Journal of Architectural Education

ISSN: 1046-4883 (Print) 1531-314X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjae20

The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture,

Speculation on Ornament from Vitruvius to
Venturi, Bearers of Meaning. The Classical Orders
in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Marco Frascari

To cite this article: Marco Frascari (1990) The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture,
Speculation on Ornament from Vitruvius to Venturi, Bearers of Meaning. The Classical Orders
in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Journal of Architectural Education, 43:3,
41-42, DOI: 10.1080/10464883.1990.10758571

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10464883.1990.10758571

Published online: 08 Jan 2014.

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Download by: [University of California Santa Barbara] Date: 21 June 2016, At: 13:52

In his thematic chapters, Friedman thor-
oughly explores major issues. While useful
topically, this organization scatters infor-
mation about the individual towns. The
reader must piece together data to gain a
complete picture of anyone of the five new
towns examined. The thematic approach
simultaneously isolates the content of each
chapter from the others. On the positive
side, this arrangement establishes a frame-
work for future investigations. Friedman's
Downloaded by [University of California Santa Barbara] at 13:52 21 June 2016
work provokes many questions. What was
the history of the other new towns laid out
by Florence during the same period? What
form did all these towns take in three-
dimensions? Were there set proportions
dictating street heights in relation to build-
ing widths? How did Florentine new towns
visually interact with the surrounding coun-
tryside?
In this dense but readable book, Friedman
enlivens the history of medieval town plan-
ning. His focus on the form and ideas
behind new towns affirms the richness of
Florentine planning theory in the late Middle
Ages. The designed settlements of Tuscany
were at once functional military and com-
mercial centers, and overt symbols of the
state's unity and order. Friedman's insight-
ful study give these new towns their rightful
place in planning history. No one can
now deny the vital role of late-medieval
Florence in the theory and practice of
European urban planning.
The LostMeaning of Classical Archi-
tecture, Speculation on Ornament
from Vitruvius to Venturi
by George Hersey
The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1988
201 pp., 83 illus. (b&wl. $9.95 (cloth)
Bearers of Meaning. The Classical
Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance
by John Onians
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1989
351 pp., 203 illus. (b&w), $75.00 (cloth)
The corporeal nature of architecture is one of
the mostfascinating aspects of the processby
which meanings are incorporated in the con-
structedworld. Corporeal signsare experien-
tial structures of meaning and are essentialto
abstract understanding and reasoning. The
memory embodied in edifices is the carrier of
these experiential structures and the Orders
are vital signs of this corporeal process.
Buildings are passive structures, in which the
quotidian artof living well finds infinite expres-
sion. In them the lineaments of construction
and the harmony of building elements trace
the tropes of human habits which are elicited
by a figurative imagination. The process of
signification, or semiosis, is the process by
which meanings are attached to to signs.
Buildings are impressive agglomerates of
signs; they are rhizomes of processes of
signification. Theseaggregates ofsignsshould
be studied by means of a quasi-doctrine, the
semiotics of architecture. Based on a naive
generalization of the relationships beween
thesignifierand the signified, Le. theVitruvian
diad of quod significat and quod signifaca-
fur, this quasi-doctrine, after being in the spot-
light during the late sixtiesand early seventies
- at that time, every architectural school had
at least a young faculty member teaching a
course on the semioticsofarchitecture- isby
now in the periphery of architectural educa-
tion and of the profession. Nevertheless, the
question of how meanings are carried by
buildings is still one of the most challenging
questions asked in the realm of architectural
theory. In the two books which are the sub-
jects of this review, the formulation of that
question has outgrown the naive design
approach of the quasi-doctrine, verging on
an elemental understanding of the architec-
tural process of signification. Both Onians
and Hersey address a tradition in which the
processesof signification in architecture take
place through incorporation. The authorsinter-
pret the corporeal metamorphosis of the per-
sonification of Classical Orders to develop
their investigations within the processes of
architectural signification. They are not inter-
ested in the orders as a design solution; rather
they are concerned with pointing out the
union between practice and theory: the
individuation of the relationship beween
fabulation, the theoretical talking about, and
the patterns of usage in construction and the
consequent transformations of those in digni-
fying decorations.
In his book, Onians trace the patterns of
usage of the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Corn-
posite and Tuscan Orders from their mytho-
logical beginnings, through the Classical and
41
Medieval periods to the sophisticated ma-
nipulation of meanings which took place
during the late Renaissance. He sees the
ordersasa humaninstitution which hasceased
to be meaningful in itsessence. Hersey'sbook
deals with the Greek and bloody origin of the
Orders. We are told that the trigliph origi-
nated from the placing of three pieces of
sacrificial bones on a tablet and the guttae
under the tablet are a representation of the fat
dripping from them. The entablature, as the
name in itself says, is justan indication of the
templeasa huge sacrificial table. Heresyalso
discusses the Renaissance's rhetorical ma-
nipulation of those building elements. He
concludes his critical evaluation of the Orders
with an assessment of their use in contempo-
rary architecture. Both the authors use the
semiotic paradigm of the hunter, but with
different purposes.Onians uses the paradigm
to suggesta way of reading the architectural
signs which has been lost, whereas Hersey
reminds us of a forgotten way of producing
meaningful architectural signs.
Onians' concern with thesemiotic knowledge
developed by hunters isbased on their "ability
to process visual stimuli in such a way that
significant variations in theenvironmentwould
