(s), Form(s) and Space(s) of San Carlino; how these transition
to one another; how they combine, coalesce and modulate into aggregates
of different densities and rhythms and how they are arrested as/in form. It is
also about how such modalities, qualities and particularities are drawn,
reproduced and reinterpreted in history through different kinds of drawings,
beginning in fact with Borromini’s own. In On Borromini’s Drawings and
‘Practical Geometry’, Werner Oechslin traces a history of traditions of
geometry as pertinent to Borromini. Recalling Borromini’s early training as
a mason, he suggests that the drawings were in fact the medium through
which he ‘volumetrically’ visualized the entire stereometric ensemble of the
church. According to Oechslin, Borromini used the ‘assistance of geometry’
rather than being slave to its principles or axioms and that he effectively
fused the abstract and sensorial notions of geometry in so doing. Oechslin
specifies two categories of Borromini’s gestures on parchment: ‘lines’ and
‘complex figures’, both mutually exclusive and operational with discrete
methods. Taking a different approach to the relation between the two popu-
lar notions of geometry mentioned earlier, Skender Luarasi, in Toggling
through San Carlino, argues that Borromini could in fact have been both
‘normative’ and ‘free’ (with regard to rule-following in geometry) but not
simultaneously. San Carlino is – or can potentially be – either about method,
structure and norms on the one hand and fashion, styles and pastiche on the
other. It can be either ‘serious’ or ‘fun’, tragic or comic, timeless or fashion-
able. There is no necessary relation or higher synthesis between any two such
readings or modalities. Appropriating the notions of ‘subject’ and ‘superject’
from Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy, Luarasi suggests that one (and
Borromini) could ‘toggle’ between these two modes of thinking, that is,
between subject and superject and between normative and free. In such a
toggling process, there emerges a ‘gap’ – similar to that of the mismatches
between different drawings and physical motifs of the church. Or conversely,
that a toggling is necessitated precisely because of such gaps. Alternate theo-
ries of these gaps are offered by different authors. In this volume, two sepa-
rate strands of ‘invisible geometry’ are traced by John Hendrix and Karsten
Harries. In The Deep Structure of San Carlino, John Hendrix asserts the
significance of reading geometry through a Neo-Platonic lens. Deep struc-
ture, a term presumably borrowed from Chomsky’s linguistics, implies that
geometry, like language, is an embedded phenomenon in the mind. That is,
we have an innate proclivity to learn and use iconographic, symbolic and
textual geometry, which we must deploy in ‘reading’ (what is being ‘com-
municated’ in) San Carlino. The ‘hidden geometry’ of San Carlino, Hendrix
implies, can be found in the many symbols replete in Borromini’s drawings
 Introduction 5
and spaces. He analyzes both the overall idea and details of the church using
20th-century art historical methods (inherited from Erwin Panofsky and
others) invested in Neo-Platonic ideas and symbols. With regard to the
‘invisible geometric order’ of the church, while Hendrix turns to symbol,
Karsten Harries begins with questioning signification. In his words, ‘does the
church still signify church?’ and if yes, is geometry the mode or apparatus of
doing so? Harries, following the genealogy of Joseph Connors and Christian
Norberg-Schulz, insists on the significance of geometry being visible or not.
Schulz would deny the value of a symbol if it was not manifest as visible
geometry in the space; for example, the trinity in San Carlino. He empha-
sizes space itself being ‘shaped’ rather than ‘bound’, which is a mode of
thought contrary to those invested in symbol and form exclusively. San Car-
lino’s ‘imperfections’ or geometric distortions, like those of Juan Caramuel
y Lobkowitz, are in service of a (materially impossible) perfect perspectival
illusion. Dichotomies of perfect/imperfect and visible/invisible in Harries’
work can perhaps best be read or discussed with regard to a transcendental
metaphysic. His reading of the entablatures of San Carlino are key, and they
are precisely where the ‘visible and invisible touch’. Jonathan Hales, in
Baroque Constructive Geometry?: Borromini’s Design for the Elevation at
San Carlino accepts the existence of an underlying geometric order or struc-
ture in the church. However, his paper attempts to test both the triangle and
the rectangle as the geometric origins of such structure (or proportional
armature). In fact, some of his studies explore the juxtaposition of the two:
design ad triangulum vs. design ad quadratum, and medieval vs. post-
Renaissance proportion. These involve primarily the elevations of the church
rather than plans, which have received much more attention. He overlays
these on recent laser surveys of the church. In From String to Volume, Lau-
ren Jacobi and Karl Daubmann ‘discuss’ San Carlino’s affinity for contem-
porary architectural praxis. The procedural steps of contemporary
algorithmic design are seen as mirroring the compass and point on paper
and the string and chalk on the building site. Their proposed transmutability
of thought and form is then reflected in media such as long exposure pho-
tography and material such as edible flour pasta dough. Shifting our atten-
tion from the central interior space of San Carlino, Michael Hill explores the
‘peripheral’ Madonna and Crucifix chapels. Though seemingly a ‘result’ of
the irregularity of the site, Hill argues that these parts, in and among them-
selves, embody the contrapuntal essence of San Carlino. If the Madonna
chapel is characterized by a decorative sumptuousness, the Crucifix chapel
is marked by austerity and absence; if the former is about life, the latter is
about death; if the former evokes comedy, the latter evokes tragedy. Such
polarities pull apart but also together the whole: geometrically, symbolically,
stylistically and rhetorically. They are two antithetical parts of – yet sepa-
rated within – a whole body. In ‘San Carlino as Surface’, Adil Mansure
argues for a ‘literally superficial’ geometry, where structure, form and space
are on and of surface. The suggestion is one antithetical to there being a
6 Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi
‘deep structure’ behind or beyond surface. Several parametric analyses of Bor-
romini’s drawings aid his explorations: they reveal several ‘gaps’, ‘malfunc-
tions’ and an ‘incompleteness’ in and of geometry. Rather than ‘geometry
being frustrated’ by incompleteness, he suggests that the ‘aesthetics of its
malfunctions’ embody the artistic sensibilities of Borromini’s drawings and
spaces. However, these gaps compel us to consider multiple scale-shifts in
Borromini’s process and to look especially to the ‘relief work’ of the church
interior for geometric resolution. He explores these through three cases of
the ‘geometry of surface’: the column-wall juncture, the pendentive-zone and
the dome. Ultimately surface emerges as both a meta-concept and spatio-
temporal interface that involves Borromini, a viewer of his drawings and a
church visitor alike. An ‘alien object’ offers access to both the pragmatic and
ideational aspects of the church: while for Mansure it is surface, for Niklas
Maak it is a seashell. Maak, in The Xenophora Principle – using the seashell
as an analogical lens for evaluating San Carlino – describes the idiosyncra-
sies and unique motifs of San Carlino as effectively an overflow of a Neo-
Platonic geometric object. That is, a logarithmic spiral flows over onto the
material effects of a maritime sensibility. The operative metaphor of an
object in its fluid environment addresses several aspects of San Carlino: the
grotto outside the church, the interior/exterior (material) relationship, and
the biome-like interconnectedness of every object in the forming process.
Through the analogy of ‘a mollusk secreting its own abode throughout its
lifetime’, Maak offers possibilities of reading San Carlino itself as being
slowly molded by the forces of time, environment and chance.
It is our hope that we remain faithful to the multitudinous history of San
Carlino. We hope that these essays do not close the discussion about San
Carlino but create an opening into the history of architecture. Let this con-
cluding line serve as an opening to the following essays, and let this book
serve as an opening to further discussions about San Carlino.

Notes
1 Inferred from Sedlmayr’s diagrams in: Hans Sedlmayr, Die Architektur Borromi-
nis (Hiildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1973), pp. 130–131, 58.
2 See diagram in: Paolo Portoghesi, Storia Di San Carlino Alle Quattro Fontane,
1st ed. (Rome: Newton & Compton, 2001), p. 73.
3 Leo Steinberg, Borromini’s San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane: A Study in Mul-
tiple Form and Architectural Symbolism (London and New York: Garland Pub.,
1977).
4 Rudolf Wittkower, Gothic vs. Classic : Architectural Projects in Seventeenth-
Century Italy (New York: G. Braziller, 1974), p. 88.
5 Karl Johns, “Hans Sedlmayr, The Architecture of Borromini,” Journal of Art His-
toriography no. 14 (2016): 4; Sedlmayr, Die Architektur Borrominis, p. 1.
6 Hill, explaining the arguments of Joseph Connors, Federico Bellini and Julia
Smyth-Pinney, offers the primary example of Az Rom 173 (Plate 3) as a draw-
ing made after-the-fact, in the 1660. See Michael Hill, “Practical and Symbolic
Geometry in Borromini’s San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane,” Journal of the Soci-
ety of Architectural Historians 72, no. 4 (2013): 558.
 Introduction 7
7 Maarten Delbeke, Andrew Leach and John Macarthur, “Defining a Problem:
Modern Architecture and the Baroque,” in The Baroque in Architectural Cul-
ture, 1880–1980, ed. Maarten Delbeke, Andrew Leach, and John Macarthur
(London and New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 1.
8 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama (London and New York:
Verso, 1998), p. 46.
9 Alois Riegl, The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome (Los Angeles, CA: Getty
Research Institute, 2010), p. 109.
10 For the relationship of the Baroque with modern historiography see: Delbeke,
Leach, and Macarthur, “Defining a Problem: Modern Architecture and the
Baroque,” pp. 1–12.
2 Toggling through San Carlino
A speculative inquiry into the geometry
and process in San Carlino and its
interpretations in history
Skender Luarasi

Historically, San Carlino has been interpreted in terms of an underlying geo-

metrical structure. What is at stake in these interpretations is not the actual
shape of the church – any survey with traditional or digital tools would repro-
duce the as-built with considerable accuracy – but rather the establishment of
geometrical criteria or rules that describe how Borromini imagined and gen-
erated the form. This is evinced to a certain degree by the Albertina drawing
series, which shows the presence of triangles, ovals, rectangles and octagons
without, however, indicating any drawing order of these shapes. Different
from this normative position is the one that suggests that San Carlino is not
based on underlying geometrical norms and that Borromini was simply fol-
lowing caprice and fashion. Such disposition is also evinced in the Albertina
drawings, Az Rom 175 and especially Az Rom 176, in their idiosyncratic and
sumptuous gestures (Plate 4). Which of these interpretations is true? Is San
Carlino based on geometrical rules or not? Is it normative or free?
Both readings are true but not at the same time. San Carlino cannot be
interpreted pluralistically, as being both about geometrical rules on the one
hand and gestural freedom on the other but only as being either about geo-
metrical norms or free of these norms. The two readings of San Carlino are
not simple oppositions but incommensurable with one another; neither can
subsume and justify the other. This either/or gap gives San Carlino its philo-
sophical edge or flavor. Alain Badiou defines the philosophical as an either/
or situation, as “the moment when a choice is elucidated,” when we have to
choose between two terms that do not have a “common measure.”1 How is
this choice “without criteria”2 made or not made in the interpretations of
San Carlino in history?
While different accounts on the Baroque and Borromini point to these
incommensurable terms, they also attempt to ground them to a larger com-
mon denominator. For example, Alois Riegl has shown that in the Baroque
Rome there was already an historical consciousness for both the normative
and the non-normative approach to art:

Here we encounter the boundaries of style for the first time. Neither
antiquity nor the Middle Ages seem to have known about them. It was
26 Skender Luarasi
always self-evident that sculpture could venture to extreme limits just as
much as painting (impressionistic painting has its counterpart in drill-
ing holes, and both can be found in the art of the Roman Empire).
Today, this risk is avoided because of the limits of style, which were
introduced with the rise of subjectivity. A part of the artists and the
public ([namely] the academicians) sought normative principles with
which to confront this subjectivity. The lack of a norm is perceived more
acutely with regard to sculpture and architecture than it is with regard
to painting.
At the same time, fashion appeared. We will see that with Borromini
it appears as always searching for the new, always searching for that
which does not exist or has not been heard of. Both have their roots in
heightened subjectivity. In contrast, conservatives like Bellori seek that
which is objective, at least temporarily.3

However, as Riegl distinguishes between the normative and non-normative,

he also roots them to a larger subjectivity. On the one hand this subjectivity
is historical insofar as it rises at specific moment in history, even if neither
the conservative academic nor the heretic seem to necessarily have been
aware of being rooted in it. On the other hand it is timeless, invisible and
transcendental insofar as it subsumes (the temporality of) both the norma-
tive and non-normative and authorizes an opposition between the two. This
large subjectivity or Style delimits different styles without being them, or –
to echo Jacques Derrida – structures their play without participating in the
play. This absolute subjectivity is both inside and outside history; it is the
Style that is not a style.4
Manfredo Tafuri is more polemical than Riegl and much closer to the
either/or proposition when he agonistically asks whether Borromini’s work
is classical or non-classical, historicist or anti-historicist, and whether “the
Borrominian pastiches destroy . . . [or] reinforce the historical value of the
ancient ‘things’ inserted in the new contexts.”5 However, not unlike Riegl,
he also introduces a larger subjectivity that roots, subsumes and synthesizes
these terms into a larger, organic whole:

Within the terms of the Baroque dispute, what we have called experi-
ence of history can only be read as a prophetic anticipation of the atti-
tudes of the twentieth century avant-gardes: The collage of memories
lifted out of their historical contexts finds structure and semantic loca-
tion within the frame of an independently built organic space.6

For Tafuri the Baroque is not just an historical style among others but an
autonomous framework that allows him – or us – now, to understand the
origin of modernity and avant-garde as if it was happening from the point
of view of Borromini, then. The Baroque is not Borromini’s particular style
but, in Andrew Leach’s terms, a “general artistic category” that leads “back
 Toggling through San Carlino 27
to the specifics of Borromini’s architecture.”7 What sets apart “Borromini’s
work from earlier pastiches and from those of his contemporaries” is that
he is – or rather, Tafuri wants him to be – aware of such general category
and his historical agency in it.8 Thus, for Tafuri, Borromini is more (or less)
than just a person; he is also the transcendental subject that authorizes an
“independently built organic space.”
Can we think of this large subjectivity as what comes after rather than
before the normative and non-normative; as what results from the relation,
or rather non-relation between the two; as an effect of toggling between the
two rather than their cause? Such reversal would mean temporalizing this
large subjectivity, opening it up to the contingencies of history, time and
chance and showing that the objects created under such subjectivity could
have been otherwise. This paper is a speculative and designerly inquiry inso-
far as it is not so much concerned with what (San Carlino) is than with what
if (San Carlino could be or have been other than what is).
In Without Criteria Steven Shaviro distinguishes between two very differ-
ent kinds of subjectivities in Kant, the cognitive and aesthetic judgement. In
the case of the cognitive judgement the subject subsumes the object under
the concepts of understanding. The object is (determined by) the knowledge
that has gone or been willed by the subject into it. In this case the subject
precedes the object. It is easy to see how the faculty of cognitive judgement
can lead to the illusion of being-god. The judgement of beauty, on the other
hand, would be the only antidote for such illusion insofar as it is “affective,
rather than cognitive.” In aesthetic judgement the subject cannot precede the
object because “although the feeling of beauty is ‘subjective’ . . . a subject
does not cognize the beauty of an object. Rather, the object lures the subject
while remaining indifferent to it; and the subject feels the object, without
knowing it or possessing it or even caring about it.” This experience of lur-
ing and feeling rather is “a kind of communication without communion and
without consensus. It can be shared, or held in common, without uniting
the ones who share it.” Such disinterested experience is like “passion. The
scandal of passion is that it is utterly gratuitous: it has no grounding, and no
proper occasion. In this sense, it is entirely free (though I am not free with
regard to it).”9 Shaviro further draws an affinity between Kant’s aesthetic
subject and Whitehead’s notion of the “superject, [which is] not something
that underlies experience, but something that emerges from experience,
something that is superadded to it.”10 The superject is the result of a process
that proceeds “from objectivity to subjectivity, namely, from the objectivity
whereby the external world is a datum to the subjectivity, whereby there is
one individual experience.”11 The superject “is informed by the world out-
side, a world that (in the words of Wallace Stevens) ‘fills the being before the
mind can think’.”12
Borromini’s own drawings of San Carlino embody well the relation – or
non-relation, rather – between cognitive subjectivity and aesthetic superjec-
tivity. These drawings are particularly telling because, with the exception
28 Skender Luarasi
of Az Rom 171 (Plate 1), they are drawn after the church was mostly com-
pleted. Therefore, there was literally a concrete object that these drawings
had to engage or communicate with. For example, in Az Rom 173 (Plate 3),
175 and 176 (Plate 4) there are geometrical traces of triangles, ovals, circles
and rectangles. Here, like many others after him, Borromini emphasizes a
normative subjectivity at work, according to which the church as a whole
was designed in terms of an ordering of geometrical shapes. Yet such order-
ing would always remain ambiguous. It is hard, for instance, to state with
certainty whether the equilateral triangles were drawn before or after the
oval or vice versa. This drawing order matters profoundly with regard to the
(interplay of) presence and absence of such underlying geometrical structure.
Its ambiguity is rather easily confirmed by the historical persistence of its
countermeasure, the textual supplement whose function has always been
to superimpose a textual order on the geometrical one in order to dissipate
or control the ambiguity of the latter. The authoritative and authoritarian
descriptions of Wittkower, Blunt, Steinberg and Portoghesi, among others,
do just that. Such a task, however, borders on the impossible insofar as ambi-
guity is internal to textual orderings or interpretations of any sort, including
the geometrical – or in Derridian terms – to any act of spacing.
Something else is happening in Az Rom 176 (Plate 4). There are no longer
clear lines but inflected and formless gestures that overflow a geometrical
rationale. There is passion in these carefully modulated gestures, a passion
that has nothing to do with geometrical schemes determining (the way a sub-
ject might think, perceive or imagine) the shape of the church. Such gestures
are instead testimony of an aesthetic subject or superject emerging from the
encounter with the object, following or going after this object, letting him/
her/it-self being lured by this object, San Carlino. Borromini is lost in the
drawing. It feels as if he is trying to find San Carlino, rather than determine
it; or more precisely, San Carlino finds him. While this and other drawings
may have been drawn for publication purposes, there are moments when
such purpose disappears, when these drawings, especially Az Rom 175 &
176, stand for nothing except Borromini’s pleasure in the act of drawing
and repetition, in being lured by this act of superadding to San Carlino by
re-drawing it.
A similar experience occurs in the actual chapel. One does not so much
enter the chapel as find oneself drawn in and through the wavy façade. Step-
ping inside, one’s gaze is directed upwards toward the dome through the
rather bulky columns of the first floor, which are firmly “stopped,” however,
by a strong entablature. For a brief yet decisive moment the floating coffered
dome stops the directional movement and establishes a vertical connection.
As one moves toward the center, one feels trapped and compressed by the
undulating walls of the nave. The attention of the observer leaves the vertical
axis momentarily and explodes into what feels to be infinite little perspec-
tives as a result of the gaze “clicking” and “locking” with the wall elements:
the reliefs, columns, niches, the ornament in the upper part of the niches, the
 Toggling through San Carlino 29
openings, the dark gilt-framed pictures in the main axis, the pediments and
the pendentives. These elements are all distorted by the oscillating move-
ment of the surface of the wall – or wall as surface – continuously distorting
and modulating our perception and imagination of what we have already
encountered and what we might encounter as we move in space. Once in
the nave, one re-establishes the vertical connection with the upper parts
of the interior and the dome vis-à-vis the alternating rhythms of the first
and second story bays, or what Wittkower calls the “warp and woof of the
wall texture.”13 It becomes obvious, without much effort, that the church is
divided into three parts in section; the dome is an oval, and the plan of the
lower part is more or less geometrically organized. Yet, once we start moving
again, this geometrical rationale disappears into an ever-oscillating surface,
even if we still remember perceiving such rationale as being there a minute
ago, as in so many interpretations of San Carlino.
One may enter San Carlino as a subject, determined to subject it under
a geometrical rationale and still leave the church as a sub-ject. Or one may
enter San Carlino as a subject and leave it as a super-ject. San Carlino affords
both subjectivities but not simultaneously: at any one time one can either
experience it as a subject or a superject. The two are incommensurable. Many
may take issue with such proposition: how can any building be a situation
of incommensurability when it must necessarily be com-mensurable in order
to be built in the first place? Isn’t the philosophical purity of non-relation
compromised by the very existence of such object, insofar as it serves as
common ground of the two readings and insofar as, geometrically speaking,
it can always be reduced to an Euclidian ground, however complex it may
be? These objections, however, are based on the illusion that the world is
subjected under the subject and that the same cannot be different, that there
is only one San Carlino, namely, the object located at Via Quirinale in Rome.
According to the notion of the superject the same is different, because
between the subject and the superject there is always time; no matter how
much – one second, one hour, one day, one year. A superject “does not sur-
vive the moment of the encounter in which it is created. It cannot be recov-
ered once it is gone. It can only be born afresh in another event, another
encounter.”14 Az Rom 173 (Plate 3), 174, 175 and 176 (Plate 4) are neces-
sarily different from Az Rom 171 (Plate 1) because they were drawn about
30 years later, even if they were drawn by the same author and about the
same object. “No one crosses the same river twice . . . no subject experiences
twice.”15 It is due to such non-coincidence of the same with the same that the
object of inquiry can never remain simply San Carlino – the actual building
in Rome – but the totality of the representations of the church in history. It is
such an historically dynamic object that triggers the philosophical situation
of non-relation. How is the choice between subjectivity and superjectivity
made in designing San Carlino? How is such choice trapped in form?
Subjectivity and superjectivity are states that remain separate and in a
distance from one another. Hence, it is not accurate to say either that they
30 Skender Luarasi
“merge” with one another in a drawing or building, or that one is “born” or
“emerges” from the other. Say, in the middle of the interval between a subjec-
tive state A and a so-called e-merging superjective state B there is not 50%
subjectivity and 50% superjectivity. There is no gradual transition between
the two but rather an imperceptible yet sudden flip or shift from one state
to the other. A binary or digital shift: either one or zero; either a sub-ject
or a super-ject; there is no “transition” or blending between the two. There
is only toggling between one subjectivity to the other. San Carlino can be
interpreted only by toggling from one subjectivity to the other. Borromini
would have designed San Carlino only by toggling from one position to the
other. The “e-merging” effects of San Carlino are effects of such toggling.
And we could go so far as to risk a general law, or rather a “rule of thumb”:
the higher the number of togglings, the more e-merged, blended and unified
the incommensurable subjectivities appear.
Even though there are only two binary states, there are many togglings
between the two. If there is a toggling from the subjective state A to the
superjective state B, then the next toggling will never return to the “original”
subjective state A but to an A’, which will serve as the initial subjective state
for the next toggling to a superjective state B’. Each toggling from A to B
irreversibly changes the perception, imagination, memory of any original
state A.16 There is never a return to A, which means that the “original” state
was never a subject to begin with but rather always-already a superject.
Hence, a chain of superjects: S1, S2, S3, . . . Sn. What is original is not the
subject but the superject, that which is superadded, the extra, the surplus. It
is this irreversible entropic dynamism that opens up A and B to history and
thus to the possibility of the new.
To quote Shaviro, each toggling

implies a fresh creation, and a new subject. . . . For the ‘datum’ of any
new experience is largely composed of the remnants of immediately
past experiences . . . [Yet] this sense of continuity is not self-evident, not
given in advance. . . . It is rather what most urgently requires explana-
tion. For the default situation of the subject as of everything that exists
in time, is to perish.17

Bernard Stiegler has shown that this default situation – the Who always
already involves the object – the What, which always-already precedes the
Who. The Who is primordially or by default structured by the What, which
is technics, the artificial medium or “epiphylogenetic memory” through
which the organic subject “lives” beyond its death by memorizing and trans-
mitting its thoughts.18
Geometry is such technics: not just constative knowledge stored in a tran-
scendental mind but primordially and tendentiously performative. Indeed,
geometry is never purely constative but always already performative. There
is no such thing as geo-metry: Between geo-metry as “geometry of the earth”
 Toggling through San Carlino 31
and our hands there is always already a “roil” of technical objects, supports
and procedures with “its froth of the past and its crest of the future.”19
Between geometry as a unified corpus of knowledge and our use of such
corpus there are thousands of software and hardware supports. Geometry
has always been mediated by technics: papyrus, paper, tracing paper, pen-
cil, different kinds of styluses, rulers, compasses, templates, triangles, grids
and so forth. Geo-metry has primordially been techno-metry. If geo-metry
subjects the object under a concept, then techno-metry potentially releases
objects from concepts and superjects from subjects.
One can speculate about the choice between subjectivity and superjectiv-
ity in the design of San Carlino by speculating on the performative aspect of
its geometrical interpretations: how these interpretations could be or have
been other than what they were (proposed to be) due to the techno-metric
potential that such geometry had, has or we imagine it might have had.
What did not actually happen – but what might have potentially happened,
inevitably influences what actually happened; nothingness structures being.
The strategy here, then, is not to reject the geometrical being of San Car-
lino but rather demonstrate the impossibility of excluding imagination, that
is, nothingness, from San Carlino’s interpretations by showing the entropic
tendencies of its geometrical being: how imagination can potentially break
(from) the geometrical conception as/of the whole; how the geometrical
parts or units may be more or less than a whole or may not add up to it or
how the whole is contingent upon the ordering of the parts and the different
techniques through which such ordering is carried out.
Some of San Carlino’s interpretations propose that the geometrical con-
ception was there from the very beginning, while others impose such con-
ception on the design process as if that were the case. For example, Rudolf
Wittkower proposes that San Carlino is based on a rhomboid geometry:

The lozenge-shaped parallelogram, the basic geometrical figure used

here, consists of two equilateral triangles with a common base. The per-
pendiculars erected over each of the four sides of the parallelogram
determine the position of the chapels. At the same time, the perpen-
diculars form a second configuration of two equilateral triangles whose
perpendiculars correspond to half a side of the primary triangles. This is
pure medieval geometry.20

If in the classical and Renaissance tradition, as derived from Vitruvius, “the

overall plan and its divisions are evolved by adding module to module,” in
the medieval tradition it is achieved “by dividing a coherent geometric con-
figuration into geometric sub-units.”21 In Borromini Anthony Blunt reiter-
ates a similar interpretation:

[Borromini] evolved even his most complex and apparently whimsical

designs by a series of geometrical manipulations. The basic geometrical
32 Skender Luarasi
structure . . . consists of two equilateral triangles of identical size, placed
so that they have one side in common. Circles are inscribed in them,
and areas of other circles are drawn with their centers at the ends of
the common side . . . These four form an oval which exactly defines the
shape of the dome . . . He . . . extends the geometrical system to cover
the whole plan of the church. The apexes of the triangles fall at the
central points of the four bays which surround the central domed space,
and lines drawn from the ends of the common side through the centers
of the circles define the axes of the subsidiary chapels. In this way the
whole of the seemingly complex plan of the church is tied to the basic
geometrical scheme.22

In both these readings, the form of the church is interpreted not simply as
“based on a series of triangles and circles, but as actually created on these
geometrical figures.”23 Both suggest a full coincidence between the geometri-
cal idea and its construction, between perception and imagination.
Paolo Portoghesi argues that the origin of San Carlino was a “cruciform
type of structure,” which assured the constancy of the diagonal piers of the
shell from Az Rom 171 (Plate 1) to the final realization of the building.
The apses and the diagonal piers underwent a series of transformations as
the cruciform structure became a “scheme of a quadrilobe plan.” Borromini
further adapted the scheme to the irregular shape of the site.24 On the one
hand, Portoghesi describes the design process in terms of overcoming exter-
nal obstacles. Yet, on the other hand, he also subjects such process under a
geometrical objective law:

The intuition to interpret an objective law in the new scheme, and to

so create a coherent and demonstrable model, inspired Borromini to
that most elegant and logical geometrical investigation, through which
he freed the construction of his plan from all arbitrariness of choice,
endowing it with the clarity and necessity of a theorem.25

This objective law, which is “the secret matrix of the whole organism,” is
that of the equilateral triangles.
Similarly, Steinberg argues that even though the geometrical framework
may not have been manifestly visible there from the beginning, it was none-
theless important to think of it as if it had been latently there all along.
Focusing on the Albertina drawings Steinberg shows that the church is
characterized by a co-existence and synthesis of the cross, oval and octa-
gon. He outlines a particular order of geometrical shapes in the form of a
pseudo-code:

1) Two triangles with shared base, perpendiculars erected over their

sides; 2) Two tangent circles inscribed, yielding the foci – and the short
segments – of an inscribed oval; 3) A double-rail rectangle tangent to
 Toggling through San Carlino 33
the oval; 4) Semi-circular chapels in the long axis articulated by four
columns; 5) Chamfered corners reducing the rectangle to an octagon;
6) Completion of the side chapels. During this process seven distinct
geometric figures unfold, to wit – equilateral triangles, a lozenge, twin
circles, an oval, a rectangle, a quarterfoil, and a lobed octagon.26

The purpose of this description or textual supplement is not so much to

describe the form of the church as to establish an origin and an absolute
geometrical principle in order to “clarify” and “exert geometric control” on
the design “in its reciprocal correlations to the artist himself.”27
These exegeses posit an absolute geometrical principle that structures the
geometrical parts into a whole by standing outside the structure; that governs
the generative formal process of San Carlino by standing outside the tempo-
rality of this process and the displacements such temporality occasions. Yet if
such principle were absolute, then why should these shapes – the equilateral
triangles, the lozenge, twin circles, the oval, the rectangle, the quarterfoil and
the lobed octagon be arranged in this particular order and not another? If
the subjecting concept had absolute a-priority over the object, couldn’t one
then start from anywhere, say, step four, and go backwards to the “original”
instance, as in 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – or proceed through a random sequence, as in
4, 6, 1, 3, 2, 5? No!, because the particularity of this or any changed order
would endanger the possibility of the absolute geometrical principle of the
form by opening it up to the contingencies of process and time, to potentiali-
ties of what might have been different, to imagination.
If the geometrical principle is mediated through the particularity of a geo-
metrical ordering and the technics involved in the drawing of such ordering,
then the organizing geometrical principle cannot be an absolute principle.
Such impossibility is demonstrated in the transformation diagrams in Table 1.
In these diagrams the ordering or the drawing steps are shuffled. The first
transformation starts with the double rail rectangle; the second with the two
unequal triangles; the third with two intersecting circles; the fourth with an
octagon generated from the doubled rail rectangle; the fifth with two equal
non-equilateral triangles and the sixth with the double rail rectangle and
two unequal circles floating inside the rectangle. How the transformation
process unfolds is contingent upon the inherent transformative potential of
each figure in each step, starting with the first one. For instance, the first
transformation is inevitably and irreversibly triggered and conditioned by
the transformative potential of the double rail rectangle; the second trans-
formation by the transformative potential of two non-equal triangles and
the sixth by the double rail rectangle and the non-equal circles. It matters
whether the triangle is ordered before or after the oval or the rectangle. The
ordering of the geometrical shape matters; it has technical agency.
These diagrams show that a geometrical part never comes “alone” but
always together with a place or position n. Such position is (a) no-thing, inso-
far as it is just an ordering index that has nothing to do with the geometrical
34 Skender Luarasi

Figure 2.1 Skender Luarasi, “Transformation Diagrams of the Gometrical Structure

of San Carlino”, 2018

qualities of the part. Yet this nothingness inevitably affects the being of the
part by making it more or less than it is. This nothingness affects the vis-
ibility of the part and its potential relation with the other parts. It makes
the whole always-already incomplete, indeterminate and uncertain by open-
ing it up towards time, contingency and chance. Jean-Paul Sartre aligned
 Toggling through San Carlino 35
imagination with nothingness and perception with being, while recogniz-
ing the toggled relationship between the two, that perception and imagina-
tion cannot happen simultaneously.28 The parts can never make up a whole
because they come together with an “extra” nothingness that opens holes
in the whole. Perception is never whole because it is “punctured” by voids
or holes of nothingness, imagination; because at any moment in time, per-
ception – or what was perceived a moment ago – can potentially always be
imagined as different from what it was that moment ago.
In the context of the formal analysis of San Carlino, such aesthetics of tog-
gling and incompletion are found in the work of a contemporary of Sartre – yet
someone with very different politics – the Viennese historian Hans Sedlmayr.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe in detail Sedlmayr’s politics
and aesthetics in their specific historical context and how they bear in his his-
toriography, except to zoom in at a few arguments of his seminal book The
Architecture of Borromini.29 At first sight Sedlmayr holds a rather conservative
position as he privileges perception over imagination and does not “inquire as
to how the images [of San Carlino] are to be imagined as having been made,
but instead how they actually did come about.” He claims that “there are many
ways of imagining the genesis of an image, but there is only one which was
actually the case.”30 Sedlmayr argues that San Carlino is based on a Cartesian
and atomistic conception, a claim that, for him, is further confirmed by the
fact that “René Descartes was an exact contemporary of Borromini.” Just like
chemical bodies, San Carlino consists of a combination of “relief elements” or
units. The “ideal” of such a formal scheme of conception “is to deconstruct any
‘world’ into its constituent components. It proceeds from the aggregates back
to the simplest and universal parts not allowing any further division, and com-
poses all higher unities from these simpler units according to simple repetitive
operations. Everything else follows from this basic characteristic.”31
However, in Sedlmayr’s account of San Carlino we also encounter pas-
sages that favor the what if over the what is, equivocity over univocity,
imagination over perception, passages which feel like direct quotes from
Whitehead’s Process and Reality, like this one, for example:

Borromini imagined . . . images to be emancipated from the relations

of the real world. For Borromini as an artist, ‘churches’, ‘facades’, ‘win-
dows’ or ‘doors’ did not exist primarily, but instead only pure forms and
pure motifs, absolute and ‘uncoupled’. A ‘church’, a ‘façade’, a ‘window’
or a ‘door’ is an occasion to realize these absolute [or as Whitehead
would put it, “eternal”] forms – only a limit, not a ‘determination’.32

It has never been pointed out that Sedlmayr’s notion of the element, part or
unit oscillates or toggles between these two irreconcilable modalities: per-
ception and imagination. The unit either stands for the “fundamental unit”
of perception or the “ultimate unit of imagination;” either as the start or the
end. In the former case the unit is subjective insofar as it subjects the form
36 Skender Luarasi
of San Carlino to a composition of basic or fundamental motifs. In the lat-
ter case the unit is superjective insofar as it does not underlie the perceptual
experience of the church but rather results or yields from this experience, as
something that is added to this experience as a result of imagining it.
Sedlmayr starts by arguing that the first step is to subject San Carlino and
discipline or “shape our seeing” of it under a “basic form:”

A description of the basic form of the space of S. Carlo is where we

begin our description of the total image but it is not at all that with
which we begin our view of the image. Our viewing begins with a cha-
otic overall impression including more specific individual impressions
anchored within it. A certain structure (‘Gliederungen’) and relation-
ships only appear later to lead the way out of this chaos, while the
individual details assume an ever firmer place – and the image emerges.
Even then, the basic forms still remain hidden below the given struc-
tures, and in the case of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane this is so strong
that they have still not been properly recognized and described.33

In a rather Husserlian fashion Sedlmayr presents San Carlino like a sedi-

mented site, whose fragments provide perceptual clues to the original way
the image as a whole was conceived. In order to perform such re-activation
clues are found between the shapes of San Carlino and those from other
historical periods, in particular Roman architecture. Such connections are
drawn on the a priori methodological principle of sameness and constancy,
that is, our a priori capacity to recognize or read “the same gestalt-type
(‘Gestalt-Typus’)”34 or “fundamental unit” in different representations and
the empirical observation that “the relief units used by Borromini are based
entirely on the architectural orders.”35 Sedlmayr argues that Borromini was
a conservative architect. What is new and “revolutionary is only his concep-
tion of structure. Since he recognizes the traditional forms in order to revo-
lutionize them from the inside out, these units which he then rebuilds, can
only diverge very slightly in their proportions.”36 Yet paradoxically, instead
of a univocal reading of the unit, the genetic descriptions of the sedimented
layers of the image of San Carlino seem to lead to equivocal readings of
units, to what might have been otherwise, to the nothingness of imagination.
Not unlike the geometrical descriptions we have encountered so far, Sedl-
mayr describes the “basic form” of S. Carlo in terms of

a rectangular prism with blunted corners, and sides opening with

strained arches. On the long axis the arches are semicircles opening
onto domed niches (apses) with semicircular ground plans. The arches
on the short axis are segments of ovals opening onto flat apses with
segmented ovals as their ground plan. The arches bear a massive oval
cupola with spherical trapezoid pendentives resting on the ‘blunted cor-
ners’ of the rectangular prism. Vertically, there are three strictly separate
 Toggling through San Carlino 37
zones – that of the columns, that of the cupola, and the intermediate
zone composed of the arches, the partial vaulting and the pendentives.
A fourth would be the completely separate lantern.37

Sedlmayr states, however, that “one must be careful not to identify this
description of the stereometric ‘basic form’ with the entirety of the image,
or as the essential quality of the image – from a dogmatic point of view that
the spatial form is in any case the essential aspect of architecture.”38 The
essential quality of the image is a structure that overlays this “skeleton.”
Sedlmayr correlates structure with imagination and the skeleton or basic
form with perception. Structure is not what is hidden below the surface but
what appears or transpires on the surface.
The “remarkable structure” that overlays the basic form of San Carlino
consists in the way “the borders of the interior space are structured accord-
ing to the same units used in constructing the façade.” The latter is imag-
ined like an “elastic membrane” where “the upper floor is a different spatial
unfolding of the lower.”39 This façade yields two tripartite units or atoms T
and N, where N indicates the bays of the niches, while T the bays along the
sides of the prism or rhombus. The “entire intensive articulation (structure)”
of the interior is based on the “superimposition” of these two units, which
“are surface-bound in their character, [and] do not have a reverse side.”40
Sedlmayr distinguishes between the ideal or virtual units T and N and the
actual or concrete units, such as T3 or N2. The former is constant, fixed and
unique, while the latter are

‘derivations’ [‘Entfaltungen’] of the form of N (or of T), variants of

one another, transforming into one another and ever changeable. More
strictly: the individual form such as T3 or N2 is not conceived in iso-
lation, but rather as one among many possible representations of a
gestalt-type (T, N) in the sense we have used it above.41

Methodologically speaking, the Gestalt-Typus (T, N) is a Structure that

is not a structure, a transcendental authority that authorizes variations
of the same in history without being them. The Gestalt-Typus authorizes
the “atomistic conception”42 of San Carlino: the variation, “mobility” and
translation of the wavy façade units into the wavy interior surface units, as
well as the genetic sequences from Roman architecture, in particular the
“domed hall” of Piazza d’oro of the Villa Hadrian in Tivoli and the façades
of Petra to the third and fourth designs for S. Carlino. Such Structure also
provides the ground for comparing among Borromini’s own projects, such
as that between the crossing tower of S. Andrea delle fratte and the façade
of San Carlino. Sedlmayr argues that

the architect did not arrive at this façade by inserting waves into a flat
design, but by replacing the flat tripartite segments of such façade with
38 Skender Luarasi
formally equivalent but wavy images. Of course, it is possible to imag-
ine it, but this conceivability does not bear weight in determining how
the image actually came about historically.43

Here Sedlmayr is at pains to preempt imagination of any potential perfor-

mative agency in the making of San Carlino and to ground (Borromini’s and
our imagination of) the wave in the presence of the perception of inherited
architectural motifs.
And yet, what if San Carlino was imagined exactly like a wave? What
if at a certain point in the design of San Carlino, while drawing the struc-
tural derivations Tk-s and Nk-s or while imagining such derivations as being
drawn by Borromini or by us imagining Borromini drawing them, imagina-
tion flipped, inflected, toggled or “de-faulted”44 into a wave? What if within
the very presence and thickness of perception, the void of another choice –
that of imagining a form that is not, that of the wave, opens up? Isn’t Az
Rom 176 (Plate 4) precisely a void, a nothingness that erupts in the midst of
shapes, figures, boundaries, orders, geometrical patterns and genetic forms?
The unacknowledged merit of Sedlmayr is precisely his disposition not to
hold a fixed position about Borromini and San Carlino but rather toggle to
another position. His merit is (in) his dis-position, even if such disposition
may challenge, as it does, his ideological and methodological premises.
In such dis-position the relief units are no longer derivations of funda-
mental gestalt-units of perception but rather “loose aggregates gifted with
potential faculty of decomposing into ‘elements’. The latter are the ultimate
units of [Borromini’s] imagination, and not rigid but mobile and potentially
include various elaborations within themselves.”45 Couldn’t these “ele-
ments” be imagined as the crests and valleys of a wave, uncoupled from the
existing gestalt-types?

