arq (2018), 22.3, 205–213. © Cambridge University Press [2018]. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi: 10.1017/S1359135518000489 history An analysis of Colin Rowe’s methodological approaches – with particular reference to his 1961 essay on La Tourette – acknowledging dialectic as a creative methodology.

The methodological approaches of Colin Rowe: the multifaceted, intellectual connoisseur at La Tourette Raúl Martínez Martínez

In England, the establishment of art history as a professional discipline was consolidated by the ‘[…] approaches [to] architectural analysis foundation of the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1932, beyond Wittkower’s analytic formalism and the Warburg Library’s move from Hamburg to London the following year due to the rise of the that Rowe developed after his departure to Nazi régime; a political situation that caused the the United States’ emigration of German-speaking scholars such as Fritz Saxl, Ernst Gombrich and Rudolf Wittkower. Colin Rowe, an influential member of the second generation of historians of modern architecture, This article will focus on methodological was educated as part of this cultural milieu in the approaches for architectural analysis beyond postwar period, studying at the Warburg Institute Wittkower’s analytic formalism that Rowe in London. In the ‘Addendum 1973’ to his first developed after his departure to the United States published article ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal in 1951. In particular, it will pay special attention Villa’ (1947),1 Rowe acknowledged the Wölfflinian to his critical article, conceived during a three- origins of his analysis – Saxl and Wittkower had day visit to the recently completed monastery of studied under Heinrich Wölfflin – and the validity La Tourette in December 1960, the result of which of his inherited German formal methods. This was published as ‘Dominican Monastery of La assumption, in the opinion of one of Rowe’s Tourette, Eveux-sur-Arbresle, Lyons’ in the June 1961 7 students, the architectural historian and critic issue of The Architectural Review. The monographic Anthony Vidler,2 indicated the ‘still pervasive force nature of Rowe’s essay, coupled with the in situ of the late nineteenth century German school of analysis of the monastery, can be characterised architectural history in England in the years after as a singular work within his theoretical corpus. the Second World War’.3 Vidler, who has already written on Rowe’s analysis The impact that the German scholar of of La Tourette, considered the by-product of Renaissance and Baroque architecture Rudolf Rowe’s essay to be ‘one of the most difficult he Wittkower had on Rowe is well known and [Rowe] had attempted’, which resulted in ‘a long widely acknowledged in the academic work of reflection, or meditation, on the potentials of a architectural historians.4 Vidler is one of the visual analytic that he had developed since 1947 for 8 contributors who has emphasised Wittkower’s a practical, experiential criticism’. The ambiguity influence on Rowe’s historical approach to modern and complexity of ‘La Tourette’ leaves room for architecture, analysing the origin and development interpretation, as evidenced in Vidler’s open of Rowe’s thought in his written work from 1945 to conclusion, which established parallels between 1950. In his chronological study, Vidler established Erwin Panosfky’s ‘understanding of Scholastic the numerous intellectual debts Rowe owed to his architecture’ and Rowe’s analogous ‘understanding 9 former mentor – including thematic correlations, of mannerist architecture’. This article argues that methodological approaches, modes of historical in ‘La Tourette’, Rowe proposed a methodological interpretation and formal analysis – present in union between two previously mutually exclusive Rowe’s thesis, The Theoretical Drawings of Inigo Jones: concepts, thought and sensation, opening a new Their Sources and Scope, completed in 1947,5 and two door to understanding the work of Le Corbusier articles published in The Architectural Review: ‘The and, more importantly, allowing theorists and Mathematics of the Ideal Villa’ and ‘Mannerism historians to delve deeper towards the idea of a core and Modern Architecture’, in 1947 and 1950, of modern architecture. respectively.6

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Colin Rowe and the American art historical tradition a different art historical language.14 These two Within this framework of methodological unexpected meetings broadened Rowe’s mind and analysis, another of Rowe’s students, first at the directly exposed him to an art and architectural University of Texas at Austin and later at Cornell approach that was completely different from the University, Alexander Caragonne, examined German academic tradition he had learned from closely the brief but crucial episode in the history Wittkower; a transformative occurrence that made of architectural education developed at the him feel the need for his own experience in the University of Texas while Rowe was a member United States.15 of the faculty.10 In his book, The Texas Rangers: Rowe’s analytical method was expanded in Notes from an Architectural Underground, Caragonne the United States. His first steps were directed evaluated Rowe’s contribution to the programme by Hitchcock,16 who initiated the American at the university from 1953 to 1956, establishing historical tradition of modern architecture with chronological distinctions within Rowe’s writing. his book Modern Architecture: Romanticism and The first group of essays, the pre-Texas essays, Reintegration, published in 1929. Rowe considered illustrated the influence of the Warburg Institute, this to be Hitchcock’s best book and the motive and particularly Wittkower, on Rowe’s education that persuaded him to study under Hitchcock at during his academic training in England in the Yale. A year after Hitchcock’s death in 1987, Rowe late 1940s. This circumstance prompted Rowe to wrote an homage to his American adviser, an essay choose a theme that closely followed Warburgian simply entitled ‘Henry-Russell Hitchcock’. This text interests as a thesis subject and to use Wittkower’s began with an encounter between Hitchcock and analytic methodology in his written work. The Bernard Berenson, the American art historian who second group of essays, the Texas essays, reflected specialised in the Renaissance, at Vallombrosa in new interests that Rowe developed in the United 1955, recorded by the latter in his diaries.17 Rowe States, which Caragonne categorised as the imagined the possible conversation that the two ‘Superstructure’ and ‘Transparency’ articles. Harvard graduates had that day, establishing a The former category included