A physician, physicist, Cartesian, and "Modern," Claude Perrault (1613-1688) acquired architectural immortality with his design of the east wing of the Louvre. But perhaps an even greater achievement was his translation in 1673 of the Ten Books of Architecture by the Roman architect Vitruvius.

In the course of making this classical theorist "speak French" for the benefit of the students of the newly founded Académie Royale d'Architecture, Perrault himself became immersed in the issues of architectural theory, and the result was his Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients (1683). Notwithstanding the invocation of authority in its title, the text constituted a veritable French declaration of architectural independence from Italian Renaissance theory by asserting that the rules of architecture should no longer be defined by precedent but rather by reason and national taste.

Situating Perrault within his intellectual context, Alberto Pérez-Gómez delineates the historical import of his relative theory of beauty and describes in detail Perrault's feud with Francois Blondel, who was concurrently charged with writing the curriculum for state architectural education in France.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez is Saidye Rosner Bronfman Professor of the History of Architecture at McGill University. He is the author of Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science, and Polyphilo, or, The Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture.

Series: Texts & Documents

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Prices:
Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients (Hardcover): $35.00  
Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients (Paper): $25.00