According to the peculiarly unobjective conception of Borromini there

is a possibility of uncoupling the image to some degree from the object
it originally refers to, and seeing it as an independent entity – hovering
in the air as an independent ‘potential’ beyond the world of objects. This
disjunction invests them with a peculiar life of their own. It is easier for
the structure of the intended objects to shift more decisively. As draw-
ings, they no longer have the characteristics of the actual rigid objects,
but are complexes of geometric relations, lines, numbers and are only
subject to the limitations of reality beyond such images which might be
realized within the parameters of a given architectural commission.46

This bias toward imagining mobility and multiple variations of form is

reflected in Borromini’s choice to use orthogonal projections rather than per-
spective like Bernini: “A completely defined orthogonal elevation involves an
entire series of possible objects which it ‘might’ represent. Orthogonal pro-
jection detaches itself more strongly from ‘reality’ than does a perspective
 Toggling through San Carlino 39
image.”47 Such non-relation with reality is also reflected in Borromini’s atti-
tude toward material, which he, unlike Michelangelo, considers as “a dead
amorphous mass which lends itself to anything. At one spot in the Opus
Architectonicum, Borromini characteristically says that he wishes it were
possible to cast the entire façade (of the Oratorio dei Filippini) as one single
brick with no seams.”48 Such biases relate to his “thinking in multiplicities
[which is] necessarily abstract and removed from reality.”49
Sedlmayr attempts to confirm his own dis-positions or togglings toward
Borromini’s dis-positions or togglings through the findings of contemporary
elementary psychology, according to which some subjects see certain geo-
metrical figures as a zig-zag or a wave, while others see them as “objects” or
“'objective structures’:”

The one group leave what they see in its own sphere while the other
inserts it into the relations of the world. For Borromini . . . the images
he conceives do not have their place in the real world, but in a semi-real
sphere of pure forms. Their changeability is theoretically not limited,
or only in a ‘secondary’ sense in that they be realizable as a ‘window’,
a ‘façade’ etc. For this reason, the autonomous life of the motifs is
extraordinarily strong.50

Sedlmayr pointedly warns against an organicist reading of Borromini’s forms:

It is only in the sense of ‘higher’ geometry such as complicated rotat-

ing bodies in relation to the more elementary forms that the images of
Borromini give an illusion of ‘being alive’. Such a mistaken impression
can come about since his forms are often based on those from antiquity,
and the erstwhile life from these still penetrates the abstract geometrical
forms. Their ‘movement’ is in no way similar to the potential for motion
in organic life, but rather the flexibility of abstract formal complexes.
Yet there is something like an ‘organic life’ which occasionally bleeds
through these abstract geometrical forms.51

One can experience San Carlino either as abstract or organic, either as

autonomous from or genetically grounded in historical forms yet not as
both abstract and organic or as both autonomous and genetically grounded.
Sedlmayr does not oppose Wilhelm Worringer’s categories of abstraction
and empathy, yet he endorses neither a synthesis nor an opposition between
the two:

In the outward appearance of the works, these two spheres interpen-

etrate and join in very different ways without ever actually melding into
one another. The tension is not resolved in intermediate values, but is
at times completely concealed and at others completely overt. Between
the ‘cool’ effect of the mathematical and the ‘warmth’ of the organic,
40 Skender Luarasi
Borromini does not arrive at a mild middling temperature, but instead
at the paradoxical ‘cold fire’, that ‘dead life’ which generally encloses
the peculiar appeal of Borromini’s architecture, and depending on the
disposition of the viewer either seems fascinating or repelling. In discov-
ering ‘naturalistic’ blossoms amid the most abstract and coldest forms
one can experience this antithesis in the extreme.52

The relationship between these modalities is one of toggling or inflection.

Formally such relation is achieved by a process of inserting chunks of time
or nothingness between an image and its addressee-object. Technically, it
is realized by a certain kind of drawing in which the very act or process
of drawing becomes the object of such drawing. Sometimes these images
find an addressee-object in the world, sometimes not, hovering like “dead
forms”53 in the inorganic universe of images, ready to be instantiated and
come alive at different presents.
One could argue that such toggling is not so much an initial methodologi-
cal premise than a result of the analysis of San Carlino and that it has a regu-
lative function. This is evinced by the fact that the very possibility that San
Carlino’s forms could have been designed in terms of the image of the wave
does not appear right away in the book. When it does first appear, it does
so in a rather negative light.54 Sedlmayr resists such notion by grounding
the formal qualities of San Carlino on structural and genetic descriptions. It
is only after the midpoint of the book that Sedlmayr recognizes – or rather
is forced to recognize – the irreducibility of the wave-image into genetic
units and imagination in perception. Even then, he tries to regulate or hold
in check the “danger” that might result from the “abstraction, fantasy, and
immoderateness”55 of such irresistible wavy image by toggling back to a
gestalt-derived concept of units. The fact that the book concludes that San
Carlino is based on a Cartesian conception of a whole made by the com-
bination of “isolated elements”56 – the most conservative moment in the
whole book – only shows how traumatic the possibility that the wave-image
was constitutive of San Carlino might have seemed to Sedlmayr. Sedlmayr
reaches a threshold, crosses it and goes outside, only to go back inside into
familiar territory. He repeats or rehearses such ‘reconnaissance’ movement
several times in his book.
What happens to the possibility of toggling when this threshold is (thought
to have been) crossed definitely, once and for all, when the wave image is
already the starting point rather than a belated, un-welcomed or ticklish
hypothesis? This is what is at stake in Andrew Benjamin’s article “Surface
Effects: Borromini, Semper, Loos,”57 published in 2006. Benjamin proposes
to see San Carlino “within what could be described as another history of the
curvilinear.”58 “A theoretical history takes the concerns of the present as its
point of departure.”59
Benjamin argues that the surface and the curvilinear do not stand for the
literally curved walls of the church but rather for a process of abstraction.
 Toggling through San Carlino 41
The point is neither to deny nor diminish the importance of (what is com-
monly perceived as) the foundational geometry of San Carlino – the cross,
oval and octagon – but rather “to complicate this particular description,
[a] complication [that] can be demonstrated by concentrating on a specific
drawing by Borromini; namely Albertina 175:”

The importance of the drawing is that it generates a further opening.

What allows it to be made is the relationship architecture has to its
means of representation [. . . which] can be read diagrammatically. This
is the claim that lines, drawings, in sum representations, once under-
stood as diagrams, have the capacity to generate representations but
should not be assumed to be straightforwardly representational. This
move introduces into the history of drawing and architectural represen-
tation an abstracting element that interrupts the flow of history by link-
ing the abstracting process to the possibility of a ‘representation’ having
an afterlife. To be precise, the afterlife is the move from abstraction to a
further representation.60

Such “afterlife” is possible only because, as pointed out earlier, the same
representation is not the same in different presents. The “abstracting ele-
ment” is nothing else than the interval between a subject and a superject,
or the ‘old’ superject and the new one. Such interval is both historically and
technologically contingent. The surface and curvilinearity of San Carlino
become a “concern of the present” because the “present” in which this arti-
cle is situated is characterized by a digital technical tendency, which affords
a new imagination of the curvilinear, not only as an effect or illusion of
Baroque geometries but also as an abstraction that affects and effectuates
(the production of) space.61
At first, Benjamin acknowledges toggling as a methodological disposition
to read San Carlino:

to the extent that the production of the line remains central, then an
account of the line will be in terms of that production. Any account
therefore will oscillate between those involving the history of geometry
and in particular the role of geometry in drawing, and more ideologi-
cally based versions in terms of architectural attempts to reconcile vari-
ous religious and philosophical positions. The end result is that the line
remains secondary to that which is taken to have produced it.62

But this oscillation or toggling is not Sedlmayr’s, which was that between
basic geometrical forms and structural units on the one hand and the
abstract forms such as the wavy line on the other. Rather Benjamin’s tog-
gling remains within the first position of Sedlmayr, one which, in a sense,
has its own internal toggling, insofar as it distinguishes between basic forms
and structural units that correspond to theological meanings and those that
42 Skender Luarasi
have shed those meanings. In both cases, the geometrical line works for and
thus “remains secondary” either to the Gestalt – Type without meaning or
the Type with inherited historical or theological meaning.63 External to such
toggling, Benjamin argues,

there is another possibility, which, while alluding to these accounts of

the line, is not defined by them. Namely, giving emphasis to the line
itself. This means more than a change in emphasis. Another area of
concern emerges. Henceforth, the interpretive question concerns what
is it that the line produces. This question – one that can be taken to a
range of different drawings of the plan – has to start with what can be
described as the line’s density. Density means that the line is not the
single line but the double line marking, if only as a beginning, an inside
and an outside. The dense line – the line itself – is this double (perhaps
doubled) line. In general terms it is a line of information.64

This dense curvilinear line is not a contour or outline that “maintains

space, rather it is part of the process of spacing.”65 It is not only an effect
of curved entablatures, orders and founding forms of San Carlino but also
that which “effects,” informs, organizes and distributes these forms in
space:

Within the confines of the dense line, how is the relationship between
the column and the wall to be understood? This question cannot be
asked independently of the movement that the line marks out. While it
is possible to account for the movement of the line in terms of the effect
of the founding internal geometry, it is also true that any account of the
line has to begin with the recognition that its movement effects. The
curvilinear creates and distributes internal and external volumes that
are themselves the distribution of programmable space. Whether that
programme is used in one way rather than another – ie, locating specific
functions proper to the operation of a church, or even places for statues
or ornamentation – is not the point. What matters is that this line has
to be understood as that which distributes volume. In other words, the
volumes (bays) are the effect of the line. At work therefore is a line that
works. This line becomes the architectural correlate to the surface of
Bernini’s David. That surface too, needs to be understood as a gener-
alised production and therefore as a workful line.66