Rowe’s essays methodological confluence between them. The ‘Chicago Frame’ (1956) and ‘Neo-‘‘Classicism’’ and point of connection, he speculated, was Berenson’s Modern Architecture, I and II’ (1956–7); the latter friend and Hitchcock’s professor, the American was characterised by ‘Transparency: Literal and art historian and medievalist, Arthur Kingsley Phenomenal’ (1955–6). Caragonne’s distinction was Porter. Rowe characterised Porter’s methodological significant because it exposed the development approach by ‘his excessive attention to facts at the of Rowe’s architectural discourse during his time expense of generalisations’; an opposition to the in Texas. Rowe’s departure to the United States German idealism, which was already beginning to in 1951 was a voluntary emigration motivated fade when Hitchcock was studying at Harvard in the by his enthusiasm to learn from the American early 1920s. This differentiation between empiricism architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and idealism caused Rowe to say, ‘it must have been who, at the time, was teaching at Yale University. Kingsley Porter who had been responsible for the Rowe justified the move in 1988 saying, ‘I felt way ultimate mental formation of the Russell Hitchcock back and I still feel today that I came to Yale, as whom I knew at Yale’.18 they used to say, to sit at his feet.’11 Rowe’s interest in the American art historical tradition was not new. It emerged after two Italian ‘[…] different ways of relating the history encounters, first in Florence in 1947 and later in of architecture […] represented by […] Rome in 1950. The former chance encounter was an Wölfflin’s pupil Sigfried Giedion and [Henry art historical confrontation between his Canadian travelling companion, Sydney Key, and an employee Russell] Hitchcock, teaching at Harvard of a New York art magazine, Libby Tannenbaum and Yale, respectively, when Rowe moved – an event that, in Rowe’s own words, ‘was to the States’ amusing for me because between Syd and Libby there developed a conversation from which I was completely excluded. […] I felt myself reduced to These different ways of relating the history of utter insignificance’.12 Even though Rowe described architecture were represented by two of the leading North America as ‘odd’ following the conversation, historians of the modern movement, Wölfflin’s this initial encounter planted the seed for his pupil Sigfried Giedion and Hitchcock, teaching at eventual migration. The second chance encounter Harvard and Yale, respectively, when Rowe moved was with Arthur Brown, an architect who had to the States.19 Two decades prior, Giedion and been Georges Gromort’s student at the École des Hitchcock had published works that established Beaux-Arts in Paris. Rowe described him as a ‘great them as upcoming scholars in the field of modern connoisseur’ with whom he had an ‘architectural architecture. In 1928, in Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in revelation’.13 Through their interactions, Rowe Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton, Giedion, the ‘Philosopher realised that Wittkower was not the sole authority Historian’ as John Summerson labelled him in pertaining to the subject of the Italian architect 1942,20 clearly guided by ideological objectives, Carlo Rainaldi but that, in the United States, located the roots of modern architecture in the the same concern already existed expressed in technological and engineering progress of France

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of the nineteenth century. One year later, in Modern Architecture, Hitchcock accounted for this same ‘Rowe underwent a methodological change evolution within the aesthetic realm. Hitchcock’s analytical approach derived from his own first- due to his rejection of Wittkower’s analytic hand impressions of the aesthetic expression of tradition.’ architecture.21 He particularly valued one book, The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste by Geoffrey Scott. In his opinion, the architecture anything written in the second half of the twentieth of the ‘New Pioneers’, which rested ‘more centrally century within the theory of architecture that was upon aesthetic’, was ‘the more comprehensible comparable to Scott’s and Wittkower’s books.26 critically to those who are familiar with, if not This ambiguous duality in Rowe’s analytical altogether won to, Geoffrey Scott’s theories’.22 approach to architecture has been highlighted by Modern Architecture concluded with a revealing . He believed that Rowe underwent late footnote in which Hitchcock acknowledged a methodological change due to his rejection of his personal affection to this ‘partial study of the Wittkower’s analytic tradition. The key rupture was physiological aesthetic of architecture’: Rowe’s move ‘from the abstract and conceptual As this book goes to press I have learned of the death of tradition to the empirical tradition’.27 The Geoffrey Scott. It is more than sad to think that there greatest sign of this empirical shift was a sudden may now be no further work on architecture from a attraction to an English architecture that he pen that set forth the subject more brilliantly than has had, before, refused. The architect Edwin Lutyens been done since Ruskin. But The Architecture of became a central figure for Rowe. According to the Humanism will continue to hold its place, reminding architectural historian David Watkin, Lutyens was us of a time when Humanism had a brighter meaning the personification of Scott’s ideals. He believed than it has today.23 that The Architecture of Humanism influenced him, especially after having discovered a copy of that Rowe’s ambiguous duality: between the conceptual book, belonging to Lutyens, signed and dated from and the empirical traditions December 1914, when the architect was on board After the Second World War, the standard the ship that took him to India.28 Vidler categorised theoretical alternative to The Architecture of Rowe’s use of these two opposite methodological Humanism was Wittkower’s Architectural Principles attitudes as ‘Rowe’s ambiguous relationship’ in the Age of Humanism, published in 1949. between the professional art history, ‘represented Wittkower himself clarified this in the first page by Wittkower and the Warburgians’, and the of the book, refuting Scott’s misinterpretations. gentleman amateur, ‘cultivated by the English These two works, especially influential in the school and championed by Bernard Berenson’.29 Anglo-American context after the Second World Rowe gradually alternated Wittkower’s analytic War, established opposite arguments about formalism with novel methodological approaches Renaissance architecture. As Alina A. Payne has after his arrival to the United