baroque
[buh-rohk; French ba-rawk]
adjective
1.
(often initial capital letter) of or relating to a style of architecture and art originating in Italy in the early 17th century and variously prevalent in Europe and the New World for a century and a half, characterized by free and sculptural use of the classical orders and ornament, by forms in elevation and plan suggesting movement, and by dramatic effect in which architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts often worked to combined effect.
2.
(sometimes initial capital letter) of or relating to the musical period following the Renaissance, extending roughly from 1600 to 1750.
3.
extravagantly ornate, florid, and convoluted in character or style:
the baroque prose of the novel's more lurid passages.
4.
irregular in shape:
baroque pearls.
noun
5.
(often initial capital letter) the baroque style or period.
6.
anything extravagantly ornamented, especially something so ornate as to be in bad taste.
7.
an irregularly shaped pearl.
The proposition is that Hersey’s work on Baroque geometry
is, ironically, baroque itself in the sense of the dictionary listings numbers
3 and 6. They are ‘ornate, florid, and convoluted’ inventions, ‘extravagantly
ornamented’ so as to prove the point being assumed. Hersey seems to be forcing
fabrications, faking proofs with naive manipulations that appear structured to
purposefully confuse and convince at the same time. Why is Hersey unable to say
that, e.g., Borromini’s dome (Fig. 5.32) is similar to the Columbine flower,
(Fig. 5.33), rather than asserting that, as on p.129-130: It seems to me that the
thought behind Borromini’s design is botanical. The two juxtaposed rotations
seem to mimic the alternating petals and sepals you find in certain flowers –
for example, the columbine pictured in figure 5.33.
Is it merely that Hersey would like it to have been this
way? Why try to pompously guess at Borromini’s thought processes when the
origin of the dome forms could easily have been otherwise, perhaps generated by
some straightforward, or alternatively, some more complex planning decisions
and/or a simple decorative desire. The similarity in the forms might merely be
chance, serendipitous, like a lot in this world. But no; Hersey has to ‘prove’
his reading is so, citing some abstract geometrical rotation, perhaps to make
things appear somewhat ‘scientific.’ Is it a matter of prestige; a yearning for
academic stature? The outcome reduces any academic standing by its excess of
hopeful manipulation and the lack of review and testing. It is mere conjecture
without any clarifying refutation. Does Hersey fear that such an off-handed
observation about this work might change perceptions of his heroically original
book on things Baroque? Hersey notes that he is unaware of anyone who has
explored such geometry in art history. Is there a reason for this? Is he
claiming originality? Does he have to prove his unique approach has substance
to confirm his brilliance?
p. 125 I will here mention
Descartes’s theories about vortices, namely that they filled the heavens and
were everywhere on Earth – in the air, invisibly, as well as visibly in water
and other fluids. Such thoughts expanded the importance of vortices and spirals
in Baroque thought. Yet I’ve never seen any art-historical comment on these
aspects of Solomonic columns. (But then I’ve never seen any art-historical
comment on most of the subjects raised in this book.)
So
let’s push onwards.
The piece, APPROXIMATE
ARCHITECTURAL THEORIES – GEHRY GUESSING, used the example of the proportions of
St. Peter’s to show how precise theories were based on broad generalities: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/approximate-architectural-theories.html
George
L. Hersey, in his book Architecture
and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque,
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000 has published many diagrams to prove his thesis suggested in the
title: that geometry lies at the root of Baroque architectural design. One does not have to delve too deeply into
this book to find the first worrying illustration. On page 14 there are two
identical main elevations of St. Peters in Rome. A small photograph that has
been reproduced twice has been used to illustrate how the proportions of this
building, well this portion of it, involve two systems: a double golden section
rectangle and a double sesquiquartoquintal rectangle. It becomes obvious that
Hersey loves obscure Latin and Greek labels.
These somewhat blurred, faded grey photographs are
identical, about 85mm long and 30mm high. The coloured lines, blue and red,
that have been drawn over this image to illustrate the idea being discussed
have a width that is about one quarter of the width of one of the main
doorways. At a quick guess, the line might be, if scaled, about 600mm wide. Now
this in itself is not really a problem, as we are dealing with proportions. The
rectangle formed by the outer edge of this frame, however thick it might be,
has the same proportion as that defined by the inner edge. It is what the line
is trying to relate to on the photograph that is the critical issue, either
inside or out, because this is the significant point being highlighted by
Hersey: that the accumulated parts of this building have been planned using
specific, related dimensions, in this case, a clever twin set of proportions.
