Histories Of Architecture

With Four Historical Definitions of Architecture describe music and musical works as elusive phe-
Stephen Parcell offers an ambitious trans-historical nomena, arising from the collaborative interaction of
study aiming to retrieve four rather slippery definitions composers, performers, listeners, sounds, the score,
of architecture from four distinct but interconnected and the performative event. These musical elements
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seas: architecture as a technē in ancient Greece, correspond to Parcell’s proposed elements of archi-
as a mechanical art in medieval Europe, as an art tectural practice. This appropriation of musical theory
of disegno in Renaissance Italy, and as a fine art in to illuminate architectural history is one of Parcell’s
eighteenth-century Europe. With such adventurous most original contributions. With this compelling
aims, Parcell may be excused for serving up definitions musical analogy, Parcell begins to dissolve the notion
that are unlikely to please and persuade every of an architectural work as a static building designed
reader. But quibbles aside, there is so much to learn by autonomous visionaries. Further, with his method
from Parcell’s rigorous manner of fishing and so of tracking eight elements at play in each period,
much to savor from his bountiful catch, that every Parcell hopes to restore a historically informed un-
architectural historian and, indeed, any critically derstanding of architecture’s cooperative agencies:
inclined lover of architectural ideas ought to take its social, intellectual, and worldly contexts, and its
hold of this remarkably lucid work. For, although it material and representational processes.
does not dip into twenty-first century problems of In Chapters 2 through 9, Parcell proceeds to
architecture’s definition and status, this book does describe architecture’s epistemological position in
provide the thought-provoking immersion necessary each of the four periods under study—a tricky task,
to understand current disciplinary questions in a since its position is in flux. Nevertheless, Parcell fo-
broader context. cuses on those significant instances and documents
Before embarking on this ambitious journey, in which architecture’s status relative to other arts
Parcell prepares readers by meticulously laying out may be seen to coalesce. In ancient Greece, Parcell
(in Chapter 1) his interpretative apparatus—a kind of reminds us that architects worked in a tradition of
heuristic net of key words and concerns with which technē on a par with other remarkably diverse arti-
he attempts to harvest comparable elements of the sans: blacksmiths, potters, healers, prophets, legisla-
FOUR HISTORICAL DEFINITIONS architectural discipline from each wave of history. tors, navigators, minstrels, acrobats, cooks, and horse
OF ARCHITECTURE This interpretive net, in Parcell’s terms, is a “matrix” trainers (p. 22). In the medieval period, architecture
STEPHEN PARCELL consisting of a “weft” of four historical definitions became defined more narrowly as a protective art, a
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012 of architecture—technē, mechanical art, disegno, subset of armature within the mechanical arts, which
338 pages, 21 figures and fine art—and a “warp” of eight interdependent also included fabric making, commerce, agriculture,
$49.95 CAD (hardcover) elements of architectural practice: designer, builder, hunting, medicine, and theatrics (pp. 65–69). In the
dweller, material, drawing, and building, as well as Italian Renaissance, architecture became linked to
Definitions, for which dictionaries alone have concepts of architecture and architectural works. painting and sculpture as an art of disegno (p. 105).
an obligation, contain of reality what a badly Parcell’s historical “weft” is borrowed from a quartet Finally, in the eighteenth century, architecture was
retrieved fishnet contains of the obscure and of well-rehearsed concepts in the Western tradition, classified among the fine arts (beaux-arts), together
swarming life in the sea … some seaweed tan- as outlined in Paul Oskar Kristeller’s two-part essay with painting, sculpture, poetry, and music (p. 178).
gled about and some scrawny creatures waving “The Modern System of the Arts,”2 while his “warp” As Parcell shows, these four historical groupings
their translucent limbs, and all sorts of snails, and derives from an analogous set of elements definitive were neither fixed nor finite. Rather, the bonds among
bivalves. … But reality, which was a sizable fish, of musical practice, as presented in Lydia Goehr’s arts were debated and their epistemological group-
has, with a flip of its tail, slipped overboard. Imaginary Museum of Musical Works3 and Christo- ings changed in response to cultural and philosophical
—Remy de Gourmont1 pher Small’s Musicking: The Meanings of Performing transformations, with architecture often at risk of being
and Listening.4 According to Parcell, Goehr and Small ousted as a hybrid misfit. The bases of architecture’s