States. Rowe’s essay argued, Wittkower’s humanism was an ‘intellectual ‘Character and Composition; or Some Vicissitudes configuration’ based on Platonic philosophy, of Architectural Vocabulary in the Nineteenth Pythagorean mathematics, and Euclidean geometry. Century’ (1953–4) indicated, for Eisenman, the In contrast, Scott’s humanism was described as ‘shift in voice from Mathematics to Composition’, in the ‘body-consciousness of Renaissance artistic other words, the ‘waning influence of Wittkower production’, according supremacy to the ‘physical/ and the passing influence of Hitchcock’.30 The perceptual moment over the rational/intellectual chronological significance of this article was one’.24 Scott’s book was recommended by Rowe evidenced by Eisenman’s effort to determine the and the Swiss architect in their time when it was written, which, according to Rowe, design course at the University of Texas, an was while he was at Yale, fourteen years before unexpected move considering Rowe’s academic its publication in Oppositions. The article’s shift training with Wittkower, whose book was not from the more conceptual aspects of theory to the included in the reading list.25 Rowe’s intellectual perceptual evidenced Hitchcock’s influence and stance between Wittkower and Scott, between paralleled the publication of his book Early Victorian science and connoisseurship, or, in other words, Architecture in Britain in 1954. This initial American between German intellectual objectivity and Anglo- influence on Rowe was palpable during his years American experiential subjectivity, was indirectly teaching at the University of Texas at Austin. Rowe expressed in an article published in the magazine was impressed by the new inquiries that were in Summa+ in 2001. The text reported the reflections vogue at the time at Yale, in particular, in the field of Argentinian architect Alfonso Corona Martínez of analysis derived from Gestalt psychology. This on the influence of Rowe’s articles on the field visual approach was introduced in Texas after Rowe of architecture. It included a valuable confession himself recommended candidates from Yale to teach derived from his brief, but significant, epistolary new freshman drawing classes, several of whom exchange before Rowe’s death. In this assessment, were professors who had studied under the tutelage made at a time when Rowe was arguably most of Josef Albers. One of these professors, Robert capable of balancing the entirety of his intellectual Slutzky, who was fascinated with the relationship spectrum, he argued that there had not been between architecture and painting, had applied

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Gestalt psychology to the visual perception of ‘spatial mechanics of the monastery’s precinct’,36 twentieth-century art, a topic that inspired Rowe and which, according to Rowe, was Le Corbusier’s subtle Slutzky to co-write the text ‘Transparency: Literal attempt at a commentary on Athenian material. and Phenomenal’ during their time in Texas.31 This argument was supported by a paragraph Rowe’s gradual shift in voice was again exhibited consisting of several quotations, all drawn from through the comparison between ‘Mathematics of various chapters of Vers une Architecture, in which the Ideal Villa’ and ‘Transparency’, two articles that Le Corbusier discussed the intrinsic relationship attempted to unveil the hidden structures behind that existed between the apparent absence of analysed objects, but from different standpoints; order of the Acropolis’ plan and the surrounding the first from the conceptual and the second from landscape. Part of Rowe’s excerpt derived from the the perceptual. Christoph Schnoor, while studying chapter ‘Three Reminders to Architects: III. Plan’. the role of architectural space in Rowe’s essays, The passage was an adaptation of the caption stated that ‘since Rowe argues at times with Gestalt that Le Corbusier wrote in regard to a figure from theories, it may be seen as perceptual, but only Auguste Choisy’s 1899 text, Historie de l’Architecture. in the abstract sense of an analytical perception, Le Corbusier used this image to illustrate the an intellectual way of seeing rather than an experiential reading of the processional route of the immediate, sensory perception’.32 Together with Acropolis, the spatial sequence that the Soviet film Gestalt psychology-derived analysis, Rowe pursued director Sergei M. Eisenstein labelled ‘the perfect a perceptual approach but from an empirical example of one of the most ancient films’.37 Choisy’s standpoint. Rowe’s first attempt to put forward sequential interpretation played a significant role an experiential analysis of a body in motion was in the elaboration of Le Corbusier’s idea of the in ‘Transparency’, where he described the spatial promenade architecturale. The idea of movement stratifications that an observer would experience in was insinuated in Choisy’s image through the the hypothetical axial approach to the auditorium of discontinuous line that appeared as a central focus, the Palace of the League of the Nations.33 In his next a notion that was expanded in the original volume article, ‘Lockhardt, Texas’, written with by figures that revealed the sequential perspectives in 1957, Rowe included real subjective descriptions of the marked itinerary. In this third ‘reminder’, Le (urban and architectural) of the promenade Corbusier established a causal relationship between architecturale, started at the central courthouse.34 the conceptual and the empirical: the plan was These types of analyses based on experiential the generator of architecture, holding in itself the descriptions were expanded in his essay on La essence of sensation, but the spectator’s eye, while Tourette. It is necessary to deconstruct this work in in motion, was responsible for perceiving volume order to reconfigure a picture of Rowe’s intent. and surface. This idea was graphically reinforced by Le Corbusier’s axonometric projections extracted from Choisy’s book, a graphic resource which, ‘Together with Gestalt psychology-derived as Yve-Alain Bois pointed out, was ‘a mode of 38 analysis, Rowe pursued a perceptual enunciating virtual movement’, because it stated the temporality of perception without referring to a approach but from an empirical fixed point of view. standpoint.’ Rowe’s brief preamble was followed by an analysis of La Tourette based on an empirical methodology. This was supported by his ‘La Tourette’: the conscious equilibrium of two subsequent narration of the casual visitor’s sensory opposing analytic traditions perception as he approached the monastery, the Rowe began the text on ‘La Tourette’ in the same same critical method applied by his friend and way that he had begun ‘Mannerism and Modern pupil, James Stirling, in the essay ‘Ronchamp: Le Architecture’ ten years previously: with reference to Corbusier Chapel and the Crisis of Rationalism’ Le Corbusier’s Villa Schwob at La Chaux-de-Fonds. five years previously, published in 1956. Both The blank panel of its facade once again assumed authors deliberately selected Le Corbusier’s the primary role within Rowe’s discourse, becoming most recent building and their analyses were the element of comparison with the blank wall at based on visual perceptions experienced along the north side of the church of La Tourette. Both a promenade architecturale, or, in Stirling’s words, buildings possessed planar surfaces that, although ‘the usual procedure in examining buildings’.39 they ‘absorbed’ the eye, they were ‘unable to retain This experiential mechanism of analysis had, in its attention’.35 This initial similarity allowed Rowe Eisenman’s opinion, ‘gradually become one of to establish a chronological framework between Le Rowe’s favourite devices’, because it was ‘thought Corbusier’s first building of historical importance by Rowe to be free of an ideological content’.40 and his more recent works. Furthermore, it The internal logic of the promenade derived constructed a coherence of composition and from the in situ experience of the observer, an intellectual unity with the stylistic change that the empirical observation of partiality without any architect developed after the Second World War. predetermined general purpose. Eisenman’s In the following paragraph, Rowe proposed a argument coincided with the idea that Rowe second comparison; this time, between the ‘patterns expounded in his ’Addendum 1973’, where he of organisation’ of the Athenian Acropolis and the recognised the validity of the Wölfflinian method

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intellectual qualities of architecture prompted ‘This disposition to recognise body images them to analyse both buildings from these two diverse architectural analytical methodologies, in concrete forms was in alignment with with the ultimate aim of explaining the domain Scott’s complementary principles […].’ of influence of each criterion. In ‘La Tourette’, it was permissible for Rowe to use both methods in tandem. On the contrary, in ‘Ronchamp’ it was because it appealed ‘primarily to what is visible’ only possible for Stirling to use the first of these and thus, ‘making the minimum of pretences to methods due to the ‘entirely visual appeal’ of the erudition’.41 chapel and the ‘lack of intellectual participation’49 In his description of the itinerary, or promenade demanded from the visitor. architecturale, Rowe incorporated material on In this ‘inside out’ section, Rowe returned to the topographical experience of the place, its his conceptual analyses of the late 1940s. The architectural experience and visual perceptions, as determining element of the definitive solution for well as optical impressions of a subjective nature, the building was, he argued, subordinated to Le qualified by individual feeling and personal Corbusier’s personal style, rejecting the functional thought. The language used was familiar with programme as a decisive factor. Rowe insisted physiological aesthetics, including descriptions that the architect’s individual stylistic unity and such as ‘a bastion supporting gesticulating coherence was reflected in Le Corbusier’s building, entrails’ and ‘one is obliged to exchange a reliable which maintained a consistency with the style of his womb’.42 This disposition to recognise body images previous designs. The final result was determined by in concrete forms was in alignment with Scott’s a formal preference of the architect (Le Corbusier’s complementary principles, which professed, insistence on volumetric economy) linked to an ‘we have transcribed ourselves into terms of abstract category (the ideal form of a Dominican architecture’ and ‘we transcribe architecture into establishment). These aprioristic deductions were, terms of ourselves’.43 A significant insight into Rowe asserted, connected antithetically to the Scott’s lasting influence on Rowe became evident concrete conditions of location. In other words, from Rowe’s annotated pages from his copy of a dialogue was established between opposites: the 1924 edition of The Architecture of Humanism. between architecture and landscape, between a Schnoor, after examining the Colin Rowe Library ‘statement of presumed universals’ and a contrary at the University of Texas at Austin, emphasised ‘statement of particulars’, between the ‘idealist one particular sentence which summarised gesture’ and the ‘empiricist veto’.50 The merging Scott’s intellectual impact on Rowe: ‘the whole of of these elements constructed his blueprint architecture is, in fact, unconsciously invested by for understanding La Tourette and its formal us with human movement and human moods’.44 organisation. Rowe also added another immediate This body-centred conception of architecture was cause. La Tourette combined, within a single block, articulated by Robert Maxwell, who highlighted that the structural model of the Maison Domino (a one of Rowe’s changes in architectural education, sandwich concept) exhibited in the living quarters since his experience at the University of Texas, and the structural schema of the Maison Citrohan was that he ‘promoted buildings as people, with (a megaron concept) used in the church: two fronts and backs’ and he added, with this influence structural systems that had previously been used ‘students began saying things like “my building independently of one another. Rowe deduced addresses the park”’.45 that this unusual combination was the cause of For Rowe, this first section of the article the ‘abnormality’ of the experience to which the represented the ‘normal way of seeing’ a building, visitor had been subjected. La Tourette appeared an ‘outside in’ discourse that considered La to be a sophisticated construction, able to ‘charge Tourette as a perceptual structure, exposing depth by surface’, to ‘condense spatial concavities the complexities of volumes and surfaces while into plane’, and to violate a unity of conception by approaching this ‘machine à émouvoir’. In the second forcing together opposite elements that instigated section, Rowe proposed an opposite formula with sensations like those of ‘tension and compression’, conceptual criteria in mind for the purpose of and ‘openness and density’.51 understanding La Tourette around what were, In 1976, a second, extended version of this according to him, criteria for the ‘normal way of article was included in the book, The Mathematics making’46 a building. This ‘inside out’ system of analysis suggested withdrawing ‘attention from the more sensational aspects of the monastery ‘[…] a dialogue […] between opposites: and to consider instead what may be presumed between architecture and landscape, to be its rationale’.47 The article was a deliberate combination of two opposing methods: empirical- between a “statement of presumed sensational judgement, and conceptual-intellectual universals” and a contrary “statement of judgement, an attitude that Maxwell summarised particulars”, between the “idealist gesture” as ‘the insistence [of Rowe] on seeing architecture at the intersection of thought and feeling’.48 Rowe’s and the “empiricist veto”.’ and Stirling’s consciousness of the sensational and