The concern is that a 600mm pointer is being used to identify the precise
locations of the dimensions to confirm the claim. It is like waving one’s hand
at a group of cups to indicate which particular one has the pebble under it, to
prove that one knows exactly where the elusive stone might be. The detail is
all very rubbery.
The loose use of preferred
ideas continues throughout the Hersey book, Architecture and Geometry in the
Age of the Baroque, leaves one a little bewildered: why was it published by
such a prestigious university press? It is not as though Hersey is trying to
keep his guessing game concealed. Theoretical studies like these do nothing to
generate any respect for rigour in the architectural profession. They allow
others to mock matters architectural that merely support the romance of imagery
with some flippant flare of flimsy ‘maybes’ and ‘perhaps’ that drive today’s
efforts in the shaping of fanciful form. We need to do better than this. Hersey
writes:
p. 96
Let us look at the work of a late Baroque architect
who did this - ‘make use if the faces of Archimedean and rhombic solids . . .
in the plans of buildings’ - (though he dressed his Baroque bodies in
neoclassic trimmings): William Halfpenny. Halfpenny was the author of numerous
villa books, including A New and Complete System of Architecture (1794).
In that book, the plan of house no. 31 (fig. 4.26) consists of a central
equilateral triangle with, on each side, a 4:3 rectangle (the latter are not
all exactly the same size, but never mind). For simplicity’s sake I will ignore
the three circular rooms at each corner of the triangle.
. . . I will also note, if Halfpenny’s “faces” were
to be extended – that is, if other clusters of the same shapes were added – it
would then fold into a hexakaiicosohedron, a 20-sided Archimedean solid with 8
equilateral triangles and 18 squares.
It seems that for the sake of
confirming his idea that Archimedean patterns have been used, Hersey is
prepared to ‘simplify’ and ‘ignore.’ As for the unequal 4:3 rectangles that
appear to become ‘squares’ to make the solid if ‘extended’ appropriately, perhaps
approximately, to make an Archimedean form with such an obscure Greek name, (as
I said, Hersey likes these complicated names: more ‘academic’?), Hersey seems
to be as liberal here with his hopeful interpretations and disregard as he has
been with the reading of the plans – ‘never mind’? It is all, apparently, for
simplicity!
Hersey does make an interesting
point: that these plans have a set of cumulative geometrical relationships
similar to those displayed in the Kepler solids if ‘developed’ - flattened out
into one plane; but this is all. To continue what he likes to present as his
detailed analysis of this observation, his proof, Hersey, (unfortunately close
to ‘heresy’ and ‘hearsay’), has to manipulate, ignore and simplify matters in
the very worst example of scientific rationalism that struggles to prove a
point by creating the proof rooted in a set of ‘appropriate’ dismissive
assumptions and ad hoc conjectures. Hersey is forcing the outcome he has chosen
to be the case, rather than exposing his ideas to the testing questioning of
scientific method as identified by Karl Popper in his Conjectures and
Refutations.
p.95
Rhombic and Archimedean patterns of just these types, and
variant forms of them, frequently appear in the coffers and ribs of Baroque domes.
Guarini’s dome at San Lorenzo, Turin (1668-80; fig. 4.24), while it is not one
of the 13 classic Archimedean solids, is a set of repeated tiled geometric
faces formed into a sphere segment. . . . A dome like this could only be the
work of someone, like Guarini, who had studied rhombic solids.
One has to ask: why might this be
so? The photographic image (fig. 4.24) shows a dome lined with four sets of
twin arches rotated 45 degrees to each other, making this display of what
Hersey reads as ‘tiles’ within their intersections, the spaces between the
arches. It is as though Hersey is ignoring the obvious - the arches. His
diagram of the pattern to ‘prove’ his point, fig. 4.25, shows a set of
triangles arrayed around an octagon inside a circle. It is a pattern that
appears to ignore the clear relationship between the intersecting arches and
the shaping, the integral making of the octagon: four pairs of lines rotated at
45 degrees make an octagon. In the Hersey diagram, the octagon stands alone as
an isolated, complete form like the outer circle, without any precise
relationship with the geometry of the surrounding triangles that are arrayed
independently as a zigzag between these two shapes with no necessary alignments
- but ‘never mind’? Hersey appears intent on reading the spaces between the
lines rather than the lines themselves, the bold arched forms that generate the
octagon and all of the other spaces between. These semi-circular arches are
similar to the ‘Islamic’ style of decoration where complexity is generated by a
strict and rigorous simplicity. Is Hersey completely unaware of the dome of the
Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain? It looks as though Hersey had to yet again
manipulate matters, his interpretations, his explanations, to make a fit with
‘his’ story, and read the image only as a tiling pattern. It is not this.
The dome of the Mezquita in Cordoba
p.83 – 84
But how does architecture come into it? - ‘Tilings
that use more than one shape are known as Archimedean tilings’ – My answer is
that Kepler’s patterns (fig. 4.4) show that the Liber architectonicus
was well named. Many of the diagrams look like Baroque and Rococo church plans,
or like the polygonal palace plans one sees in the mathematically architectural
treatises such as Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz’s Arquitectura civil, tecta y
obliqua and Guarini’s book.
To illustrate: In figures 4.5 amd 4.6, first, is
another of Kepler’s tilings, a set of five stellated decagons arranged in a
pentagonal footprint, with a central smaller pentagon serving as the
centrepiece. The little spaces between the rays of the decagonal stars are also
pentagons. Already this could almost be a church plan, with five chapels and a
central pentagonal nave. Specifically, it could be compared with Johann
Santin-Archel’s plan of St. John Nepomuk, near Saar in Slovakia, dating from
1719-21 (figs. 4.7 and 4.8). That too has a pentagonal footprint with a central
nave – though in this case the chapels are ellipses rather than stellate
decagons, and the central nave is circular instead of pentagonal. But these
differences are trivial. The chief point remains that the tiling and the plan
are instances of Kepler’s “congruent” conjunctions of polygons – his tilings.
‘. . . as if this might be
necessarily so?’ (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations). Does
Hersey decide what is important and what is ‘trivial’ on the basis of his
theories and readings, to create the best ‘fit’ through specific exclusions?
The mathematics of tiling patterns is precise and certain. There is no
sloppiness or any random choice of forms or fits here. Hersey seems to want to
prove his concepts just too much. Maybe he should be content with the simple,
loose analogy that says that Kepler tiling patterns might have stimulated an
interest in cluttering various geometrical shapes into the one plan pattern? Hersey
seems happy to leave the Wren steeple and bell tower of St. Bride’s, Fleet
Street in London, p.93, as being . . . thus like that other Baroque artefact, the telescope, which also
opens up into a set of contiguous cylinders, without pressing the point
further or extending the analogy in any other manner. It is an interesting
observation that might have no real sense of beginning or origin in the manner
suggested. It might be just that this similarity has happened: ‘it looks like a
. .’ - like viewing clouds. Why is he so insistent on other ‘proofs’?
His reading of the multiple,
stacked domes of the Baroque era as being like the layered lenses of the
recently invented magic lantern, telescope and microscope, p.60, is likewise
interesting, as these dome forms cleverly play with light and, symbolically,
with celestial projections too. Unfortunately, Hersey seems to get carried away
with mathematical forms called catenoids, a surface generated by the 360 degree
rotation of a catenary. He even gives the formula for the catenary: x = (a/2)(e
x/a + e x/a).
He writes. p.69:
. . . St. Paul’s, the masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren
(1675-1710; fig. 3.17). There, however, one finds not a true paraboloid,
(unlike previous domes), but a set of three domes. The outer dome is a
flattened hemisphere – half an oblate spheroid, one might say, perhaps as a bow
to Wren’s colleague Newton. Then, within, are catenoids. These form the two
inner domes supporting the outer. . . . catenaries had just recently been
distinguished from parabolas (they have different formulas), notably by Jacobus
Bernoulli in 1691.
The proximity in dates seems to
have persuaded Hersey that Wren must have used catenoids. He even illustrates
this with coloured lines drawn over the section of the dome. While the outer
and innermost domes appear to confirm his vision, it is the middle ‘dome’ that
seems to have been faked. The only other explanation is that the lines are as
casual in their placement as those previously illustrating proportions on St. Peter’s.
The red line that illustrates the catenoid profile is drawn over a masonry
structure that is conical in form with a segmented hemispherical cap. It is not
a catenoid. The sides are sloping straight lines, conical. The red ‘catenoid’
line does not even follow the sectional lines of this masonry structure other
than at the beginning and the end of the side of the cone; but Hersey claims
that it does? Is he relying only on the illustration and the misreading of it,
perhaps as a misprint, for this outcome? This seems to confirm that yet again
Hersey is determined to ‘prove’ his thesis, come hell or high water.
