Treatise (architecture)

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A treatise in the field of architecture is a literary and / or graphic representation of architectural relationships. In the Renaissance in particular , the architectural treatise was the most important medium for disseminating architectural knowledge. Important topics in the treatises on the architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque were the five orders of columns and the architecture of Roman antiquity . Thanks to the printing press , the treatises quickly found widespread use in Europe and Latin America and, as practical instructions for building and designing, became the tools of the trade for every architect of the time.

Treatises of antiquity

The origins of the European treatise literature lie in the descriptions of their own buildings by Greek architects such as Iktinos , Pytheos or Hermogenes . In late Hellenism, the architectural treatise with the character of a textbook developed in the Latin-speaking area; Vitruvius's Ten Books in particular are known today . Vitruvius, for his part, draws on previous writings by Fuficius, Varro and Publius Settimius.

Gothic tracts

In the Paris National Library is Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt kept. Villard, a master builder of the Gothic style , made drawings on 32 sheets of paper that were relevant to the subject of architecture and mechanical engineering . His work can only be proven around 1230-1235. The sheets contain very little text, the drawings look like sketches, they probably served as a stimulus and a reminder.

The sketchbook contains drawings on geometry that helped to develop columns, components such as quatrefoil , pointed arch windows and rosettes, towers, floor plans of churches (some of the few passages there). It also includes drawings for cranes and similar construction machinery. A builder was also an engineer for construction machines to organize the construction operations.

Villard's sketchbook is the only one to have survived. There are indeed masterful drawings of that time that go beyond the drawings of Villard (palimpsest on the west facade of Cologne Cathedral), but they hardly give any clues about the thinking or working methods of the builders of that time.

Vitruvius and the Renaissance Treatises

The trigger for the series of architectural treatises of the Renaissance was the rediscovery of Vitruvius ' "Ten Books on Architecture" in medieval copies in the monasteries of St. Gallen and Monte Cassino by Poggio Bracciolini in 1414. Vitruvius' unillustrated text was considered difficult to understand. For this reason, an attempt was made to clarify the descriptions of Vitruvius with accompanying illustrations, for example in the edition by Fra Giovanni Giocondo with woodcuts by Francesco di Giorgio from 1511 or the edition from 1556 translated by Daniele Barbaro and illustrated by Andrea Palladio .

Leon Battista Alberti tried to make the classical architecture of Rome and the text of Vitruvius understandable for his present through his own work “de architectura” (1485). Just like Vitruvius's text, Alberti's text was also a literary text without illustrations. Alberti saw in orderly architecture a material manifestation of the social structure. In the house, so Alberti, the status of its owner should be expressed. The design of the building has two aspects, beauty (pulcritudo) and ornament (ornamentum). While beauty belongs to the core of the building, ornament is an additional beauty applied from outside.

With his work “sette libri d'architettura”, Sebastiano Serlio created a new type of architecture treatise by placing the drawing at the center of his work and interpreting the texts only as additional explanations. In doing so, he created the archetype of the architectural treatise, which his successors Palladio, Vignola and Scamozzi referred to when writing their own treatises. As with Vitruvius and Alberti, also with Serlio the Roman-ancient architecture with the classical column order system is the model to be achieved.

The "sette libri" appeared in an irregular and incomplete manner from 1537 in Venice. Thanks to the new type of graphic representation, they quickly found an enthusiastic readership and were translated into all European languages. Serlio thus became the most important architectural model of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without being a particularly productive architect himself.

Vincenzo Scamozzi and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola limit themselves in their treatises to depicting the “ five orders ”, but are more brilliant and elaborate in drawing than Serlio's woodcuts.

Andrea Palladio changed the focus of the architectural treatises by placing his own designs and completed buildings at the center of the descriptions, instead of relying exclusively on ancient models. The dissemination of the treatise made his buildings one of the most influential designs in humanistic architecture.

Architectural treatises of the baroque in Germany

Influential architectural treatises in Germany were "Architectvra" by Wendel Dietterlin (Nurnberg 1598), and the writings of Leonhard Christoph Sturm .

Architectural treatises in the 19th century

In the 19th century, the classical architectural theorists of the Renaissance Palladio and Vignola still had a significant impact , as can be seen from the buildings of Classicism and the Neo-Renaissance . There was an increasing number of tracts that were written like textbooks; they served the training of architects and the education of the building owners and thus also the acquisition . In the 19th century, architectural history established itself as a scientific branch of art history.

Heinrich Hübsch developed In What Style Should We Build In his book published in 1828 ? a program for a new architectural style.