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planes made the building a sort of ‘dice’, allowing ‘Rowe sought to bridge the dilemma it to free itself again from the limitations to which enclosed by vision and intellect by denying the idealist and empirical methodology had been subjected. This multifaceted methodological stance the opposition between these two different assumed by Rowe was not accidental, but rather, a ways of seeing the world […].’ deliberate response to the personal attributes of the architect who had designed La Tourette. In Rowe’s opinion: of the Villa Ideal and Other Essays. With the newly [Le Corbusier] is one of the few architects who abbreviated title of ‘La Tourette’, this piece began have suppressed the demands of neither sensation with a note extracted from the first book published nor thought. Between thought and sensation, he has by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, always maintained a balance; […] This is the obvious Meditaciones del Quijote (1914), an ‘author whose message; and thus, with Le Corbusier, the conceptual newly translated works [Rowe] had consumed argument never really provides a sufficient pretext but with a passion’.52 The quotation dealt with the has always to be reinterpreted in terms of perceptual problem between depth and surface, placing the compulsions.54 idea of ‘​​foreshortening’ as the ultimate situation Rowe’s article on La Tourette is presented as the where vision merged with intellect. From this text where he intended to clarify a fundamental perspective, ‘La Tourette’ was not only an analysis dilemma that had emerged in his reading of Vers of Le Corbusier’s building, it also expressed Rowe’s une Architecture and that he had denounced a decade theoretical position regarding the methodology of earlier in ‘Mannerism and Modern Architecture’: architectural analysis. Like Ortega, Rowe sought to ‘the incapacity to define an attitude to sensation’.55 bridge the dilemma enclosed by vision and intellect The enormous importance that Le Corbusier by denying the opposition between these two attributed to the intellectual content of architecture different ways of seeing the world and, therefore, was in direct juxtaposition with the value that of understanding architecture. The inseparable he placed on sensory perception in his book. terms, ‘impression’ and ‘concept’, became a formula Although the business of architecture, as a plastic for exploring the reality of architecture. The invention, was to establish invaluable emotional proposed collaboration of these two antagonistic relationships, it was also an intellectual speculation methodological approaches provided Rowe with that reflected thought. Le Corbusier’s ambiguity an integrative point of view that enriched the between sensation and thought made it impossible discipline of architectural criticism by uniting for Rowe to provide an adequate answer to the Wittkower’s and Scott’s postulates as well as meaning of words like ‘comforting’ (‘comforting facilitating the interpretation of this singular work truths’) or ‘correct’ (architecture is ‘the masterly, by Le Corbusier. correct and magnificent play of volumes brought together to light’), which could be interpreted Dialectic as a creative methodological philosophy indistinctly from an idealistic perspective (‘the The core of Rowe’s methodological philosophy was theory of the Renaissance’) or from a sensorial located in Vers une Architecture. This second extended point of view (‘the theory of 1900’).56 This unresolved version of ‘La Tourette’ included additional new dilemma from 1950 was interpreted in 1978 as an content extracted from Le Corbusier’s book. Rowe attitude of balance between the two concepts that added material from the chapter ‘Architecture: II. were inherent to the architect himself. For Rowe, The Illusion of Plans’ to complement his initial the truly great artistic personalities were capable paragraph, which included information from of reaching this balance in the design process ‘Three Reminders to Architects: III. Plan’ and and, ironically Rowe himself achieved a similar ‘Architecture: III. Pure Creation of the Mind’. These equilibrium between empiricism and idealism in three chapters all centred on aesthetic matters, his analysis of La Tourette. In the same way that the phenomenon of the promenade architecturale, Le Corbusier understood architecture as a ‘total and Le Corbusier’s idea that architecture was invention, which depends exclusively on who both sensation and thought. The added quotation designs it’,57 the insightful Rowe proposed that the refocused the discussion towards a more conceptual tools of architectural analysis used to understand discourse that took precedence over the previous the complexities of La Tourette were those that gave sensational one regarding the approach behind an answer to the absolutely personal ‘style’ of Le La Tourette. Le Corbusier’s passion for walls Corbusier. As Ortega pointed out: became the key generator of the building, with his real things are made of matter or energy; but artistic consideration of the floor as a horizontal wall and things – like the character of Don Quixote – are the wall as a vertical floor. This equivalence between of a substance called style. Each aesthetic object horizontal and vertical planes enabled Rowe to is individuation of a protoplasm-style. Thus the apply both methodologies of analysis to the ‘vertical individual Don Quixote is an individual of the species floors’ and ‘horizontal walls’ of the monastery. At of Cervantes.58 La Tourette, all elements could be ‘referred to two distinct structures of argument’.53 They could be The architecture of good intentions related to optical desiderata as well as to conceptual The great importance that Rowe attributed to requirements. This theory about the parity of artistic personalities was due to his progressive

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rejection of the spirit of the age initiated in the impulse towards symbolic meaning. In order to United States, an echo that traces back to ‘Character substantiate the idea that modern architecture and Composition’, which Eisenman considered a was not symbolically neutral, Rowe focused on one premonition of the Rowe who rejected ‘modern architect: Le Corbusier. Using Wittkower’s text as architecture, the zeitgeist, and all that is purported a model, Rowe placed Le Corbusier into the role of to be rational and scientific’.59 The zenith of this Leon Battista Alberti and established comparisons position was exemplified in the last book that that revealed the diverse symbolic content between he wrote as a sole author, The Architecture of Good the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. While Alberti Intentions: Towards a Possible Retrospect, published searched for the recovery of antiquity, Le Corbusier in 1994. This ultimate contribution to the life searched for a discovery, a standpoint that invoked of ideas, written following Rowe’s characteristic a ‘dialectic between a highly elevated conception oblique approach, subtly maintains ties to both of mechanism and a highly edited conception Wittkower and Scott. Divided into five chapters, it is of antiquity’.62 As in ‘La Tourette’, where Rowe characterised by a destructive-constructive structure represented Le Corbusier as the result of a dialogue comparable to Scott’s The Architecture of Humanism. between thought and sensation, in ‘Iconography’, Though similar to Scott’s framework, Rowe’s layout Le Corbusier remained a product of these two was more balanced, where the destructive chapters approaches: the ideology of French positivism (‘Epistemology’, ‘Eschatology’) did not ‘overweigh’60 (engineering) and the influence of Vienna with its the constructive ones (‘Iconography’, ‘Mechanism’, theories of pure visibility (aesthetics). ‘Organism’). Rowe ended the chapter by alluding to two drawings of ‘opposition’ by Le Corbusier: ‘the face of Medusa and the sun’ (published on the cover of ‘[…] fantasies that had, according to him, the book) and ‘The Tasks of the Engineer/The Tasks become devoid of meaning, held together of the Architect’. These images revealed Rowe’s deep-rooted fascination with establishing a dialectic by prejudice and blind passion.’ between non-compatible elements, speculating on the product that emerged from their union. It appeared to be the resolution of the last two In the ‘destructive’ portion, Rowe attempted chapters, ‘Mechanism’ and ‘Organism’, where Rowe to display and dismantle what he considered defined the lineage of these two title concepts to be the constellation of ideas that gave rise to within the French mechanicist tradition and its the emergence of a new architecture after 1919, counterpart, the German and Anglo-American a collection of fantasies that had, according to organicist tradition, deducing that modern him, become devoid of meaning, held together architecture was a composite of both. by prejudice and blind passion. In ‘Epistemology’, The same approach to placing opposing entities Rowe scrutinised the paradox of two doctrines that side-by-side recurs in several of Rowe’s own texts but, remained invisible within the roots of modern in ‘La Tourette’, this duality is more pronounced architecture: the architect seen as the ‘dedicated because it is interwoven on different levels. First, servant of technology’ (a positivist argument about within the structure of the article, the empirical the architect as a scientist) and also the ‘executive methodology professed by Scott was complemented of the Zeitgeist’ (a historicist argument about the by the conceptual methodology supported by architect as a protagonist of the will of the epoch). Wittkower, equipping architectural criticism with In ‘Eschatology’, Rowe discussed the fallacy of a multifaceted lens that enriched the discipline. the modern architect assuming a prophetic role, Second, through the interpretation of this singular responsible for the salvation of the twentieth work, Rowe revealed that the Dominican monastery century while severing from the visual chaos of itself was a combination of two opposed structural the ‘diseased’ nineteenth century. The objectives systems represented by the Maison Domino (which of these two chapters paralleled those pursued by emphasised horizontal planes) and the Maison Scott through his fallacies: to demonstrate how Citrohan (which emphasised vertical planes). Third, untenable these misconceptions were, to trace through the intimate analysis of the building, Rowe how they arose, and to reveal why they were still offered insights into the nuances of Le Corbusier’s accepted. It appears that Rowe concurred with ambiguous personality. This recurring interest in Scott’s observation, that ‘in these matters, it is not the expression of dialectics was one of the reasons enough to argue against an opinion: the opinion why Rowe experienced such an attraction to Le will remain unless the roots of it are exposed’.61 Corbusier and his architectural work. Through his The third chapter, ‘Iconography’, introduced the in-depth analysis, La Tourette became central to ‘constructive’ part of the text. Just as Wittkower Rowe’s stimuli, and forged a new way of thinking had made a decisive contribution by connecting and understanding into the folds of modern the problem of form and meaning of Renaissance architecture.63 architecture, in Architectural Principles in the Age This fixation on dialectics comprised the of Humanism, Rowe sought to forge a similar foundation of Rowe’s academic philosophy, path with reference to the earlier twentieth as evidenced when he defined the duty of the century, unravelling the supposed opposition of educator within these same parameters: first, ‘to modern architecture to the nineteenth-century encourage the student to believe in architecture

The methodological approaches of Colin Rowe Raúl Martínez Martínez 212 arq . vol 22 . no 3 . 2018 history

and Modern architecture’, second, ‘to encourage the student to be sceptical about architecture ‘interaction between conflicting ideas as a and Modern architecture’, and third, ‘to cause the student to manipulate, with passion and creative method […], a continuous intelligence, the subjects or objects of his conviction exchange in which both entities retain their 64 and doubt’. Rowe envisioned this interaction individualism but are constantly enriched between conflicting ideas as a creative method capable of innovation, a continuous exchange in by their reciprocity.’ which both entities retain their individualism but are constantly enriched by their reciprocity, a fluctuation that triggers the creation of new the conceptual and productive veins of architects, realities. Through this exchange, Rowe unlocked urban designers, critics and theorists of the second the potential to open innovative pathways within half of the twentieth century.