I understand the story to be that
during construction Wren realised that the footings were inadequate to support
the load of a full masonry dome. He redesigned the structure, placing a conical
masonry form over the inner dome that would support a wooden-framed outer dome,
reducing the loads without unnecessarily loading the inner dome. The sections
of St. Paul’s published by others confirm this, (see, e.g., Bannister
Fletcher). Surely Hersey must have known that the red line did not accurately
follow the alignment of the sectional profile of this inner form? Did he just
think that it didn’t matter - ‘never mind’: all for ‘simplicity’? Was it considered
‘trivial’ – or that he could ignore such minor discrepancies? Was it just a
close enough fit? It is this sloppy lack of precision and logical argument that
makes Hersey’s work weak - hopeful guesswork that would like the world to be
seen in a certain ordered manner: his ‘academic’ way, in spite of all the
evidence that leaves matters ‘suggestive’ at the very best - loose guesswork.
It is not as tough this might be a
simple mistake or misconception. Hersey later asserts by way of summary:
p. 134
And of the three nested domes of St. Paul’s, two are even
more exotic. Two are cubical catenoids and one is parabolic.
One can look at any section of St.
Paul’s dome. It is clear that the inner dome is conical. Indeed, Wikipedia
describes its sectional illustration unequivocally:
‘Cross-section showing the brick
cone between the inner and outer domes’
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Paul's_Cathedral
Hersey seems determined to see the
inner dome as a catenoid. Why? Unbeleivably he draws a catenoid over the cone
in order to offer visual confirmation, but, even with smothering misalignments
of the thick, coloured line, the discrepancies are more than obvious.
His intuitive readings are not
without interest; but they might suggest simple serendipity rather than any
self-conscious manipulation or scientific adaptation of other inventions and
mathematical studies of the times. Why not be happy to leave things like this?
There are other circumstances that have seen inventions occur in parallel:
e.g., calculus (Newton; Leibniz); and the filament light bulb (Edison; Swan).
No one seeks to resolve these inexplicably surprising events with some pseudo-rational explanations. Hersey’s efforts to create some sense of music out of
his seemingly almost random allocations of notation by ‘adjusting’ some notes,
again highlights his self-conscious manipulations and adaptations that seek to
illustrate some inherent order, when they are merely superimposed guesses, perhaps,
or maybes.
p.48
In figure 2.25 I have rewritten the two tunes into a
single melody. I’m cheating, I suppose. I make use of the entrenched and
necessary musical tradition whereby a given note can be transposed an octave
without overly damaging the musical sense (but which of course changes its
number ratio since it changes its interval). But in this way we can make the
baldacchino’s original melodies more acceptable. Anyway the old ratios and the
new ones do remain linked, musically, even though the numbers change. This is
because when we transpose a note up or down an octave, or even several octaves,
it remains harmonically the same note.
Hersey unabashedly confesses his
manipulations and boldly, almost brazenly, seeks to justify them. Why?
Architectural theory needs to be
more thorough and exact. We have to overcome our lazy tolerance with ‘Gehry
guessing/Hersey hoping’ that indulges in much the same carefree world as that
of selfies, centred on my image, visions and hopes, when there are larger, broader,
deeper, more significant things that are seeking in all humility to be
represented otherwise. If our ideas are sloppy, then there is little hope for
anything based on them being otherwise: they will all be other than wise. We
need careful rigour and responsibility in all that we do rather than playing
the game of the over-confident, over-satisfied, smiling television presenter,
grinning with apparent superfluous contentment at the entertaining delight of
life and its extremes, promoting this vision as an ambition for all: life as
one great laugh, where everything different and flippant will let one stand out
from the pleasure-seeking crowd looking, as tourists do, for the next
distracting ‘high’ for folk to applaud - see: http://springbrooklocale.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/who-or-what-is-tourist.html
But there is more. Deeper into the
book, Heresy has another example of his preferred geometrical graphic patterns
overlaying an illustration, this time a plan drawing, to document another idea
of his interests: the nine-square plan, the 3x3 lattice.
p.120 - 121
While as it stands the Invalides’ nave/chancel complex
does not possess more than the most primitive bilateral reflection, the
composition is nonetheless formed from a matrix that very clearly is a 3x3
lattice. That is, by removing the plan’s symmetry-breaking elements – its main
entrance with its steps and columns, and the chancel extending the church to the
east, all of which split the plan into heterodox shapes, the rest of the plan
then turns directly into a square building with central cupola, four flanking
domical transepts, four corner chapels, and four entrance massings, all
identical in form and placement.