This line then does not work for an external authority, whether such author-
ity is an epistemological or ideological geometry; rather it works in and
for itself, in and for its own interiority, its own immanent intelligence. It is
not a “secondary” but both a primary and telic image.67 The interpretive
question: “what does this line produce?” can be answered: another line;
one that is different from the first, yet one that is an “aftereffect of a line
or surface that effects,” one that is and remains within “the same line,” the
 Toggling through San Carlino 43
same generality.68 Hence this line is a circuit: it is both a multiplicity of lines
or multiple individuations and at the same time that which governs or struc-
tures such multiplicity.
This line, though deceptively similar to Sedlmayr’s “wave,” is not that,
insofar as it generalizes both the founding geometry and the wavy line.
This means precisely that this Line that is not a line generalizes the toggling
between the geometrical and non-geometrical, between the straight and the
curvilinear, between the determinate and the indeterminate, between what
causes an effect and the effect itself, between the subject and superject. A
generalized toggling can only mean that there is no longer toggling, which
means, in turn, that there is no longer time. Here there is a profound para-
dox or interpretative dilemma: the very means that would bias individuation
and singularities, a means which here is the curvilinear, becomes the means
that preempts, forecasts and synchronizes individuation and singularities.
The degree of such preemption is in direct proportion with the degree of
generalized and generalizing production of the line or surface: the higher the
former, the higher the latter. Such generalizing agency is directly related with
the techno-historical present that provides the concerns and motivations of
Benjamin’s theoretical history. This present is the digital.
Mario Carpo has argued that what came to be known as the Digital Style
in the early nineties was the result of “a quest for formal continuity in archi-
tecture, born in part as a reaction against the deconstructivist cult of the
fracture, [crossing] paths with the computer revolution of the mid-nineties,
[a quest that] evolved into a theory of mathematical continuity.” Deleuze’s
The Fold “accompanied, fertilized, and catalyzed some stages of this pro-
cess.”69 The ‘militants’ of the Digital may take offense, but the Digital, or
Parametricism as it is called nowadays, is full of ideology, despite or rather
precisely insofar as it is claimed that it is not.70 Ideology consists of anticipa-
tions, expectations or biases, which are unconscious rather than conscious
dispositions.71 The biases towards inflection, continuity and variability
influenced how The Fold and the objectile were read or not read, what
arguments were selected and what were not and what software features
were preferred and what were not.
By referring to Cache’s Earth Moves, Deleuze defines the objectile as

a temporal object, a very modern conception of the technological object:

it refers neither to the beginnings of the industrial era nor to the idea of
the standard that still upheld a semblance of essence and imposed a law
of constancy (“the object produced by and for the masses”) but to our
current state of things, where fluctuation of the norm replaces the per-
manence of the law; where the object assumes a place in a continuum
by variation; where industrial automation or serial machineries replace
stamped forms. The new status of the object no longer refers its condi-
tion to a spatial mold – in other words, to a relation of form-matter –
but to a temporal modulation that implies as much the beginning of a
continuous variation of matter as a continuous development of form.72
44 Skender Luarasi
Digital dicourse has rarely reflected upon the fact that Deleuze’s definition
of the objectile as a temporally continuous and variable object is only one
bias of his argument, which is two-fold: on the one hand there are continu-
ous and variable objects, represented by a spline; on the other, contiguous
monads, or points of view imagined as a “place” or “zone” outside the curve
“where the lines perpendicular to tangents meet in in a state of variation.”
This point of view “sees” only variation between inflections but not inflec-
tion itself; it is blind, or the inflection between the points of view is a blind
spot. That is why Deleuze locates the monads in the upper floor of the
Baroque house where there are no windows. Deleuze states that

the transformation of the object refers to a correlative transforma-

tion of the subject: . . . Just as the object becomes objectile, the subject
becomes a superject: an eventual subject [that] apprehends a variation
(metamorphosis), or: something = x (anamorphosis). Perspectivism . . .
is not variation of truth according to the subject, but the condition in
which the truth of a variation appears to the subject.73

The point of view and inflection cannot happen simultaneously. They are
separated by an anamorphic x during which the point of view “explodes
with the proximity of” inflection.”
Deleuze’s objectile demands a choice between continuity and contiguity,
between the Body without Organs and the “Organs without Bodies.”74 Both
readings are true but not at the same time. The objectile cannot be inter-
preted pluralistically – as being both about continuity and contiguity – but
only as being either about one or the other. This either/or “x” makes the
objectile not only a political but also a philosophical situation, if one were to
agree with Alain Badiou that a philosophical situation is the moment when
one has to choose between two terms that do not have a “common mea-
sure.”75 The only way to have both is to toggle from one to the other. Yet, in
his brief but important essay “Postscript on Control Societies” Deleuze was
far less optimistic about such toggling or philosophical distance:

The various placements or sites of confinement through which individu-

als pass are independent variables: we’re supposed to start all over again
each time, and although all these sites have a common language, it’s
analogical. The various forms of control, on the other hand, are insepa-
rable variations, forming a system of varying geometry whose language
is digital (though not necessary binary). Confinements are molds, differ-
ent moldings, while controls are a modulation, like a self-transmuting
molding continually changing from one moment to the next, or like a
sieve whose mesh varies from one point to another.76

In such modulated confinements there is no longer time as the subject

and superject collapse into a fluctuating variable. The very non-standard
 Toggling through San Carlino 45
geometry tends to diabolically standardize biases, subjectivities and futures
by modulating them into a continuous whole. From an intrinsic singularity
inflection becomes an intrinsic tendency that preempts singularities.
The speculations on the form and interpretations of San Carlino in history
help us shift focus and emphases on the digital, the non-standard or what
today is called parametricism. The question should not be how the digital
can generalize previous geometries, such as those of the Baroque or San
Carlino but rather how objects like San Carlino can serve as occasions to
prehend the digital. The question or challenge is not to (ideologically) reject
or lament the advent of the digital but rather how to find a toggling in the
digital and keep it open. San Carlino in history helps us do just that.

Notes
1 Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, Philosophy in the Present, trans. Peter Thomas
and Alberto Toscano (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), pp. 3–5.
2 I borrow this term from Steven Shaviro, Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead,
Deleuze, and Aesthetics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009).
3 Alois Riegl, The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome, ed. and trans. Andrew Hop-
kins and Arnold Witte (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010), pp. 108–
109. (my emphasis).
4 Jacques Derrida writes that the center has always been thought of as “the center
is not the center, [as] ‘that very thing within a structure which while governing
the structure, escapes structurality.’” Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play,”
in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1978), p. 279.
5 Manfredo Tafuri, “Modern Architecture and the Eclipse of History,” in Theo-
ries and History of Architecture (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980),
pp. 11–77, 20.
6 Ibid., p. 22.
7 Andrew Leach, “Francesco Borromini and the Crisis of the Humanist Universe,
or Manfredo Tafuri on the Baroque Origins of Modern Architecture,” The
Journal of Architecture 15, no. 3 (2010): 301–335, p.  311, DOI: 10.1080/
13602365.2010.486569, accessed October 26th, 2018.
8 “Modern Architecture and the Eclipse of History,” Ibid., p. 22.
9 Without Criteria, Ibid., pp. 4–6.
10 Ibid., p. 12.
11 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, quoted in Without Criteria, Ibid.,
p. 10.
12 Without Criteria, Ibid., p. 13.
13 Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600–1750, Volume 2, The
High Baroque 1625–1675, Revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 43.
14 Without Criteria, Ibid., pp. 4–5.
15 Ibid., p. 12.
16 Concerning the relation between perception and imagination and retention
and protention in relation to consciousness and unconsciousness see Bernard
Stiegler’s phenomenological analysis of the “cinematic consciousness” in Tech-
nics and Time 3, trans. Stephen Barker (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2011); in particular, see: “Selections, Criteria, and Recordings,” pp. 16–20.
17 Without Criteria, Ibid.
46 Skender Luarasi
18 Stiegler writes:
A shaped flint-stone forms itself by shaping in organized inorganic matter:
the technician’s gesture engrames an organization that is transmitted via the
inorganic, introducing for the first time in the history of life the possibility
of transmitting knowledge acquired individually, but in a non-biological
way. This technical memory is epiphylogenetic: it is at one and the same
time the product of individual epigenetic experience, and the phylogenetic
support for the accumulation of knowledge constituting the intergenera-
tional cultural phylum.
Bernard Stiegler and Ars Industrialis, “Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the
First Thinker of the Proletarianization,” http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-
and-hypomnesis, accessed February 29th, 2016, p. 4. Stiegler develops this topic
further in Technics and Time I, II, & III.
19 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetic
Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson (Evanston: Northwest-
ern University Press), p. 139.
20 Rudolf Wittkower, Gothic vs. Classic: Architectural Projects in Seventeenth Cen-
tury Italy (New York: George Braziller, 1974), p. 90.
21 Art and Architecture in Italy 1600–1750, Ibid., pp. 40–41.
22 Anthony Blunt, Borromini (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979),
pp. 47–49. Unlike Wittkower who traces such construction in medieval practices,
Blunt argues that such construction follows “an accepted technique for drawing
an oval as it is to be found in Serlio’s treatise on architecture and in ordinary
seventeenth-century handbooks on geometry.” Ibid.
23 Ibid., p. 47 (my emphasis).
24 Paolo Portoghesi, The Rome of Borromini: Architecture as Language, trans. Bar-
bara Luigia La Penta (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1968), p. 42.
25 Ibid., p. 43.
26 Leo Steinberg, Borromini’s San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane: A Study in Multiple
Form and Architectural Symbolism (New York & London: Garland Publishing,
Inc., 1977), Ibid., p. 89.
27 Ibid., pp. 90–91.
28 See: Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary: A phenomenological Psychology of Imagi-
nation (London: Routledge, 2010), in particular pp. 4–44. Albeit, Sartre did not
emphasize the effect toggling and its technics has on perception and imagination
in time and the irreversibility of perception to an original state due to its being
always-already mediated and structured by imagination.
29 Hans Sedlmayr, The Architecture of Borromini, ed. and trans. Karl Johns, https://
arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/johns-sedlmayr-translation.pdf,
accessed October 26th, 2018. For an account on Sedlmayr’s politics and how
they bear on his formalism and historiography see Evonne Levy’s, “Hans Sedl-
mayr’s Austrian Baroque: Ganzheit to Reichsstil,” in Baroque and the Political
Language of Formalism (1845–1945): Burckhardt, Wölfflin, Gurlitt, Brinck-
mann, Sedlmayr (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2015).
30 The Architecture of Borromini, pp. 22–23.
31 Ibid., p. 81.
32 Ibid., p. 60.
33 Ibid., p. 13.
34 Ibid., p. 38.
35 Ibid., p. 56.
36 Ibid., p. 98 (my emphasis).
37 Ibid., p. 13.
38 Ibid., p. 15.
39 Ibid.
 Toggling through San Carlino 47
40 Ibid., p. 19.
41 Ibid., p. 20.
42 Ibid., p. 48.
43 Ibid., p. 35.
44 Stiegler thinks of the origin of being as a de-fault: an irreversible fault, forget-
ting, erasure, or disappearance in the very technical act of inscription or memo-
rization (of being) through writing. Such default is figured in two different but
inseparable “figures of temporalization,” ħpimħtheia and promħtheia:
the Promethean advance and the Epimethean withdrawal (which is also the
fault of Epimetheus as the one who forgets) bring together promħtheia as
foresight and ħpimħthea as both unconcerned distraction and after-thought
[méditation après coup] This counterbalance is only possible given the de-
fault of origin [le défault d’origine] in which Epimetheus’s fault consists –
namely, the originary technicity, from which ħpimħthea, idiocy as well as
wisdom, ensues.
There is no
full origin, followed by a fall [or a fault]: there will have been nothing at the
origin but the fault, a fault that is nothing but the de-fault of origin or the
origin as de-fault [le défault d’origine ou l’origine comme défault]. There
will have been no appearance except through disappearance. Everything
will have taken place at the same time, in the same step.
Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time I: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. Richard
Beardsworth and George Collins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998),
pp. 16, 188.
45 The Architecture of Borromini, Ibid., p. 54.
46 Ibid., p. 56.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., p. 59.
49 Ibid., p. 57.
50 Ibid., pp. 60–61.
51 Ibid., p. 59 (my emphasis).
52 Ibid., p. 62.
53 Ibid., p. 60.
54 See note 49.
55 Ibid., p. 107.
56 Ibid., p. 81.
57 Andrew Benjamin, “Surface effects: Borromini, Semper, Loos,” The Journal
of Architecture 11, no. 1 (2006): 1–36, DOI: 10.1080/13602360600636099,
https://doi.org/10.1080/13602360600636099, accessed October 2018.
58 Ibid., p. 10.
59 Ibid., p. 30.
60 Ibid., p. 12.
61 For example, Greg Lynn distinguishes between the Baroque and Digital curve:
There is a critical difference between the discrete geometry of baroque space –
a geometry of multiple points, and the continuity of topology – a multiplicity
without points. Where baroque space is defined by multiple radii, a topological
surface is defined as a flow that hangs from fixed points that are weighted.
Although baroque space is geometrically highly continuous and highly differ-
entiated, it does retain multiple centers. The continuous contours of baroque
interiors are composed of segments of multiple discrete radial elements.
Lynn also argues that the spline is different from the Baroque curve insofar as it
has no parts. This whole without parts is a virtuality that is not a geometry but a
48 Skender Luarasi
parametric space or space of parameters – t for curves and U and V for surfaces –
that topologically governs how geometries “flow” or change in time. Lynn hier-
archizes the two geometries by arguing that the digital de- and re-territorializes
all other geometries:
The formal character of a particular spline is based on the number of con-
trol vertices influencing a particular region of the flow. For instance, a three-
degree spline will begin at its root and determine its inflection between
every three points in the series. A seven-degree spline curve will be defined
by groups of seven control vertices, thus appearing smoother. A two-degree
spline will appear linear because it lacks smooth continuity between control
vertices.
Greg Lynn, Animate Form (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999),
pp. 22–23.
62 Ibid., p. 12.
63 Levy writes: “One of the attractions of Gestalt had to do specifically with what it
offered the Baroque, dominates, as we have seen, by a politically overdetermined
formalism that had at its center a sociopolitical question about the relation of
subordinated and coordinated parts.” Baroque and the Political Language of
Formalism, Ibid., p. 311.
64 “Surface effects,” Ibid., p. 13.
65 Ibid., pp. 11–12.
66 Ibid., pp. 13–14.
67 For inflection as a primary image see: Bernard Cache, Earth Moves: The Furnish-
ing of Territories, trans. Anne Boyman (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995).
68 Ibid.
69 Mario Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Cambridge: The MIT Press,
2011), p. 91.
70 Lars Spuybroek, for instance, genuinely believes that the “machine-work rela-
tionship is never predetermined in any way . . . and must at all times be stud-
ied ecologically, not ideologically,” Lars Spuybroek, The Sympathy of Things:
Ruskin and the Ecology of Design (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), p. 32.
71 Concerning ideology see: Louis Althusser, “Ideology and the State,” in Lenin
and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly
Review Press), pp. 85–126. Concerning anticipation and expectation in relation
to consciousness and unconsciousness see Bernard Stiegler’s phenomenological
analysis of the “cinematic consciousness” in Technics and Time 3, trans. Stephen
Barker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); in particular, see: “Selections,
Criteria, and Recordings,” pp. 16–20.
72 Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), Ibid., p. 19.
73 Ibid., pp. 19–20.
74 Slavoj Žižek, Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (London:
Routledge, 2004).
75 Badiou and Žižek, Philosophy in the Present, pp. 5–7.
76 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
pp. 178–179.
Conclusion
The future pasts of San Carlino
Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi

In the preface to this volume, Mark Jarzombek refers to the project as “satis-
fyingly inconclusive.” Such inconclusiveness was indeed a hypothesis from the
very beginning. What we hope this collection of essays (satisfyingly) shows is
that this book is inconclusive because San Carlino is itself inconclusive. The
chapters highlight different aspects of the form, geometry, symbolism, and
the history of the representations of San Carlino. However, they also show
that San Carlino is not the sum of all aspects or viewpoints but rather that
San Carlino is constituted, perceived or imagined as a whole only from the
perspective of any one distinct viewpoint. Being inconclusive, then, is not
a matter of pluralism – of everything goes – but rather of inevitable shifts
between any two (or more) viewpoints. Borromini himself shifted between
different viewpoints in designing San Carlino: from one geometrical episteme
to another, from one drawing technique to another, from one historical motif
to another, from an inherited traditional reference to an abstract shape, and
from a ‘symbolic’ to a ‘construction’ geometry. It is these very shifts that con-
tinue to compel us to wear different hats, and find San Carlino.
Analyzing the previously-mentioned shifts is to test different viewpoints,
and we offer in this conclusion a brief window into media and methods
other than writing to do so. The examples chosen here are two projects each
by Simon Rabyniuk and Phillip Daniels.1 Daniels’ interest lay primarily in
the oval medallions of the pendentive zone of the church, while Rabyni-
uk’s gravitated toward the dome. Daniels tests and contrasts two themes
or viewpoints: in the first, he explores through his drawing apparatus, (Fig-
ure C.1) the instrumentality of ellipses, cycloids, epicycles, epitrochoids
and hypotrochoids – all geometries that describe the orbits and motions
of celestial bodies, as proposed by Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Tycho
Brahe and others in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.2 The
device borrows aspects, features and parts from elliptical trammels, from
medieval methods of constructing ellipses and spirals (with string and nails),
and from Spirographs. Like Borromini’s seamless and ceaseless procedures
of geometric combination, the apparatus ultimately commits to no one
canon or lineage. In the second project, he attempts to map the curvature
of the oval medallion, his focus being not on the static perimeter or form of
Figure C.1 Adil Mansure, “photograph of Spirotype” (designed and built by Phillip
Daniels) Toronto, 2018
144 Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi
the oval and methods of inscribing it from a center(s), but on the series of
rosettes as they guide an eye circumambulating and thus ‘breaking down’
the perimeter (Figure C.2a). Such incremental drawing progressions expose
the curve path to potential clinamen. Rosette by rosette, the adjacencies
of the medallion surface are literally unraveled, unfurled and unrolled along
an ‘un-destined’ path (Figure C.2b). In both projects, we are confronted
not only with the factors of determining static form but with parameters of
motion such as cadence, rhythm, frequency and modulation. In these repre-
sentations, we observe the ‘inscription’ of static form give way to a rhythm
of shifting tangencies in varying frequencies.
Rabyniuk’s two projects explore the use of ‘projective geometry’ in San
Carlo’s dome, more specifically, the surface of the dome. In the series of cya-
notypes, sunlight replaces the ‘perspectival ray of light’ or the orthographic
‘stereometric slice’ – that characterized and dominated drawing from Piero
della Francesca to Albrecht Dürer – and reveals various contortions of the
pattern caused by a moving eye (Figure C.3a). The ‘visual noise’ generated
from the uneven spread of cyan chemicals, wavering and flickering light, and
never-flat paper characterizes the equally ‘noisy’ perception of the church
dome. The second project pays homage to a long tradition of the inversion of
voids to solids, especially to Luigi Moretti’s plaster casts of Hadrian’s Villa,
Guarini’s church of Santa Maria della Divina Provvidenza, and St Peter’s
basilica.3 While Moretti’s casts reveal a geometric isomorphism pertaining
to both solid and void, Rabyniuk’s 3D prints are telling of the geometric
inconceivability of notions of both solid and void in San Carlino, and that
their only conceivable commonality is precisely the physical juncture of solid
and void, which is a highly nuanced and localized surface (Figure C.3b).
Both projects reveal and play on the myth of ideal, empty and homogenous
(Newtonian) space and articulate the value of the nuances, innuendoes and
chance occurrences encountered in translating form through any media, be
it graphite, light, air, starch, plastic, plaster or stone.
The projects presented in this conclusion, like the essays in this volume,
shift modalities (and media) by employing, analyzing, speculating and writ-
ing about different geometrical know-hows. Amidst these shifts and trans-
lations, we are constantly returned to the fundamental, general question
posed in the introduction of the book: is the geometrical lack particular
to the geometrical interpretations, or is this lack itself universal insofar as
these interpretations are geometrical? In this volume, we have encountered
this lack mostly between two kinds of geometries: those that come at the
beginning, like Daniels’ drawing apparatus and the many inherited under-
lying geometrical schemes of San Carlino and those that come after or at
the end,  like Rabyniuk’s cyanotypes and Borromini’s own Az Rom 176
(Plate 4). There is a multiplicity of shifts between them, shifts that are not
absolutely ours, since the history of the techniques that enabled such shifts
predate us. Our viewpoints of analysis emerge from amidst these shifts:
in many ways, they represent the contemporary concerns of architecture,
Figure C.2a Phillip Daniels, “Diagrams: Rosette Sc(roll)” stills from animation,
Toronto, 2017
b Phillip Daniels, “Medallion manifold”, digital drawing, Toronto, 2017
146 Adil Mansure and Skender Luarasi

Figure C.3a Simon Rabyniuk, “cyanotype” of a dome model

b Adil Mansure, “photograph of 3D printed domes”
Source: built by Simon Rabyniuk and Kenzie McNamara

yet are within the affordance of Borromini’s process. The viewpoint shifts
affect these concerns in time, as they are trapped in form during the time
of the making of the project, as well as after its completion, by perceiving
and imaging these aspects. Borromini’s genius lay precisely in cultivating
an affordance of our viewpoints through this very history (or tradition) of
forms and techniques. And it is precisely the bounds of said affordance that
produce the ‘absolute lack’ of the geometrical universal. By now, this lack
should not be understood as a ‘problem’ to be solved, avoided or relativized,
but rather as that which sustains finding the original in history: a tendency
to be followed persistently, imaginatively and with love and passion toward
unhoped-for destinations. Hence the open inconclusiveness and multiplicity
of San Carlino in history.
It is hard to compete architecturally in Rome, a city with such a long
history and so many beautiful, lavish, elegant, complex and imposing build-
ings. Yet San Carlino does compete. Successfully. It does manage to carve
an opening in a city where it is so hard to emerge or be distinguished from
Nolli’s merciless poche-ing or Piranesi’s cerebral fragment-ing drive. And
yet, San Carlino – and its maker, Borromini – do come out in Rome and
 Conclusion 147
through history. Despite being so small, San Carlino does define an era and
an epochal style, precisely by being an exception and singularity within that
style, and by embodying and demonstrating the very impossibility of being
reducible to that style, despite being absolutely in it. What San Carlino offers
for us today is precisely the possibility of anticipating the new within the
milieu of the predictable and the computable: traits that have never been as
pervasive, pronounced and unquestioned in history as they are today.

Notes
1 These projects were produced as part of a seminar series titled Finding San Car-
lino; the chosen projects are part of the one taught at the University of Toronto
in the Fall of 2017 by Adil Mansure. Daniel’s second project was produced exclu-
sively for an exhibition titled Instrumentality of an Eternal Baroque: San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane, curated by Adil Mansure that premiered at Ryerson Univer-
sity in Toronto in September 2018.
2 Kepler is credited with discovering that the celestial bodies orbited around ellipti-
cal paths and Galileo with proposing that bodies could ‘freely float’.
See George L. Hersey, Architecture and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 192.
Galileo has also been credited for using cycloids to study the orbits of celestial
bodies.
See E. A. Whitman, “Some Historical Notes On the Cycloid,” The American
Mathematical Monthly 50, no. 5 (1943): 309–315.
3 Moretti analyzes the interior ‘space’ of a building over other aspects. His param-
eters of discussion and evaluation include ‘dimension’, ‘density’, ‘pressure, or
energetic charge’, and ‘quality’. Note that his choice of buildings privileged the
geometrically and stereometrically resolute. Thus his casts verified, re-presented
and visualized that which was already anticipated about both space and sequence.
See Luigi Moretti, “Structures and Sequences of Spaces,” trans. Thomas Stevens,
Oppositions 4 (1974): 123–138.
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Plate 1 Francesco Borromini, “plan” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1634,
Az Rom 171. 52.3 × 37 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 2 Francesco Borromini, “plan” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome,
1638–60s, Az Rom 172r. 56,1 × 39,9 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 3 Francesco Borromini, “plan” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1660,
Az Rom 173. 47 × 31 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 4 Francesco Borromini, “plan of the façade” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fon-
tane, Rome, 1666–67, Az Rom 176. 40,7 × 52 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 5 Francesco Borromini, “partial plan, main interior space” of San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1638–70, Az Rom 178v. 25,3 × 18,7 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 6 Francesco Borromini, “façade studies” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane,
Rome, 1640–41, Az Rom 187r. 22,9 × 18,1 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 7 Francesco Borromini, “plan of lantern” of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome,
Az Rom 192. 16 × 27,3 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 8 Francesco Borromini, “sketch section of the dome” of San Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane, Rome, Az Rom 196v. 13,2 × 19,7 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 9 Francesco Borromini, “architectural details of the interior”, San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, Rome, Az Rom 203. 40,2 × 26,3 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 10 Francesco Borromini, “Studies on wall and conching in the interior” of San
Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1640–41, Az Rom 208r. 26,6 × 20,3 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 11 Francesco Borromini, “Studies on vaulting and dome fencing”, San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1639–40, Az Rom 224. 27,9 × 20,6 cm
Source: Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Plate 12 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the façade of San Carlino”, Rome, 2016
Plate 13 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the chapel in the crypt of San Carlino”,
Rome, 2016
Plate 14 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the interior of San Carlino”, Rome, 2016
Plate 15 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the interior of San Carlino, taken from the
dome lantern”, Rome, 2016

Plate 16 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the apses and dome of San Carlino”, Rome,
2016
Plate 17 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the interior of San Carlino, taken from the
dome lantern”, Rome, 2016
Plate 18 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the entrance apse and dome of San Car-
lino”, Rome, 2016
Plate 19 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the entrance apse and dome of San Car-
lino”, Rome, 2016
Plate 20 Adil Mansure, “photograph of the pendentive medallion”, Rome, 2016
Index