Notes Histories of the Immediate Present, Hitchcock’, in As I was Saying: 1. Published in Colin Rowe, The p. 66. Volume 1: Texas, Pre-Texas, Cambridge, Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and 6. Rowe had been influenced by ed. by Alexander Caragonne Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Wittkower’s previous articles, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), Press, 1976), p. 16. including ‘Michelangelo’s p. 21. 2. For more information regarding Biblioteca Laurenziana’, The Art 12. Colin Rowe, ‘Two Italian Vidler’s interactions with Rowe, Bulletin, 16 (1934), 123–218; ‘Pseudo- Encounters’, in As I was Saying: see Anthony Vidler, ‘Two or Three Palladian Elements in English Volume 1: Texas, Pre-Texas, Cambridge, Things I Know about Him’, ANY, Neoclassicism’, Journal of the ed. by Alexander Caragonne 7/8 (1994), 44–7. Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 3. Anthony Vidler, Histories of the (1943), 154–64; ‘Principles of p. 5. Immediate Present: Inventing Palladio’s Architecture – I’, Journal 13. Ibid., pp. 9–10. Architectural Modernism (Cambridge, of the Warburg and Courtauld 14. Rowe thought that Wittkower’s MA: MIT Press, 2008), p. 61. Institutes, 7 (1944), 102–22; article ‘Carlo Rainaldi and the 4. Some of the historians that have ‘Principles of Palladio’s Architecture of the High Barroque discussed Wittkower’s impact on Architecture – II’, Journal of the in Rome’, Art Bulletin, 19 (1937), Rowe are Alina A. Payne, ‘Rudolf Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 8 242–313, was the pre-eminent Wittkower and Architectural (1945), 68–106; ‘Inigo Jones, source regarding Rainaldi. Principles in the Age of Architect and Man of Letters’, RIBA 15. Rowe’s perception of American Modernism’, Journal of the Society of Journal, 60 (1953), 83–90. culture can be traced through the Architectural Historians, 53 (1994), 7. Colin Rowe was not the only letters he wrote to his parents 322–42; Monica Centanni, ‘Per una architect who was interested in La during his time in the States. See iconologia dell’intervalo: Tourette at this time. Alison The Letters of Colin Rowe: Five Decades Tradizione dell’antico e visione Smithson and also of Correspondence, ed. by Daniel retrospettiva in Aby Warburg’, in wrote articles referring to this Naegele (London: Artifice Books, L’architettura come testo e la figura di building: ‘Couvent de la Tourette, 2015). Colin Rowe, ed. by Mauro Marzo Eveux-sur-l’Arbresle, Nr. Lyon, 16. Rowe won a Fulbright scholarship (Venezia: Marsilio, 2010), pp. 59–72; France’, Architectural Design, 28 to study with Henry-Russell Katia Mazzuco, ‘L’incontro di Colin (November 1958), 462; ‘Il convento Hitchcock at Yale. Rowe con Rudolf Wittkower e de La Tourette di Le Corbusier’, 17. Bernard Berenson, Sunset and un’imagine del cosiddetto Casabella, 246 (December 1960), Twilight: From the Diaries of 1947– “metodo warbugiano”’, in 4–19, respectively. 1958 (London: Hamish Hamilton, L’architettura come testo, ed. by 8. Anthony Vidler, ‘Reckoning with 1963), p. 399. Marzo, pp. 73–96; Francesco Art History: Colin Rowe’s Critical 18. Rowe, ‘Henry-Russell Hitchcock’, Benelli, ‘Rudolf Wittkower e Colin Vision’, in Reckoning with Colin Rowe: p. 13. Rowe: continuità e frattura’, in Ten Architects Take Position, ed. by 19. Wittkower had advised Rowe in L’architettura come testo, ed. by Emmanuel Petit (New York: favour of Harvard, but he instead Marzo, pp. 97–112; Mollie Routledge, 2015), p. 48. This essay decided upon Yale due to Claypool, ‘The Consequences of was a revised and expanded Hitchcock’s position on the Dialogue and the Virgilian version of his article, ‘Up Against faculty. Nostalgia of Colin Rowe’, the Wall: Colin Rowe at La 20. John Summerson, ‘The Architecture and Culture, 4:3 (2016), Tourette’, Log, 24 (2012), 7–17. Philosopher Historian’, 359–67; and Vidler in Histories of the 9. Vidier, Reckoning with Art Architectural Review, 91 (1942), 126. Immediate Present, pp. 61–104 History’, p. 52. This text corresponds to the review 5. Rowe began his thesis in 1945 10. Branden R. Engel, ‘Ambichronous that Summerson wrote for when he was Wittkower’s only Historiography: Colin Rowe and Giedion’s book Space, Time and Master’s student at the University the Teaching of Architectural Architecture. of London. The thesis was, in History’, Journal of Art 21. A comparison of the types of Vidler’s words, ‘an extraordinary Historiography, 14 (2016), 1–22. This illustrations that both authors synthesis of historical article investigates and brings new used to explain the same building interpretation derived from light to Rowe’s approach to confirmed their different Wittkower and formal analysis teaching at Texas. proposed analyses. Giedion derived from Wölfflin’. Vidler, 11. Colin Rowe, ‘Henry-Russell emphasised the construction and

Raúl Martínez Martínez The methodological approaches of Colin Rowe history arq . vol 22 . no 3 . 2018 213

