Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science [Paperback]

Alberto Perez-Gomez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 1985

Between the late Renaissance and the early nineteenth century, the ancient arts of architecture were being profoundly transformed by the scientific revolution. This important book, which won the 1984 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, traces the process by which the mystical and numerological grounds for the use of number and geometry in building gave way to the more functional and technical ones that prevail in architectural theory and practice today. Throughout, it relates the major architectural treatises of successive generations to the larger culture and the writings of philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.Alberto Pérez-Gómez is Director of the School of Architecture at Carleton University in Ottowa.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Geometry was demoted from its regal status as the generator of forms to being the servant of surveyors and engineers. It is a paradox that this happened as techniques of mensuration and construction, as well as geometrical speculation, intensified. Pérez-Gómez has placed this paradox in its proper context, scientific and philosophical. But most important to me, he has shown how much that is done and written about architecture nowadays is a direct consequence of that demotion. This book is essential for anyone who believes that architecture must reaffirm its role as the theatre of memory and metaphor-that there is no such thing as a meaningless structure." Joseph Rykwert

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (April 11, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262660555
• ISBN-13: 978-0262660556
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #618,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The end of poetic architecture, September 28, 2000

By 

Michele Sbacchi (Palermo, Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (Paperback)

From the very title Alberto Pérez-Goméz 's remarkable study refers to Edmond Husserl's phenomenolgy. Using Husserl and Heidegger's thought Pérez-Goméz analyses the crisis of the methaphorical role of architecture. The advent of Cartesianism is for him the starting point of a process that has, from that time, developed until our contemporary epoch. Scientific thinking has instrumentalized architectural thinking changing architecture into a merely purposeful activity. Architecture has; in this way; losen its role of metaphor of universal meaning and it has more and more become a pragmatic and non-representational culture. At the very beginning of this crisis the author places Claude Perrault's theories on architectural orders. They reveal quite clearly that orders have become only guidelines for design rather than portrayers of a divine, poetic reality as they were in the Classical tradition. Pérez-Goméz very profoundly analysises theories of architecture from that time until the end of 19th century, focusing on the central role played by Durand, the French theorist who more than any other stigmatized this trend. The book, firstly written as a doctoral thesis, focuses upon geometry and the changed use of it within architecture. To this regard very insightful are those parts where Guarino Guarini and Girard Desargues are dealt with. The book constitues one of the best reflections on the modern condition in architecture and it manages to suggest a path for a correct rethinking of architecture within modern culture.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtakingly smart., September 7, 2003

By 

Alejandro Ogata "Alex" (Kansas City, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (Paperback)

Perez-Gomez takes you on an amazing trip from the discoveries of Galileo the arguments of Durand towards the 19th Century.
The explanation of the way in which we lost the mythic aspect of the architecture discipline is devastatingly logical and to the point.
This book is nothing short of a must-read for anyone interested on understanding how things got to be the way they are.