Week 8: Didascalo’s Argument

The voice of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Didascalo, in argument with “strawman Protopiro, a rigorist in the tradition of Laugier and Winckelmann” (Piranesi 5), was a stimulating discussion on differing fundamental theories on architecture. By fundamental theories, I mean literally going back to architecture’s widely-considered birth in Greco-Roman times and discussing differing interpretations from an origin point. It’s clear that both men feel compelled to look to architecture’s origin in order to shape their theories, though they couldn’t seem to agree less on what original architecture says about a modern theory (modern, relative to Piranesi of course, a post-enlightenment modernism). Protopiro argues for a rigorous reductionist theory, one that, to Didascalo’s dismay, leaves no room for superfluous ornamentation as anything but a distraction from architecture’s core values. My bias definitely stands with Didascalo, and subsequently Piranesi, on this matter. I think that the crux of Didascalo’s argument comes in his rant which begins on page nine and later culminates on page 11 when he remarks “Show me a drawing of a purist, who believes that he has created the most marvelous way of designing a building. If the purists will not appear to be even more foolish than one of the free architects, then I will seem all the more naïve. A building without irregularities will be built only when four straight sticks holding a roof–this being the architectural prototype–will be able to exist, whole and in isolation, at the very same moment in which they are divided and disposed in thousands of different ways” (Piranesi 11). I reject rigorous reductionism for the very reason which Didascalo alludes to. Architecture can be expanded upon by looking to the past, but it cannot be advanced by trying to drive it to its most primitive “pure state”. The reason I reject rigorous reductionism, but tolerate or even accept moderate reductionism is because you see in the work of such titans as Le Corbusier, transfixed by Greek architectural order, and Mies, enamored with minimalistic framing of infinite spaces, an earnest attempt to let reductionist principles borrowed from antiquity, primarily with Le Corbusier, drive architecture forward when it was believed to be stagnant. And where High Modernism was able to successfully implement reductionist principles, Postmodernism sought to challenge it, and such is the natural order of progress.

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista. Thoughts on Architecture, 1765.