2 The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa
There are two causes of beauty-natural and customary. Natural is from geometry consisting in uniformity, that is equality and proportion. Customary beauty is begotten by the use, as familiarity breeds a love for things not in themselves lovely. Here lies the great occasion of errors, but always the true test is natural or geometrical beauty. Geometrical figures are naturally more beautiful than irregular ones: the square, the circle are the most beautiful, next the parallelogram and the oval. There are only two beautiful positions of straight lines, perpendicular and horizontal; this is from Nature and consequently necessity, no other than upright being firm.
-Sir Christopher Wren, Parentalia
As the ideal type of centralized building Palladia's Villa Capra-Rotonda (Plate 1) has, perhaps more than any other house, imposed itself upon the imagination. Mathematical, abstract, four square, without apparent function and totally memorable, its derivatives have enjoyed universal distribution; and, when he writes of it, Palladia is lyrical.
The site is as pleasant and delightful as can be found, because it is on a small hill of very easy access, and is watered on one side by the Bacchiglione, a navigable river; and on the other it is encompassed about with most pleasant risings which look like a very great theatre and are all cultivated about with most excellent fruits and most exquisite vines; and therefore as it enjoys from every part most beautiful views, some of which are limited, some more extended, and others which terminate with the horizon, there are loggias made in all four fronts.'
When the mind is prepared for the one by the other, a passage from Le Corbusier's Precisions may be unavoidably reminiscent of this. No less lyrical but rather more explosive, Le Corbusier is describing the site of his Savoye House at Poissy (Plate 2).
Le site: une vaste pelouse bornbee en dome aplati. La rnaison est une boite en "air ... au milieu des prairies dominant Ie verger Le plan est pur.... II it sa juste place dans l'agreste paysage de Poissy.... Les habitants, venus ici parce que cette campagne agreste etait belle avec sa vie de campagne, ils la contempleront, maintenue intacte, du haut de leur jardin suspendu qu des quatre faces de leurs fenetres en longueur. Leur vie domestique sera inseree dans un reve virgilien.?
The Savoye House has been given a number of interpretations. It may indeed be a machine for living in, an arrangement of interpenetrating volumes and spaces, an emanation of space-time; but the suggestive reference to the dreams of Virgil may put one in mind of the passage in which Palladia describes the Rotonda. Palladio's landscape is more agrarian and bucolic, he evokes less of the untamed pastoral, his scale is larger; but the effect of the two passages is somehow the same.
Palladia, writing elsewhere, amplifies the ideal life of the villa. Its owner, from
3 The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa
within a fragment of created order, will watch the maturing of his possessions and savor the piquancy of contrast between his fields and his gardens; reflecting on mutability, he will contemplate throughout the years the antique virtues of a simpler race, and the harmonious ordering of his life and his estate will be an analogy of paradise.
The ancient sages commonly used to retire to such places, where being oftentimes visited by their virtuous friends and relations, having houses, gardens, fountains and such like pleasant places, and above all their virtue, they could easily attain to as much happiness as can be attained here below."
Perhaps these were the dreams of Virgil; and, freely interpreted, they have gathered around themselves in the course of time all those ideas of Roman virtue, excellence, Imperial splendor, and decay which make up the imaginative reconstruction of the ancient world. It would have been, perhaps, in the landscapes of Poussin-with their portentous apparitions of the antique-that Palladio would have felt at home; and it is possibly the fundamentals of this landscape, the poignancy of contrast between the disengaged cube and its setting in the paysage agreste, between geometrical volume and the appearance of unimpaired nature, which lie behind Le Corbusier's Roman allusion. If architecture at the Rotonda forms the setting for the good life, at Poissy it is certainly the background for the lyrically efficient one; and, if the contemporary pastoral is not yet sanctioned by conventional usage, apparently the Virgilian nostalgia is still present. From the hygenically equipped boudoirs, pausing while ascending the ramps, the memory of the Georgics no doubt interposes itself; and, perhaps, the historical reference may even add a stimulus as the car pulls out for Paris.