engineering aspects related to the Journal of Art Historiography, 5 Tourette’, 410. new building materials with (2011), 22. 52. Vidler, ‘Reckoning with Art plans, sections, exterior and 33. Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, History’, p. 48. interior photographs, while ‘Transparency: Literal and 53. Rowe, ‘La Tourette’, in The Hitchcock, exclusively focused on Phenomenal’, Perspecta, 8 (1963), Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, p. 196. aesthetic considerations with 53–4. 54. Ibid. exterior photographs (of fifty- 34. Colin Rowe and John Hejduk, 55. Rowe, ‘Mannerism and Modern eight images, only three showed ‘Lockhardt, Texas’, Architectural Architecture’, in The Mathematics of the interior of the building and Record, 121 (March 1957), 202–04. the Ideal Villa, p. 295. the rest displayed facades or 35. Colin Rowe, ‘Dominican 56. Ibid., p. 296. volumes in isolation). Monastery of La Tourette, Eveux- 57. Hugues Desalle, ‘Le Corbusier: El 22. Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern sur-Arbresle, Lyons’, The mensaje en una botella’, Pasajes de Architecture: Romanticism and Architectural Review, 129 (June Arquitectura y Crítica, 9 (1999), 71. Reintegration (New York: Da Capo 1961), 401. 58. José Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones Press, 1993), p .236. 36. Ibid. del Quijote (Madrid: Ediciones 23. Ibid. 37. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Yve-Alain Bois Cátedra, 1984), p. 87. 24. Payne, ‘Rudolf Wittkower and and Michael Glenny, ‘Montage and 59. Eisenman, ‘The Rowe Synthesis’, Architectural Principles’, 333. Architecture’, Assemblage, 10 (1989), p. 50. 25. Scott’s book was included in the 117. 60. Scott, The Architecture of Humanism, reading list for the courses Arc. 525 38. Ibid., 114. p .259. In the epilogue of his 1924 and 526, 1954–5. See Alexander 39. James Stirling, ‘Ronchamp: Le edition, Scott responded to Caragonne, The Texas Rangers: Notes Corbusier Chapel and the Crisis of criticism on The Architecture of from an Architectural Underground Rationalism’, The Architectural Humanism and agreed that ‘the (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), Review, 119 (March 1956), 156. destructive portion of the book p. 428. 40. Eisenman, ‘The Intellectual Sheik’, overweighs the constructive’. 26. Alfonso Corona Martínez, ‘Respe(c) 69. 61. Scott, The Architecture of Humanism, to a Colin Rowe’, Summa+, 47 (2001), 41. Rowe, ‘The Mathematics of the pp. 259–60. 132. Ideal Villa’, in The Mathematics of the 62. Colin Rowe, The Architecture of Good 27. Peter Eisenman, ‘Not the Last Ideal Villa, p. 16. Intentions: Towards a Possible Word: The Intellectual Sheik’, ANY, 42. Rowe, ‘Dominican Monastery of La Retrospect (London: Academy 7/8 (1994), 68. Tourette’, 402. Editions, 1994), p. 53. 28. David Watkin, ‘Sir Edwin Lutyens 43. Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of 63. For further evidence, see Colin (1869–1944): The Greatest British Humanism: A Study in the History of Rowe, ‘The Provocative Facade: Architect?’, in Maestros de la Taste (London: Constable, 1924), p. Frontality and Contrapposto’, in As I arquitectura moderna en la Residencia 213. was Saying: Volume 2: Cornelliana, ed. de Estudiantes, ed. by Salvador 44. Schnoor, ‘Colin Rowe: Space as by Alexander Caragonne Guerrero (Madrid: Residencia de Well-Composed Illusion’, 15. Quote (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), Estudiantes, 2009), pp. 236–41. extracted from Scott, The pp. 174–203. 29. Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Architecture of Humanism, p. 213. 64. Colin Rowe, ‘Colin Rowe: On Present, p. 63. 45. Robert Maxwell, ‘Mannerism and Architectural Education’, ANY, 7/8 30. Peter Eisenman, ‘The Rowe Modernism: The Importance of (1994), 48. Synthesis’, in L’architettura come Irony’, in Reckoning with Colin Rowe, testo, ed. by Marzo, pp. 49–50. ed. by Petit, pp. 30–1. Author’s biography 31. This connection between modern 46. Rowe changed the word ‘making’ Raúl Martínez Martínez is an adjunct painting and modern architecture to ‘conceiving’ in the 1976 edition. lecturer at the Department of had already been expounded by 47. Rowe, ‘Dominican Monastery of La History and Theory of Architecture Hitchcock in Painting Toward Tourette’, 407. and Communication Techniques Architecture (1948). The practical 48. Maxwell, ‘Mannerism and at the Universitat Politècnica de and experimental character of the Modernism’, p. 30. Catalunya-BarcelonaTech. He was book was received with open arms 49. Stirling, ‘Ronchamp’, 161. a guest lecturer at the Poznan by the new academic staff of the 50. These two concepts were similar University of Technology in 2017 and University of Texas. Furthermore, to the two types of forms, the a visiting professor at the University Hoesli and Rowe, stimulated by its ‘generic form’ and the ‘specific of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign contents, included the book in form’, developed by Eisenman in in 2014–16. He specialises in the the reading list for the courses Arc. his doctoral dissertation two years historiography of architecture after 525 and 526, 1954–5. See later at the University of the Second World War. Caragonne, The Texas Rangers, Cambridge, ‘The Formal Basis of p. 428. Modern Architecture’. A facsimile Author’s address 32. Christoph Schnoor, ‘Colin Rowe: edition was published in 2006. Raúl Martínez Martínez Space as Well-Composed Illusion’, 51. Rowe, ‘Dominican Monastery of La [email protected]

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