Sources of

architectural form
A critical history of
Western design theory

Mark Gelernter

Manchester University Press

Manchester and New York
Distributed exclusively in the USA and Ca nada by St Martin 's Press
Copyright© Mark Gelernter 1995

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada
by St Martin 's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 1001 0; USA

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been
inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary
arrangement at the first opportun ity.

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

Gelernter, Mark, 1951-
Sources of arch itectural form : a critical h istory of Western
design theory/Mark Gelernter.
p. cm .
Based on a thes is (doctorai)-Bartlett School of Arch itecture and
Planning, University College, London .
Includes bibliographica l references.
ISBN 0-7190-4128-7 .-ISBN 0-7190-4129-5 (pbk.)
1. Architectura l design-History. I. Title.
NA2750.G45 1995
720 ' .1-cd20 94-12283
CIP

ISBN 0-7190-4129-5 paperback

Reprinted 1996, 2000

Typeset in Great Britain

by Northern Phototypesetting Co Ltd, Bolton
Printed in Great Britain
by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
Contents

List of figures page vu

Acknowledgements Xll

1 Introduction 1
The central problem of design theory 1
Theories of form 3
A paradox in western theories of design 18
The subject-object problem 27
2 The ancient world 36
The origins of design theory and education 36
The Greek revolution in philosophy 44
Greek art and architecture theory 54
Vitruvius 61
3 The Middle Ages 69
Shift from the secular to the divine 69
Medieval art and architecture theory 74
Scholasticism 80
Education in the guilds and universities 85
4 The Renaissance 92
The revival of ancient concepts 92
Art theory in the High Renaissance 97
The Mannerist extremes 104
The new art academies 111
The rise of Positivist science 116
5 The Baroque 121
The Baroque dualities 121
Rationalism and the priority of reason 122
vi Contents

Empiricism and the priority of sense 127

Art and architecture theory and the academies 135
6 The Enlightenment 153
Revolutionary foundations of the modern world 153
Positivism and the new deterministic sciences of man 154
The Romantic rebellion 157
Neoclassicism and the academies 167
Immanuel Kant and the synthesis of subject and object 177
7 The nineteenth century 185
Philosophical relativism and artistic eclecticism 185
Classicism and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts 187
German Idealism, Romanticism, and the Gothic Revival 194
Positivism and artistic determinism 208
The shift to abstraction in art 213
8 The twentieth century (I) 220
The reaction to relativism in philosophy 220
The opposed sources of architectural form 225
The opposed sources of artistic form 233
The Bauhaus conflation 238
The Modern Movement 250
9 The twentieth century (11) 256
Late Modernism 256
Positivism and environmental design 260
Structuralism 265
Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism 277
Bibliography 292
Index 301
 1
Introduction

The central problem of design theory

This book examines the history of Western design theory from the
ancient world to the present. Design theory encompasses a wide
variety of subjects, from describing the essence of beauty to asserting
the social and political consequences of the building layouts.
Comprehensive coverage of all of these issues is beyond the scope of a
single volume. Instead, this book will focus on a particular issue that
lies at the core of design theory: what is the source of an architect's
design ideas? At the beginning of the design process the architect pos-
sesses only a random collection of information, requirements, inten-
tions and assumptions, and then suddenly on the drawing board
appears a proposal for a building form. How is this idea generated,
what influences its shape, from what is it derived?
This is a central question for design theory for a number of reasons.
For architects, this is the key issue at the heart of their practice. Faced
with the daunting task of conceiving a building form, should one first
study the functional requirements, or manipulate a geometrical system,
or give expression to inner intuitions? During this critical and almost
magical stage of creating something apparently out of nothing, archi-
tects have naturally desired a set of normative principles that could
guide their activities. Many theories about the source of form were
developed entirely to help govern architectural practice, and much
practice subsequently derived from these tbeories.
This question about the source of form 'is equally central to theories
in other fields from art and architectural history to anthropology.
Although these other fields are not concerned with creating building
forms themselves, many wish to explain interesting social and histori-
cal phenomena which are manifested in the built environment. Why,
for example, do most of the buildings created by a given culture -
2 Sources of architectural form