Accompanying these words are two
illustrations, Fig. 5.22 and Fig. 5.23. Fig. 5.22 is a hazy, rather blotchy
plan of the Invalides, Paris by Mansart, erected 1679-91. Fig. 5.23 is supposed
to be the same plan, modified by truncations and deletions. This plan drawing
is more indistinct and does not appear to be the same illustration that has had
the entry and chancel removed. The forms of the various parts differ in shape
and detail. Still, Hersey presses on with his ‘proof.’ He draws a square divided
into four in red and the same square divided into nine in green over this plan
to illustrate his theory. The red and green lines are very thick. They must be
at least one metre wide to scale. But what is strange is that the symmetries
and alignments that Hersey seems to suggest might be there are not. Central
columns sit askew around the perfect symmetry of the red lines, while the green
ones slice through the masonry masses at what look like random points that have
no mirroring sense or sensibility. There is such a sloppiness here that one
cannot believe that Hersey is serious. Are the red and green lines so bold as
to appear to want to assert this proof just too much? Is Hersey trying to bluff
us with the certainty of brash, thick colour overlaying a fuzzy, indistinct
diagram that is not even a reproduction of the adjacent ground floor plan being
referenced? The thick, coloured bands clearly define the proportional
divisions, but even with such generous tolerances, they do not illustrate what
Hersey is suggesting. Some of the relationships between the building parts and
these broad, overlaying graphics are not even close.
On p.122 he says it more clearly:
My doctored version
of the Invalides plan in figure 5.23, for example, . . . Yes, he is
‘doctoring’ the proofs to suit himself. Hersey is constantly manipulating
matters to achieve his proofs.
Why does Heresy consider his approach to be acceptable?
p. 80
(Leonardo’s famous drawing, illustrating this
passage, proves that while the circle originates at the navel, the square will
have its origin at the penis. As an origin-point or generator, however, a penis
is just as appropriate as a navel, perhaps more so.) Anyway, throughout the
Renaissance and Baroque periods, the male body was thus seen as an aspect of
cubices rationes, fathering geometric and architectural forms.
One might imagine a point being
the centre of the navel, like a circle referencing its centre, but where on
earth might one begin to locate a point of generation in or on the penis? Does
Hersey acquire his inspiration for generalities and vague diagrams from Fig.
4.1 that illustrates correspondences between macrocosm and microcosm from
Robert Fludd’s Utriusque, 1619? This illustration shows the penis as the
‘Centrum’ – the generating point – with a line that passes under the
overhanging penis and in front of the scrotum, tucked up somewhere in the
intimacies of this sheltered location. Where is this generating point? Has it a
location or is it merely a metaphor: seed; growth; fertility; futures? Is
Hersey doing the same in his study – making broad certainties out of
generalities and maybes anchored in geometrical analogies: making facts out of
poetic fictions that can themselves touch reality obliquely, but with an
elusive certainty too? The geometry is not without interest, but we need to
avoid the suggestion of any sense of rigour when there really is very little,
in the same way that drawing approximate diagrams to prove certainties must be
avoided if we are ever to understand our world and our place in it beyond what
we envisage it to be. No other profession other than perhaps astrology could
get away with such sloppiness.
Hersey might be hopeful, but
fabricating ‘baroque’ theories is neither poetic nor factual, not emotionally,
or in any other manner. It merely creates a fantasy of possibilities that
highlights Heresy’s hearsay; his heresy. Academics must do better than this if
they want respect. Architecture needs better too.
One is left wondering:
Is Hersey too casual with his
subject; too easily distracted with matters interestingly geometrical and their
internal rigours? On p.130-131 he notes: The whole subject (spirals) stands as a fascinating
challenge for architectural writers. And not just in Baroque architecture. Any
architect who uses continuous curves – Antonio Gaudi and Frank Gehry are only
two of the many who come to mind – can be studied for their use of spiral
symmetry.
This observation leaves one a
little amazed, but when the previous lines are read, ‘spiral symmetry’ can be
seen to include anything: Archimedean, golden section, Pythagorean, dynamic-symmetry, random,
and fractal spirals. They also discuss spirals with what is called broken
symmetry. One could also mention that there are parabolic, hyperbolic, and
cornu spirals.