Accademia di San Luca 61 Astronomia nova 69, 123

accordion 132 atectonic 70
Adams, Andrea 60 atoms 37; atomistic 35, 37
ad quadratum 5, 74, 80, 82 Aurea Catena 10
ad triangulum 5, 74, 80, 82 Aureli, Pier Vittorio 126
aedicule 79, 80, 82, 139 Austrian Baroque 46
aesthetic 6, 27, 28, 35, 49, 51, 55, 58, auxilia 12, 14
130, 131, 134 avant-garde 26
affect 3, 34, 41, 115, 120, 123, 124, axiom 4, 12, 69, 116, 122; axiomatic
146; affective 2, 27, 119, 121 129
affordance 146
Alberti, Leon Battista 13, 16, 60–62, Bach 65
64, 80, 81, 87, 113, 115–116, 119, Bachelard, Gaston 138
125, 126 Bacon, Roger 15
Albertina 1, 20, 23, 25, 32, 41, 52, 54, Badillo, Noé 51
65, 68, 83, 96, 99, 114 Badiou, Alain 25, 44
algorithm 112, 115–116, 119; balanced 86
algorithmic 5, 115, 116, 119 Baldinucci, Filippo 17, 23
allegory 55; allegorical 105 balloon 123
altar 67, 77, 96, 99, 100, 102, 104–107, balusters 53, 54
109–111, 116, 119, 133; altarpiece balustrade 54, 77, 78, 83
67, 68, 102, 104, 105, 109, 111 baptism 104, 109
Althusser, Louis 48 Barbaro, Daniele 8, 9, 12, 16
amalgam 132, 133; amalgamated 133, Barberini, Francesco 105
139; amalgamation 130, 132, 138, Barozzi, Francesco 22
139 Bauhaus 12
ambiguity 28, 60; ambigu 136, 137, beach 132, 135, 136, 138
141; ambiguous 28, 131, 135 beauty 12, 27, 55, 61, 62, 66, 67, 85;
anamorphic 1, 44 beautiful 62, 66, 90, 95, 146
animation 118, 127, 145 Bellini, Federico 6, 23, 108
Annunciation 107 Bellini, Francesco 1
Annunciatione, Fra Giovanni della 96 Bellori, Giovanni Pietro 26
Aquinas, Thomas 66, 71 Benjamin, Andrew 40, 41, 43, 121, 125,
archetype 53, 54, 61; archetypal 52, 53, 127–128
121, 131 Benjamin, Walter 3
Architettura Civile 22, 107, 111, 118, Bernini, Gianlorenzo 17, 20, 38, 42, 53,
126 100, 104, 121
armillary sphere 55 Bernini, Domenico 18
Arnheim, Rudolf 127 biangolo 99, 100

binary 30, 44, 90, 113, 121
Blumenberg, Hans 135, 137, 138, 141
Blunt, Anthony 1, 28, 31, 46, 73, 82,
96, 99, 108, 126, 130, 131, 140
Borromeo, Carlo 1, 53, 67, 121;
Charles Borromeo 108
Borromini, Bernardo Castelli 76
Brahe, Tycho 142
Bramante (Donato) 62, 120
Borsi, Franco 61
Brinckmann (Albert Erick) 46, 65, 68
Brunelleschi, Filippo 81, 85, 116,
118–119, 126
Bruno, Giordano 50
Buenaventura, Fra Juan de san 96
Buonanni, Filippo 138
Buonaventura 107
Cache, Bernard 43, 48, 122
campanile 100
Campbell, Colen 62, 68
Campidoglio 54
Canciani, Marco 76, 77, 82
canon 108, 123, 142; canonical 121
Capella della Sacra Sindone 118
Caritat, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas 20
Carpo, Mario 43, 115
Cartesian 35, 40; Cartesio 19, 24
Casa dei Filippini 98
Casa Papanice 127
Castelli (Francesco) 67
catechism 50, 52, 55
Catholic 50, 58, 134
celestial 50, 52, 55, 58, 128, 142, 147
Cerceau, Androuet du 137
Cerrini, Giovanni Domenico 102
chance 6, 27, 34, 129, 131, 137, 139,
144
cherubim 55, 112, 121
chiaroscuro 121
Chomsky, Noam 4, 60
Christ 67, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 109
Christian 66, 102
circular 14, 55, 58, 69, 100, 109, 113,
121–123, 127
classical 26, 31, 49, 54, 58, 63, 64, 71,
85, 107, 113, 115, 116, 119, 122,
131
Clavius 16, 22, 23
clay 91, 137
Clement of Alexandria 66
cloister 1, 53, 54, 62, 76, 96, 98
cloud 67, 83, 112, 131
coffering 28, 113, 124, 125, 134
Index 177
Cohen, Andrew 60
Cohen, Matthew 82
Coldstream, Nicola 74, 82
Commandino, Federico 13, 22
compass 5, 15, 16, 31, 55, 80, 84, 88,
100, 122
complexity 2, 51, 90, 100
concave 1, 53, 60, 134
concinnitas 62
Condorcet, Marquis de 8, 9, 10, 20, 21
Connors, Joseph 1, 5, 6, 21, 65, 68, 82,
83, 96, 105, 108, 126, 133, 135
consensus 2, 27, 58, 112
constructive geometry 5, 73–82
contrapuntal 5, 68, 100
convex 1, 53, 60, 109
Corinthian 105, 133
cornice 55, 71, 78–80, 82–84, 135, 140
Cortesi, Domenico 93, 94
cosmology 50, 51, 55; cosmic 55, 123
counter reformation 52, 53, 67, 104
courtyard 100, 107
crab 130, 136
crescendo 53
Crewdson, Gregory 93
cross 32, 41, 54, 76, 78, 98, 100, 104,
109, 113, 125
crucifix 5, 67, 96, 98, 100–102, 105,
107–109
crucifixion 102, 104, 105, 109
cruciform 2, 32, 113, 123, 124
crypt 90, 125, 139
cupola 36, 37, 54, 57, 58
curve 1, 18, 44, 47, 48, 77, 122, 123,
130, 131, 144; curvature 120,
122–124, 127, 142; curved 40, 42,
62, 122, 131; curvilinear 40–43;
curvilinearity 41
Cusa, Nicholas 50
Cusanus, Nicolas 52, 57, 58, 63, 69
cyanotype 144, 146
cycloid 123, 128, 142, 147
d’Arpino, Cesare 104
data 14, 76–80, 82, 84
Daubmann, Karl 5, 86
David (by Bernini) 42, 121, 127
death 5, 30, 39, 40, 76, 83, 96, 102,
104, 105, 107, 130, 136, 138, 139
decomposed 38, 68, 124, 126
deconstructivist 43
decoration 66, 98, 102, 105, 124, 132;
decor 107
decorum 105, 107
178 Index
deep structure 4, 6, 49, 52, 60, 70
default 3, 30, 38, 47
Degni, Paula 50
DeLanda, Manuel 122
Delbeke, Maarten 3
Deleuze, Gilles 43, 44, 48, 127
Derrida, Jacques 26, 28, 45
Descartes, René 19, 35, 69, 132
diagonal 32, 74, 78–82, 88, 96, 98–100,
105
diagram 6, 33, 41, 52, 57, 58, 75, 114,
125, 145
diameter 70, 84, 115–116, 118
Dientzenhofer, Johann 65
digital 2, 25, 30, 41, 43–45, 47, 48, 87,
88, 92, 95, 115–116, 118, 128
dimension 1, 10, 12, 18, 73, 76–82, 84,
88, 90, 116, 118–119, 137, 147
discipline 3, 10, 14, 19, 36, 87
dissertation 2, 49, 50, 52, 60, 62
distortion 5, 29, 55, 69, 88, 92, 95, 122
divine 10, 51, 52, 55, 69, 70, 138
dormitory 96, 98, 107, 108
dough 5, 18, 93
dove 68
Downes, Kerry 108
Dürer, Albrecht 11, 13, 16, 22, 144
DvoĜák, Max 1, 18
ecclesiastic 66, 102
egocentric 120
Eisenman, Peter 58, 60, 61
elastic 37, 91, 101
ellipse 14, 69, 123, 142; elliptical 69,
113, 122, 128, 142, 147
empirical 16, 36
engraving 55, 68, 69, 75, 76, 79, 83,
84, 108
Enneads 61, 62, 64
entablature 5, 18, 28, 42, 54, 65, 69–71,
120, 126, 134
entrance 62, 96, 100, 101, 120, 121
epicycles 142
epiphylogenetic memory 30
epitrochoids 142
equilateral triangle 2, 28, 31–33, 68–70,
74, 77–79, 99, 100
ethical 62, 66, 71
Euclid 10, 12, 13, 122, 128; Euclidean
12, 14, 29, 116, 119, 122, 131
Eupalinos 136, 140
Evans, Robin 112, 113, 123
excrescences 130, 131
exegesis 2, 33, 118
exterior 6, 79, 90, 91, 121, 138
eye 16, 19, 57, 61, 68, 70, 88, 96, 121,
127, 144
Fagiolo, Marcello 49, 50
Ferrari, Giovanni Battista 105
Fibonacci Series 54
Ficino, Marsilio 52
firmitatis 58, 123
flotsam 135–137
foci 32, 116, 123
foreshortening 115
formal 33, 35, 39, 40, 43, 48, 49, 51,
119, 130, 131, 135, 137
formless 28, 136
fountain 53, 132–134, 139
Francesca, Piero della 144
Franciolli, Marco 84, 108, 110,
111, 140
Frisolino, Domenico 22
Freud, Sigmund 60
Frey, Dagobert 1, 18, 20
frontality 121
Galileo, Galilei 123
Galtruchius, Petrus 12
garden 1, 96, 98, 105, 133
generative 33, 88
genesis 1, 17, 35, 68, 131
genetic 36–40, 121
Giannini, Sebastiano 76, 77, 83, 108
Gödel, Kurt 126
Gottignies, Gilles-François de 15, 16, 23
Grassi, Ernesto 66, 71
Greek cross 69
grid 31, 87, 127
grotto 6, 133, 137–139
Guarini, Guarino 22, 51, 65, 118, 144
Gubbio 105, 109
Gutenberg 126
Hadrian’s villa 1, 37, 144
Hales, John (Jonathan) 5, 73
haptic 130–133
Harries, Karsten 4, 5, 65
helicoidal 129, 130, 132, 138
Helmholtz 16, 23
Hendrix, John 4, 5, 49, 51
Hersey, George L. 128, 147
hexagon 2, 98, 100, 101, 105, 113, 123,
124, 134
Hill, Michael 1, 5, 6, 65, 67, 68, 80, 99,
101, 103, 104, 106, 108, 111, 125,
126
 Index 179
historian 17, 35, 62, 65, 73, 96, 112, Laurentian Library 62, 120
129, 138 Leach, Andrew 3, 7, 26, 45
historicist 26 Le Corbusier 10, 11, 60, 135–137
historiography 3, 4, 35, 46, 128 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 127
Hölder, Otto 16 lineament 54, 61, 62; lineamenta 62
Horn-Oncken, Alste 107 Lobachevsky, Nikolai 122
hyperbolic space 122 Lobkowitz, Juan Caramuel y 5, 69
hypolepsis 9, 21 logarithmic spiral 6, 129, 130, 134
hypostases 50, 55, 61 logic 16, 54, 87, 91, 99, 121
hypotrochoids 142 logos 66
lozenge 31, 33, 116
iconography 49, 50, 52, 53, Luarasi, Skender 1, 4, 25, 63, 125, 142
105; iconographic 4, 49, 50;
iconographically 49; iconologia 130 Maak, Niklas 6, 129
ideal 2, 17, 23, 35, 37, 90, 101, 102, Macarthur, John 3
108, 119, 144 Madonna Chapel 5, 96, 100, 105–108
ideality 2; idealization 101 Maignan (Pierre) 14, 15, 22
ideation 51 malerischen 18
incomplete 34, 112, 119; malfunctions 6
incompleteness 6, 119, 126; Manni, Domencio Maria 23
incompletion 35 Mansure, Adil 1, 5, 63, 112, 142, 147
inconclusive 142; inconclusiveness 142, maritime 6, 129, 133
146 Martinengo, Gabriele Tadino da 13
inflection 40, 43–45, 48, 127; inflected mason 1, 4, 69, 70, 73, 74, 80, 81, 88,
1, 28, 38 93; masonry 90, 95, 124
Innocent X (Pope) 53, 134 masonic 73
inscribe 88; inscribed 32, 52, 54, 58, Master Giuseppe 102, 103, 109
68, 88, 116, 121; inscription 47, 49, Matha, Jean de 67
78–80, 99, 116, 144 mathematic 10–15, 55, 60, 61, 63,
instrument 10, 12, 14, 58, 62, 102, 113 69, 111, 118, 126, 128–131;
instrumentality 123, 142, 147 mathematica 11, 15; mathematical
inter-columniation 116 10, 12–14, 39, 43, 57, 65, 70,
interiority 42, 121 131, 135, 139; mathematice 21;
intuition 32, 50, 54, 61, 120, 123 Mathematici 14, 21
invisible 4, 5, 11, 26, 65, 71, 105, 107, medallion 113, 121, 122, 127, 134,
135 139, 142, 144
Ionic 54 Medici, Giuliano di 120
irrational 54, 60, 62, 74, 80–82, 84 medieval 2, 5, 31, 46, 69, 73, 74, 76,
80–82, 123, 142
Jacobi, Lauren 5, 86 medium 3, 4, 30, 124; media 5, 142, 144
Jesuit 12, 138 meta-geometric 128
Johns, Karl 140 metamorphosis 44, 131, 139
juxtaposition 5, 131, 133; juxtaposed metamorphotical 135
53, 54, 58 metaphor 2, 6, 130, 132, 133, 135
metaphysic 5, 9, 49, 137
Kahn-Rossi, Manuela 84, 108, 110, 140 Michelangelo (Buonarroti) 39, 50, 54,
Kandinsky, Wassily 12 62, 87, 109, 120, 121, 127
Kant, Immanuel 27, 61 Michelini, Manuela 75, 76–79, 82
Karatani, Kojin 126 middle ages 25, 54
Kepler, Johannes 50, 52, 69, 123, 128, Mignard, Pierre 67, 102, 107, 109
142, 147 modalities 3, 4, 35, 40, 144
Kircher, Athanasius 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, modern 3, 7, 12, 18, 43, 50, 58,
59, 63 62; modernism 2; modernist 4;
know-how 144 modernity 26
180 Index
mold 43, 44, 93, 94, 122
mollusk 6, 129, 130, 137–139
monad 44, 121, 127
monastery 68, 96, 98, 102, 107, 108
motif 2, 4, 6, 35, 36, 38, 39, 58, 90,
112, 113, 121, 125, 127, 142
motion 39, 69, 95, 122, 139, 142, 144
music 65, 81, 107
Musurgia universalis 55, 58, 59
mystery 57, 67–69, 71; mystère 11;
mysterium 14; mystique 11
myth 113, 144; mythical 133
Neri, Filippo 104, 109
Nervi, Pier Luigi 86
Neumann, Balthasar 65
Neumeyer, Fitz 109
Newton 6; Newtonian 144
Nifo, Agostino 11
Nolli 146
non-Euclidean 122
non-standard 44, 45
Norberg-Schulz, Christian 5, 68–70
normative 4, 25–28
norms 3, 4, 25
objectile 43, 44
oblique 69, 70
octagon 25, 32, 33, 41, 54, 113, 116,
123–125, 134
Oechslin, Werner 4, 8
Oedipi Aegyptiaci 52
optical 53, 120; opticorum 55
Opus Architectonicum 39, 108–110,
123
Opus Majus 22
orbit 69, 107, 128, 142, 147
ornament 28, 58, 62, 68, 90, 105, 107,
110–113
orthographic 113, 115, 144
oscillate 41
Otto, Christian 60
Ovid 131
painterly 18, 70
Palazzo Barberini 50, 131, 132
Palazzo Carpegna 129
Palazzo dei Conservatori 54
Palazzo del Te 62
Palazzo Falconieri 129
Palazzo Farnese 109, 110
Palazzo Spada 115
Palingenius, Marcellus 50
Palissy, Bernard 137, 138
Palladio, Andrea 12, 22, 60, 62, 81, 84,
108, 111
palmi 76–80, 83, 84, 96, 98, 108
Panofsky, Erwin 5, 52, 55, 61, 63
Pantheon 123, 124, 128
parallel 90, 98, 100, 104, 122, 136
parallelogram 31
parametric 6, 48, 87, 89, 90, 126;
parametricism 43, 45
parchment 4, 113
parti 10, 57, 58, 118
Pascal, Blaise 14, 22
Pascoli, Lione 15, 17, 18, 20
Passeri, Giambattista 18, 19
pastiche 4, 26, 27
pendentive 6, 29, 36, 37, 78, 80, 82, 113,
118, 119, 121, 123, 124, 126, 142
perimeter 118, 120–123, 126, 142, 144
perspective 38, 53, 63, 69, 105, 113,
115, 142; perspectival 5, 69, 112,
115, 123, 144; perspectivism 44
Phaedrus 108, 136
phenomenon 3, 4, 112, 131;
phenomenological 45, 48, 66, 68
philosophy 4, 10, 49, 50, 52–55, 58
photogrammetry 76
phylogenetic 46
physics 14, 19, 55
Piazza D’Oro 37
Piazza Navona 53
pilaster 120, 121
Pini, Ermenegildo 19, 24
Pittoni, Leros 139, 140
plaster 3, 90, 94, 119, 122, 124, 144
plastic 123, 144; plasticity 128, 132,
133
Platonic 10, 21, 53, 54, 60, 61, 69, 131,
137; Neoplatonic 4–6, 49–53, 55, 58,
60, 61
Plotinus 61
poché 90, 91, 93, 120, 146
polar 120, 126
Pollak, Oskar 109, 110
Polus of Acragas 9
Porta Pia 62
Porticato of Palazzo Carpegna 129
Portoghesi 1, 6, 28, 32, 49, 50, 52, 62,
65, 91, 101, 109, 110, 122, 127, 129,
132, 134
postmodernist 2
Poussin, Nicolas 53
Pozzo, Cassiano dal 133
praxis 5, 14, 86
Proclus 10, 12, 69
 Index 181
projection 38, 55, 57, 69, 115, 118, sacristy 98, 133
119, 120, 123; projective geometry San Alessandro 109
112, 144 San Andrea al Quirinale 108
propaganda 132 San Anna de Parafraneiri 1
prosthetic 120 San Lorenzo 81, 85, 87, 109, 118, 126
Protestantism 134 Sansedoni Palace 74
psalms 107 Santa Costanza 123, 128
pseudo-code 32 Santa Costanza Rotunda 123
psyche 16 Santa Francesca Romana 109
psychology 39, 46, 126, 127; Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori 90, 92
psychological 17; psychologized 17 Santa Maria della Consolazione 109
Pythagoras 10, 60, 81, 84, 90, 126 Santa Maria della Divina Provvidenza
144
quadrants 113, 125 Santa Maria delle Grazie 120
quadratum 5, 74, 79, 80, 82 Santa Maria del Prato 105
quadrilobe 32 Santa Maria in Valicella 108
quadrivium 54 Santa Maria in Vallicella 109
quatrefoil 2, 33, 90, 115, 116 Santa Maria Maggiore 127
quattrocento 113 Santa Maria Novella 113, 116
Santi Quatro Coronati al Celio 53
Raffaello 57 San Tomaso in Cenci 109
ratio(s) 12, 74, 76, 80–82, 98, 100, 108, Santo Spirito 81, 85, 116, 119
135 Sant’Andrea in Mantua 113, 125
ratiocinatio 9, 12 Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza 50, 51, 109,
reconstruct 3, 71, 89, 91, 133 129–131
Reimann, Bernhard 122 San Vittorio 109
relief 1, 6, 28, 35, 36, 38, 112, 119, 124 Sapienza 130, 131
Renaissance 31, 54, 58, 60–62, 64, 69, sarcophagi 105, 110
70, 80–82, 86, 91, 107, 111, 113, Sartor, Alessandro 76, 83
116, 127 Sartre, Jean-Paul 34, 35, 46
restless 3, 115, 120, 122 Scamozzi, Vincenzo 96
rhetoric 3, 107, 108; rhetorical 105, scenographia 12
107, 108 scheme 1, 28, 32, 35, 53, 69, 80, 113,
rhombus 2, 31, 37, 68 119, 120, 121, 144; schema 1, 74, 80,
rhythm 4, 29, 115, 144 82, 114, 116
Riegl, Alois 3, 25, 26, 120, 121 Scholasticism 54
Righi, Francesco 24 science 9, 10, 14, 21, 55; scientia 10,
Ripa, Cesare 130 15, 16, 21
robot 87, 94, 95 sciographia 12
Rococo 65 script 95, 116; scripting 86
Romanelli 105, 109 sea 129–132, 134, 136
Romano, Giulio 62 seashell 6, 129–131, 135, 137–139
rosettes 122, 127, 144, 145 Sedlmayr, Hans 1, 2, 6, 35–41, 43, 65,
Rossi, Domenico di 107 107, 112, 115, 118, 125, 128, 138
Rossi, Giovanni Giacomo de 76, 82 semicircle 36; semicircular 33, 36, 116,
Rotonda 60, 123 132
Rowe, Colin 51, 60, 61 Semper (Gottfried) 40
Rubens, Peter Paul 55 senses 4, 11, 13, 15, 16, 54, 61, 137,
rule 3, 4, 14, 25, 50, 53, 62, 69, 86–90, 138
95, 131, 135 Seraphim 55, 67
ruler 15, 31, 100 Serlio, Sebastiano 14, 15, 22, 46, 81,
84, 123
S. Andrea delle Fratte 37 Shaviro, Steven 27, 30, 45
S. Pietro 18 shell 32, 129–141
182 Index
shift 2, 3, 30, 38, 45, 101, 138, 142, structural 38, 40, 41, 54, 73, 76, 77,
144, 146 81, 88, 90, 108, 120, 121, 124;
Sidereus Nuncius 123 structurality 45, 120
sign 9–12, 45, 49, 66, 67, 100, 127, stucco 105, 110, 112, 115, 119, 122,
138; signes 8, 9 124; stuccoed 105
signification 5, 58, 66; significato student 51, 53, 60, 62, 125–128
13, 63 style 3, 4, 25, 26, 43, 62, 70, 83, 85,
signified 58, 60 105, 107, 128, 147; stylistic 2, 3
signify 5, 9, 58, 66; signifi 8; significata subdivide 124
8, 9; significatur 8, 9; signifier 58, 60 subjectivity 26–31, 45
Sistine Chapel 57 substructure 54, 61
Sixtus V, Pope 132, 133 suicide 129
sketch 18, 68, 98 superficial 5, 112; superficiality 112;
Smyth-Pinney, Julia M. 6, 108, 126 superficially 112
snail 129–132, 137, 139 superject 4, 27–31, 36, 41, 43, 44
Socrates 136, 137 surface 5, 6, 29, 37, 40–43, 53, 58, 60,
software 31, 43, 116 90–93, 95, 112, 113, 115, 118, 119,
solid 12, 16, 120, 123, 129, 144 120–131, 133–135, 138, 144
Solomonic 69 survey 25, 76–80, 84
Spada, Virgilio 18, 100 Suthor, Nicola 125, 128
spatio-temporal 6, 124 symbol 4, 5, 51, 66–69, 113, 118, 130,
sphere 11, 17, 39, 55, 123; spherical 36 134, 135; symbolic 2, 4, 49, 52–54,
spiral 6, 113, 129–135, 137, 138, 142 58, 60, 69, 102, 120, 130, 142;
spiritual 54, 68, 70, 104, 107; spiritualis symbolism 2, 4, 49, 55, 58, 62, 68,
61; spiritualisas 55 112, 142
Spirographs 142 symmetry 98, 100, 107, 108
spline 44, 47, 48 syntactical ambiguity 60
springing 77, 82, 83, 100 syntax 58, 60, 61
square 54, 73, 74, 77–82, 84, 98, 113, synthesis 4, 10, 32, 39, 105; synthesizes
116, 124, 127 26, 58; synthesizing 49; synthetic 12,
squeeze 88, 121, 139 116
SS. Jean 67
St. Augustine 66 tabernacle 107
St. Borromeo 66 Tafuri, Manfredo 26, 27
St. Carlo Borromeo 67 tangent 32, 44, 90, 100, 116, 144
St. Peter 54, 104, 109, 111, 121, 133, Tartaglia, Nicolo 11, 13
144 technics 30, 31, 33, 45, 46
stair 62, 100, 109; staircase 132–134 tectonic 70, 86, 122, 127
Steck, Max 21 Tempio Malatestiano 87
Steinberg, Leo 1, 2, 28, 32, 49, 50, temporal 43; temporality 26, 33;
52–54, 60, 62, 65, 68, 107, 112, 116, temporalizing 27
118, 123, 124 Terragni 60
stereometric 4, 37, 112, 115, 123, 139, theological 41, 42, 50, 51, 58, 62
144, 147 Tiber 132, 133, 139
stereotomy 112, 118, 119 Tjarks, Torsten 24, 105, 135
Stevens, Wallace 27 toggling 4, 25, 27, 30, 35, 39–46; toggle
Stiegler, Bernard 30, 45, 47, 48 4, 38
St John the Evangelist 102 Toker, Franklin 74
St Maria Maggiore 127 tomb 120
stone 3, 17, 77, 78, 83, 86–88, 113, topographic 76
144; stonemason 17, 19, 73 topology 47, 122, 123, 128; topological
Strada Felice 98 47, 122; topologically 48
Strada Pia 98, 102 torch 55, 130
string 5, 74, 81, 86, 88, 89, 118, 142 tragedy 5, 105; tragic 4
 Index 183
transcendence 138; transcendental 5, Villalpando, Juan Bautista 69
26, 27, 30, 37 Vinci, Leonardo da 136
trapezoid 36, 98 virtual 37, 122
treatise 46, 69, 107, 118, 137, 138 Vitruvius 8–10, 12, 15, 20, 31, 58, 70,
triad 55 81, 107, 125; Vitruvian 11, 54, 100,
triangulation 2 105, 115, 123
Trinitarian(s) 1, 2, 67, 68, 96, 102, 105, Vitruvius, Marcus Pollio 81
108, 126 Vittone, Bernardo 51
trinity 2, 5, 49, 54, 55, 57, 67, 68, 71 void 35, 38, 144
tripartite 2, 37, 134 Volterra, Francesco da 99
Trissino 12 volume (spatial) 2, 4, 5, 18, 42, 74, 86,
trivium 54 91, 92, 112, 123, 127
trompe-l-oeil 134
typology 118 wall architecture 119, 120, 121
water 105, 127, 129, 130, 133, 134
universal 2, 10, 35, 57, 112, 119, 130, wave 37–40, 43, 137; wavy 28, 37, 38,
144, 146 40, 41, 43, 125, 133
utilitatis 58 Wertheimer, Max 126
Whitehead, Alfred North 3, 4, 27, 35, 45
Valéry, Paul 135–137, 139 Wittkower, Rudolf 1, 2, 28, 29, 31, 46,
Valois, Felice di 67 51, 60, 61, 65, 68–70, 73, 80, 81,
Vatican 55, 121 119, 126
vault 101, 102, 105, 108, 113, 118, Wölfflin, Heinrich 46, 70, 123
123; vaulting 37 Worringer, Wilhelm 39
Venturi, Robert 127 worship 53, 54, 57, 71, 102
venustatis 58 Wu, Nancy 74, 82
vestibule 90, 120
Via delle Quattro Fontane 132, 134 Xenophon 66, 71
Via Quirinale 1, 29, 84, 132 xenophora 6, 129, 138, 139
Vidler, Anthony 125
Vierzehnheiligen 65, 66 Zevi, Bruno 50
Vignola, Giacomo Barozzi da 1 Zuccaro, Federico 61, 63, 139, 140