even though they are designed at different times by different individu-

als - possess so many similar features that they can be said to share a
style? And if one can explain the forces which usually constrain archi-
tects to work within a shared approach most of the time, how can
one explain the apparently sudden changes in architectural styles as,
for example, from the Gothic to the Classical in Renaissance Italy?
Furthermore, why do some buildings clearly reflect the prevalent val-
ues of the cultures that built them, while others anticipate cultural val-
ues which only emerge later? Many theories about cultural stability,
change, replication and promulgation appeal to built form as evidence,
and this in turn demands some conception of how the designers creat-
ed these forms.
We will explore, then, what important theorists from the ancient
world to the present have offered as the source of architectural form.
We will examine what each theorist asserted, and analyze the merits
and shortcomings of these ideas in several areas. First of all, are the
ideas consistent within themselves? We will see that more than a few
noted design theorists in history proposed theories that were internally
contradictory. If we accept one part of the theory, we cannot logically
accept the other. Secondly, do the theories adequately account for the
reality of the built environment? If architects really did design as
described by the theory, would the resulting built environment take its
present form? We will find a few theories that, if true, could not poss-
ibly have generated the buildings or patterns of styles and stylistic
changes in our architectural heritage. This criticism will refrain
wherever possible from offering normative judgements of the theory;
that is, we will not consider whether architects ought to design
according to the precepts of a particular theory. Whether buildings
ought to look like machines, as Gropius insisted for example, will be
left for the reader to decide.
We will also examine these theories within the broader context of
the history of Western philosophy. Architectural theorists did not
invent their theories in a vacuum, but rather inherited from their cul-
tures a number of attitudes, methods and even specific philosophies
that shaped their ideas about the source of form . Contemporary theo-
ries of art often exerted the most obvious influence, and we will
examine these where appropriate. Equally, the design theories often
took ideas from the theories of knowledge, or epistemology, with
which they were contemporary. Some theories of design, we will see,
are nothing more than theories of knowledge in another guise. Other
design theories borrowed from epistemology specific conceptions of
the mind and its processes. Yet other design theories consciously react-
Introduction 3

ed against their society's dominant conception of knowledge. The rela-

tionship between theories of knowledge and theories of creation is
pervasive and fundamental, and we will examine it in some detail
throughout the book. Finally, all of the theories of art, knowledge and
design took shape under the influence of a prevailing set of cosmologi-
cal beliefs, those most basic views in a culture about the nature of the
world, the nature of humans and their abilities, and the relationships
between the two. These beliefs changed far less frequently than the
numerous design and epistemological ideas that we will explore. But
at a few critical periods in the history of the West the cosmological
system changed so dramatically that it completely redirected subse-
quent philosophy. We will examine these important changes where
necessary.
This book will also examine the theories of design education that
often accompanied the theories of design. The two are closely linked.
A number of important design theorists worked in educational institu-
tions and wrote their theories explicitly to help their students learn
how to design. Others wrote mainly for an audience of architectural
practitioners, but saw the educational implications of their ideas. For
whatever reason, theorists from Vitruvius to Gropius often presented
their theory of design and their theory of education together, as one
coherent package. It helps to understand the one by examining the
other.

Theories of form

The following eight chapters explore the major Western theories of

design, knowledge and education in chronological order, each chapter
addressing a significant historical period. Before launching into this
chronological sequence, however, it is worth taking a broad view of
what is to come. Curiously, although many theorists in many different
cultures generated a rich variety of ideas on our central theme, they
tended to work out variations on five basic ideas. Ranging from the
notion that forms are generated within the creative imagination to the
notion that they derive from function and climate, these five provide
the conceptual foundations for most of the historical theories that this
book will examine.
Theory 1: An architectural form is shaped by its intended function .
According to this view, the form of a good building is shaped by the
various physical, social, psychological and symbolic functions it is
expected to perform.' The ideal shape of a concert hall, for example,