However, a more specific comparison which presents itself is that between Palladio's Villa Foscari, the Malcontenta of c. 1550-60 (Plates 3, 4), and the house which in 1927 Le Corbusier built for Mr. and Mrs. Michael Stein at Garches (Plates 5, 6).
These are two buildings which, in their forms and evocations, are superficially so entirely unlike that to bring them together would seem to be facetious; but, if the obsessive psychological and physical gravity of the Malcontenta receives no parallel in a house which sometimes wishes to be a ship, sometimes a gymnasium, this difference of mood should not be allowed to inhibit scrutiny.
For, in the first case, both Garches and the Malcontenta are conceived of as single blocks (Plates 7, 8); and, allowing for variations in roof treatment, it might be noticed that both are blocks of corresponding volume, each measuring 8 units
4 The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa
in length, by 5Yz in breadth, by 5 in height. Then, further to this, there is a comparable bay structure to be observed. Each house exhibits (and conceals) an alternating rhythm of double and single spatial intervals; and each house, read from front to back, displays a comparable tripartite distribution of lines of support (Figure 1).
But, at this stage, it might be better to introduce an almost. Because, if the distribution of basic horizontal coordinates is, in both cases, much the same, there are still some slight and significant differences relating to the distribution of those lines of support which parallel the facades; and thus at Garches, reading from front to back, the fundamental spatial interval proceeds in the ratio of Yz : 1%: 1Yz : 1% : %, while at the Malcontenta we are presented with the sequence 2 : 2 : 1Yz. In other words, by the use of a cantilevered half unit Le Corbusier obtains a compression for his central bay and thereby transfers interest elsewhere; while Palladio secures a dominance for his central division with a progression towards his portico which absolutely focuses attention in these two areas. The one scheme is, therefore, potentially dispersed and possibly equalitarian and the other is concentric and certainly hierarchical; but, with this difference observed, it might simply be added that, in both cases, a projecting element-extruded terrace or attached portico-occupies 1Yz units in depth.
Structures, of course, are not to be compared; and, to some extent, both architects look to structure as a justification for their dispositions. Thus Palladio employs a solid bearing wall; and of this system he writes:
It is to be observed, that those (rooms) on the right correspond with those on the left, that so the fabric may be the same in one place as in the other, and that the walls may equally bear the burden of the roof; because if the walls are made large in one part and small in the other, the latter will be more firm to resist the weight, by reason of the nearness of the walls, and the former more weak, which will produce in time very great inconveniences and ruin the whole work."
Palladio is concerned with the logical disposition of motifs dogmatically accepted, but he attempts to discover a structural reason for his planning symmetries; while Le Corbusier, who is proving a case for structure as a basis for the formal elements of design, contrasts the new system with the old and is a little more comprehensive.
[e vous rappel Ie ce "plan paralyse" de la maison de pierre et ceci aquoi nous sommes arrives avec la maison de fer ou de ciment arrne.
plan libre
facade libre
5 The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa
Figure 1 Malcontenta and Garches. Analyti~ i .:':.--cal diagrams. -1 I I I I I I I I I I I I I -I I I I I 1 I iI I I I I I,L
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6 The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa
ossature independante
fenetres en longueur ou pan de verre
pilotis
toit-jardin
et l'interieur muni de "casiers" et debarrasse de I'encombrement des meubles."
Palladio's structural system makes it almost necessary to repeat the same plan
on every level of the building, while point support allows Le Corbusier a flexible
arrangement; but both architects make a claim which is somewhat in excess of the
reasons they advance. Solid wall structures, Palladio declares, demand absolute
iiHiii
symmetry; a frame building, Le Corbusier announces, requires a free arrangement:
,.
but these must be, at least partly, the personal exigencies of high style-for asymmetrical
buildings of traditional structure remain standing and even frame buildings
of conventional plan continue to give satisfaction.
In both houses there is a piano nobile one floor up, which is linked to the garden
by a terrace or portico and a flight (or flights) of steps. At the Malcontenta
this main floor shows a cruciform hall with, symmetrically disposed about it, two
suites of three rooms each and two staircases; but at Garches there is nothing so
readily describable. At Garches there is a central hall and there a