Selection of fonts in Germany

The architectural textbook by Friedrich Weinbrenner is a study book for prospective architects, which was published in three parts from 1810 to 1825 in Tübingen. In 1797 Weinbrenner became the Baden construction director and in 1800 head of a private, state-sponsored construction school. His buildings can be found in and around Karlsruhe and are among the most important works of classicism. The first two parts relate to drawing, which for him is the most important prerequisite for creating good architecture. His texts are easy to read, his approaches understandable and sometimes surprising; so when he introduces the architectural theory of forms in the third part with detailed considerations (over 30 pages long) on ​​the design of drinking vessels. He lets descriptions follow the order of the columns and then how buildings are to be structured and ordered. He devotes the last chapter in the third part to the construction police . Your task description also includes monitoring compliance with building regulations; They are essentially responsible for urban planning, for which he was the first to formulate systematic, extensive rules.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel published his collection of architectural drafts by Schinkel containing partly works that have been executed, partly objects whose execution was intended as a loose collection of notebooks from 1819. On the one hand, it is a pure self-presentation of one's own work but also contains architectural theoretical considerations. His architectural textbook remained a fragment.

Leo von Klenze , the builder of the Walhalla near Regensburg , published his instructions on the architecture of the Christian cult in 1822. In it he deals with the construction of churches and provides numerous sample boards.

Heinrich Huebsch , a pupil of Weinbrenner's, left his polemic In which styles should we build? (1828). He rejects classicism as merely imitative, immature architecture. He formulated principles of architectural aesthetics that shaped the following historicism.

Gottfried Semper left behind several writings on architecture theory, some of which are still being reprinted today. In his preliminary remarks on painted architecture and sculpture among the ancients (1834), he shows that the ancient temples of the Greeks were painted in color. He found paint residues on the ruins and made impressive studies. His style in the technical and tectonic arts or practical aesthetics (1860–1863, ISBN 3-88219-020-5 ) spans a wide architectural-historical arc from original building to its present. He suspected that the first building materials were wood and textiles. Only later were stones and clay used.

Friedrich Hoffstadt , actually a lawyer, wrote his Gothisches ABC-Buch between 1840 and 1843 , which contained an outline of the history of architecture, with a focus on Christian architecture.

Carl Alexander Heideloff left a large number of writings behind. In Little Vignola (1832) he freely translates Vignola's standard work into German; Free means here that it is structured didactically and makes it easier to understand. Before that he published the doctrine of the pillars (1827). With Die Bauhütte des Mittelalters and Der kleine Altdeutsche he analyzes the architecture of the Gothic, unfortunately he mystifies this epoch by highlighting a proportion figure (the octagon) as if it were a style-forming element for the Gothic.

Georg Gottlieb Ungewitter was an architect and architecture professor in Kassel . In his writings (e.g. textbook of Gothic constructions 1859–1864) he examined the architectural style of the Gothic and paved the way for neo-Gothic to dominate neo-historicism for many years.

Modern architecture treatises

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Buildings and designs carried out by Frank Lloyd Wright, Wasmuth, 1910
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In the modern era , the architectural treatise again became an important means of disseminating architectural knowledge. However, the importance was no longer as outstanding as in the Renaissance, since photography and film allowed a more direct and faster overview of global architectural work.

The recourse to the journalistic means of the Renaissance can be explained by the fact that modernism perceived the valid systems of order as obsolete. By resorting to the means of the treatise, modern architecture writers were given the opportunity to replace the order systems of the Renaissance with their own means.

In his treatise “Ornament and Crime” (Vienna, 1911), the Viennese architect Adolf Loos put forward the thesis that ornamenting a building is a crime if it consumes capital that can be used to alleviate urban poverty. From this thesis he derives an architectural theory of forms that should do without ornament . In his own architecture, however, Loos never fully implemented the principle of lack of ornamentation.

In his treatise “Vers une architecture” (Paris, 1923), the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier set up a theory of forms that completely rejected the structural elements of the five orders. Instead, the “five points on architecture” set up basic rules for design that were apparently intended as an answer to the sociological problems of the modern city. His writings reveal a totalitarian spirit, as he suggests tearing down entire cities in order to replace them with buildings that correspond to his architectural concept.

The most important architectural treatises at a glance

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hanno-Walter Kruft: History of the Theory of Architecture, CHBeck-Verlag, Munich 2013, pp. 20-30
  2. ^ Hans R. Hahnloser: Villard de Honnecourt. Critical complete edition of the Bauhüttenbuch ms. fr. 19093 in the Paris National Library. 2nd Edition. Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt , Graz 1972, ISBN 3-201-00768-4
The following important information is missing from this article or section:
Sketchbook by Villard de Honnecourt, treatises of modernity (Adolf Loos: "Ornament and Crime", Le Corbusier "Vers une architecture", Rem Koolhaas "Delirious New York")
Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .