Week 8 – The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa by Colin Rowe

Natural vs Customary? The real juxtaposition between modern and classical Architecture? Terms coined by the great sir Christopher Wren, Natural beauty tied to the mathematical principals of classical geometry whereas Customary beauty is defined by the user or environment. Throughout ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, Rowe explores how both classical and modern architecture juggle these same contexts with similar results.

Rowe is very much of the previous generation. In a world today where one has to prove his worth in pounds and pence, there isn’t room for the merlot soaked philosophies of the 20th century academic. The last of his kind, Rowe has become seen as an almost comical figure. However, for all his witticisms, the concepts and ethos became a driver for the start of post modernism, culminating in the work of his former draughtsman James Stirling.

So are modernism and classicism just two sides of coin. A slow evolution not uprooting revolution which the early 1900s came to encapsulate. The essence of the argument can be split across the development between façade and plan. In Rowe’s classical model the plan is natural; a celebration of geometry. In his example of the Palladio’s Villa Foscari as one moves through the building the inhabitant is treated to compositions intrinsically linked to the principles of golden section. However this requires the elevation to be heavily restricted by the plan behind. Rowe playfully describes how a very simple subversion of the same concept could be applied to Villa Stein by Le Corbusier. Using the mathematics and the division of the plan to triumphantly merge the two style, as if to try and discredit the architectural revolution.


These and other ideas proposed by Rowe, such as how unite d’Habitation fills the void of the Uffizi or the rotation symmetry of the Bauhaus school centred on Gropius office, are a fine representation of the games philosophers of all genre would play throughout the late 1800s and 20th century. Whilst there is a certain nostalgia for witty academia being perused for its own sake (there should be know denying there is a certain enjoyment to prose of Rowe), fundamentally his forthright approach to pushing post modernism seem as out of date as the style itself.   

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