Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge

Rating:
Summary: an excellent history textbook
Review: for smart talented students of architecture who also happen to have the patience for a scholarly explanation of the philosophical history behind, and destinies awaiting their profession.

Can you imagine books on the history of science dealing with lab results only without mentioning the underlying epistemological/ theological / metaphysical/ cosmological assumptions that were operative when the lab work was undertaken? But this is how most courses in architectural history are taught. No wonder most architects know so little (and care even less) about the geneology of their own profession. This book rectifies the problem in one fell swoop.

The title may give you the impression that the emphasis of this book is on the problem of representation per se, as opposed to that of architecture per se. But this book actually demonstrates that the problem of architecture really is none other than the extra-architectural problem of its own representation -- above and beyond graphical techniques (drawings, models, modeling--Form Z, ect).

Because the authors rightly take the problem of representation back to where it originates -- philosophy and religion -- the history of post-renaissance western architecture is coherently presented in terms of its destined dissolution (if not total erasure) in our time.

This history of architecture, then, is the history of architecture-as-representation. This is intellectul history in the key of "architecture." And as such, it is also a history of philosophy. There was a time when architecture was not a matter of trite concepts, and philosophy itself, like science, belonged to an order of thinking called 'scientia.' The foundation / orientation of this book is largely phenomenological along the Heideggerian / Merleau-Pontian line.

European architects, prior to the rise of the Industrial Age, did an enormous amount of work in the name of architecture, but outside the realm of "building," strictly speaking. This tradition is also as much a part of architecture's history as the built thing, and yet it seldom gets treated on equal footing in most history books. This book is a welcome addition to a new different kind of history now opening up for various fictions (made things) including architecture, and it deserves a place of honor right next to Barbara Maria Stafford's work.

I called this a textbook: Because of its clarity and pedagogic value. The book contains some very interesting anecdotes in addition to the necessary hard writing. True, there is some unnecessary Latin here and there that might irk the average architecture student who is not familiar with academic writing. But otherwise, it's a very considerately written book. The quality and quantity of rare illustrations are superb.

The authors lament over and criticize the intellectual flatness of our contemporary architectural profession. And they cite some examples of work done by supposedly more thoughtful architects closer to our time, some of them still living (and usually teaching). But the fact that the great majority of so-called "thoughtful" architects in our time all tend to be in academia, with little or no built work to their credit gives one pause to speculate: a great history does not guarantee an equally great future. If once men of science and philosophy worked alongside architects, it was only because architecture served at that time as the highest platform of material manipulation and theoretical application. Is it still today? Can one really expect "mythopoesis" alone to compete with the logic of the square footage?

What sort of response can an architect have after reading this book? What can one say in response to such a great history (and history writing)? I would say there two possible responses: "So what?" and "Now what?"

Rating:
Summary: esoteric architectural representation
Review: Perez-Gomez wrote a very important book, the research on thearchitectural representation, and its roots, is enlightning, anddisturbing, in the sense that he pushes us to rethink our reflexes of perceptions and representation of architecture.