It seems that the whole Hersey
world is spiralling out into some romantically unpredictable spin. So this is
how Gaudi and Gehry can be mentioned in the one breath, in the context of
matters beautifully Baroque. Gaudi had rigour in his forms using hyperbolic
surfaces because these are formed by straight lines – the lines of light
itself: symbolically ‘the light of the world,’ of God himself. Embarrassingly,
Gehry might be seen to fit more into the no-man’s-land of the ‘random’ and
‘broken’ aspects of spirals, if at all. Analogies and references to war zones
seem to fit Gehry’s work very well: see
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/new-gehry-projects-in-aleppo.html It seems strange to try to justify anything
Gehry-like when there appears to be such a disregard for anything and anyone in
his work – other than himself, of course, and his reputation, no matter what
comes up.
But what is this? Hersey knows about
his fudges! After claiming that he can use Serlio’s system to make ovals that
simultaneously come remarkably close to ellipses, adding that One can, with sufficient
care, reduce the bumpiness to a near zero level, (p.138); he continues
on p.139 after illustrating precisely how this can be done with: I admit that scientifically
my pseudo-ellipse falls apart into a bumpy Serlio oval if the procedure is
redone with thinner, more exact lines. Mathematically a Serlio oval can never
be a true ellipse. Its elliptical nature is really the result of the thick,
therefore ambiguous, lines that construct it. But then, of course, when you’re
constructing a building, these are just the ambiguities you face.
It seems that Hersey is unable to
help himself. He still continues to explain and excuse himself in order to
prove that he is correct, ‘near enough,’ even knowing that ‘scientifically’ he
is wrong, just for things to fit his ideas and theories. Given this, one can
only assume that Hersey’s work is all merely simple, unproved conjecture,
schematic fabrications, and that he is fully aware of this. Did Hersey try just
too hard to make one last substantial book out of a set of simple, yet
interesting observations collected over the years, noting that ‘this looks like
that’? He was 73 when Architecture and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque
was published and would/should have known better. Is Hersey’s work nothing more
than a child’s game of seeing things in shadows? That my hands can make a
rabbit shadow on the wall does not establish any essential ‘rabbit’ quality for
my hands or my thinking. Trying to impose some mental stance on a Baroque
architect through some apparent parallel in form and geometry is taking things
far too far. Attempting to reform Wren’s dome to match his own personally
preferred ideas is unforgivable. In short, Architecture and Geometry in the
Age of the Baroque is close to hypothetical nonsense masquerading as a
learned, academic study.
There is one thing: on p.130
Hersey notes that, on the matter of spirals, The whole subject stands as a fascinating challenge
for architectural writers. Maybe that is the best one can say about
this book – it offers many ‘challenges’ for others to explore, test, question
and develop. It is a real shame that it knowingly, almost desperately, tries so
hard to be otherwise; but geometry is like that: it entrances with its own
special abstracted magic.
But this is not all: on p. 141
Hersey comments on Borromini’s plan, that it has both a visible and a physical
pseudo-ellipse: We are
dealing here with the sort of coincidences that arise independently in the
course of geometrical play. This sums the whole book up. It is a shame
that Hersey is so selective in his understandings, so blind to possibilities of
chance encounters. Hersey is grasping at phantoms. On p.153 he talks of up-down
symmetry: This happens when the buildings are up-down reflected – for example,
in water or on wet streets; and notes how this dual form matches some floor
plans – again at Sant’ Agnese. He sums up ‘pseudo-scientifically’ on p.155: . .
dihedral reflective symmetry of both left-right and, at least on rainy days or
in canal cities, the up-down sort. This is a real ‘up-down sort’ of book that
comes close to being a farce. If you do happen to pick it up by mistake, put it
straight down again and spend your time more productively and creatively
watching clouds and observing the surprising reflections in our world, both in
nature and our built environment.
15 February 2015
Hersey’s erratic rashness never
fails to surprise. While being prepared to ignore the possibilities of
serendipitous occurrences earlier in the book and make outrageous assumptions
and claims, it is not until the very last section that he recognises the
possibility that might have made his book a better study had it been recognised
at the beginning of the work:
p.216
I am far from suggesting that Le Corbusier
or Maillard were consciously concerned with Robert Fludd. But Fludd’s microcosm
is nonetheless the modulor man’s Baroque ancestor. It is less a question of
conscious influence than of geometric genes. Both results were independently
generated -
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