be immediately noted." Our ancestors pos-
sessed the same ability to read their architec-
tural environment. In the same way that hunt-
ers in the forestcan read from the forestclues
to learn what nature is preparing for them, the
architectural hunters can identify. the nature of
a building by reading theclues personified in
elementsof theOrders in the building forestof
columns and capitals. The different useof the
Order's elements in a building tell the hunter
which parts of the building are the most and
the less significant, which political alliance
predominated or was sought by the original
inhabitants; or which morality or emotions
dominated the culture of the builders.
Columns and capitals are "a hard spine
through the soft flesh of European history."
Onians argues that they are a lost human
institution. Columns carried culture. The
changes in shape and placement constituted
a system for finding a way of life, and
expressing it in a memorable medium. Col-
umnsand capitals are extraordinary meansof
representation; they are aniconical images.
Twelve of them can representthe Apostles or
the signs of the zodiac, or a pillar beween
Winter 1990 JAE 43/2
 42
two pairs of columns can depict the figure of
Christamong thefourEvangelists, and theuse
of thecompositeorder in a Greek templecan
indicate a new alliance between the Atheni-
ans and the inhabitants of the Ionic colonies.
InreadingOnians' narrative, wediscoverthat
in SanMarco in Venice, a huge architectural
trophy, the change of the capitals from Ionic
to Corinthian has nothing to do with an odd
selection of building spoilsdone by thebuilder
to allow architectural tourists to speculatethat
Downloaded by [University of California Santa Barbara] at 13:52 21 June 2016
itwould have been better to useonly one kind
of Order. However, looking at San Marco
with a hunter's eye reveals tnat the consistent
use of the Ionic order in the inner wall of the
narthex and in the outer walls of the nave is
intended to convey the inferior position held
by these areas in the planned uses of sacred
space. ThealternatepositioningofCorinthian
and Composite Orders in the choir and
transept gives them equal importance in the
eye of the beholder, the visual chiasm postu-
Jockellilustroffon (Bearers 01 Meonifl[/l: The ~onsc~pI 01Old SI.
Peter's, Rome [eorlyfourth century! with Bromonle's "altarhouse" en-
closingthetomb cJ SaintPeter. Drawing byNIoorten von Heemsk-
erck INolionollibrory, Stockholm).
Winter! 990 JAE 43/2
lating the possibilityof a potential transforma-
tion from a worldly to a spiritual status. This
conversion takes place through the functions
performedwithin thisspecific and sacred part
of the church. For Onians, human bodies
consubstantiate in the stoneof buildings. The
architectural hunter can detect them in the
"forest"of the constructed world and through
them understand the story of human institu-
tions.
ForHersey,the practiceof thehunter's semiot-
ics is based on the recognition of hunting as
the primeval form of sacrifice, a ritual which
can give meaning to one's life. Architecture is
then a personified expression of sacrifice. In
Classical architecture, "a house, a bridge, a
dam, was only valid from the moment that a
sacrificed life lay beneath it. The building is
N
then a personification of that life. In making
thisremark, Herseyis quoting from one of the
most fascinating books on ancient Greek
rituals and myths, Walter Burkert's Homo
Necans.
Another recurrent and intellectually dominant
reference in Hersey'swriting isa masterpiece
of anthropological and philological analysis
of the Classical world, The Origin of Euro-
pean Thought about the Bow, the Mind, the
Soul, the World, Time and Fate, by R. B.
Onians, who isjohn Onions' father.Thisbook
is the scholarly source of many of Hersey's
architectural tropes. Architecture is seen by
Hersey as an embodiment of the tropes of
sacrifice, and the powerful mental associa-
tionscarried by theOrders are predicated on
this topical thinking a knowledge based on
images and figures. A powerful conceptual
tool, a trope is a playful interpretation which
relates forms that would otherwise never be
associated. A trope is always based on
rhetorical figures of signification. Achieving
meanings through the translation of formal
characteristics, a trope is a form of thinking
which, with the help of cross-referenced
images, generatesan elementalarchitecture
that establishes an eloquent and intelligible
constructed environment for humanlife. Build-
ing elements then become like leibniz's
monads, throughwhich it ispossibleto seethe
totalityof an architectural reality by looking at
a detail. Horns, hairs and the decoration of
capitals become meaningfulmonadsofarchi-
tectural imagination.Theyarepowerfultropes,
embodied trophies. These trophies, trans-
muted into supports and expressing human
feelings, then become meaningfulelements.
Through the tropes, the bodies of the victims
of wars or sacrifices transubstantiate in the
stones of which the building consists, revers-
ing the direction ofcausality in time, like the
hunters, who in their ritual reconstructions of
the bodies of their victims, sought to annul
casualty.
The useof the paradigm of the hunter's eye
classes both books unaer the heading of the
category of wonder. Bothauthorsare point-
ing out thatwonder may be elicited not only
by thebare notionof intelligible structure, but
also by meansof subtle perceptions. Never-
theless, in the two books, theway of produc-
ing wonder isdescribed differently.Hersey's
book, with itsconclusionon theuseof orders
in contemporary architecture - a bewilder-
ing discussion of Venturi's useofan enlarged
Palladian window - reduces architectural
wonder to astonishment, something which
fades when the sense of noveltydiminishes.
To stimulate this sortof wonder demands an
intentionalbreaking of establishedrules. On
the other hand, Onians argues that the
proper use of the building elements of an
Order generated a sense of wonderment,
giving to building elements the sense of a
steady and unthreatening naturewhich also
guides the changes in their use. These
changes are achieved through deliberate
transformation and metamorphosis.
Hersey's book is a short narrative which
reveals the bodily natureof Classical orders
throughan engaging useof anthropological
narrative, and the reader must do a great
deal of additional reading of primarysources
to understand fully the importance and the
implications of the argument. Onions' book
is a less engaging and lengthynarration, but
presents an excellentand sensiblereview of
architectural treatises, which can benefit the
reader who is approaching the topic for the
first time.
Marco Frascari
University of Pennsylvania