306 REVIEWS: HISTORIES OF ARCHITECTURE

 hybridity are well known: mingling beauty with utility; to an artifex and conditor. Elsewhere, Parcell makes Complex.9 Chapters of Parcell’s book will also be
pleasing the senses and the intellect; balancing public overarching statements that neglect relevant sources. read in history and theory seminars together with
and private interests; and so forth. Yet, Parcell’s inquiry For example, against his claim (p. 24), architektonia essays treating the extensions, limits and depths of
moves beyond simple binaries, by elaborating each did indeed appear in Greek (in Biton’s treatise on the discipline, such as Anthony Vidler’s “Architec-
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definition of architecture as a dynamic synthesis of his- war machines) before architectura appeared in Latin. ture’s Expanded Field,”10 and David Leatherbarrow’s
torically specific elements. For instance, Parcell argues But such rare slips should not turn readers away, “Architecture is its own Discipline.”11 Yet, Parcell’s
that dwellers were understood quite differently in each because, like any net pulled in from a vibrant sea, work adds two critical insights: first, architecture has
period: as a “patron” seeking to extend mortal limita- Parcell’s findings (in both his main text and copious always been part of an expanded field; and, second,
tions in ancient Greece; as a “body” inherently weak footnotes) offer many delicious tidbits, shiny gems, some of the most useful ways to critically re-concep-
and desirous of divine redemption in medieval Europe; and strange facts that provoke further thought. tualize and meaningfully re-negotiate that field may
as a “citizen” seeking physical and moral well-being in This attractive and well crafted book incorpo- come from a reinterpretation of pre–eighteenth-cen-
the Italian Renaissance; and as a contemplative “be- rates a variety of figures: epistemological diagrams tury sources. In this new century, when architecture
holder” in the eighteenth century. Similarly, the de- from historical sources, including a tree diagram from is again striving to define its place, Parcell’s study is
signer shifts from being a relatively anonymous bearer Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie5 in which well timed to help us consider afresh the premises
of ancestral tradition, to a singular “inventor” of useful architecture civile is linked to the fine arts under and contingencies of its discipline and practice.
devices, to an “imitator” of nature, then a “translator” the auspices of “imagination”; and several diagrams
of sensations. While the methodology of tracking these of Parcell’s own devising, which impart at a glance Lisa Landrum
shifting and often overlapping concepts for each ele- architecture’s shifting place in the classification
ment of practice in each period can become somewhat system of each period. The book also includes im- Notes
1. Remy De Gourmont, Selected Writings, trans. Glenn S. Burne (Ann
cumbersome, the gist of the evidence rings clear: agery associated with architecture’s more symbolic Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 46.
architecture is not an autonomous discipline having capacities: notably, a Greek vase painting depicting 2. Oskar Kristeller, “The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the
timeless methods and fixed boundaries of knowledge. the mythological return of Hephaistos; a fifteenth- History of Aesthetics, Part 1,” Journal of the History of Ideas 12, no.
4 (1951): 496-527; “Part 2,” Journal of the History of Ideas 13, no. 1
Rather, it is vitally enmeshed with a great and fluctuat- century engraving of the construction of Noah’s ark;
(1952): 17-46.
ing variety of humanistic and worldly concerns. an early Renaissance coin featuring Alberti’s winged 3. Lydia Goehr, Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the
Parcell’s insights are largely based on his read- eye emblem; Vasari’s relief of three intertwined laurel Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
ing of primary sources. He provides focused inter- wreaths, a tribute to Michelangelo who excelled in 4. Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and
Listening (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1998).
pretations of Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Essai sur l’art, all three arts of disegno; an allegorical engraving of 5. Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie,
Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria (mainly lady “Architecture” surrounded by laboring cherubs, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (Paris:
Book One), and Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon; found on a painted ceiling in Charles Perrault’s Le Briasson, 1751–80).
while, for the Greek period, he relies on informed cabinet des beaux Arts;6 and drawings of Boullée’s 6. Charles Perrault, Le cabinet des beaux Arts (Paris: G. Edelinck, 1690).
7. Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern
secondary sources. But the full breadth of his sources Cenotaph for Newton. Notwithstanding the impor- Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000).
is impressive. He casts his net wide, quoting diverse tance of diagrams to Parcell’s study, these symbolic 8. Joseph Rykwert, The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other
authors from Alexander Baumgarten to Xenophon. images are arguably most effective, since, together Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
9. Hal Foster, Art-Architecture Complex (New York: Verso, 2011).
Often this breadth is richly rewarding. The sug- with the questions raised by the text, they invite
10. Anthony Vidler, “Architecture’s Expanded Field,” Artforum 42, no. 8
gestive backstory (pp. 48–70) of how the mechani- storytelling and musing, opening ways of thinking (2004): 142–147.
cal arts arose in the ninth century as a response by about architecture’s definition that resist distillation 11. David Leatherbarrow, “Architecture Is Its Own Discipline,” in
Johannes Scotus Eriugena to Martianus Capella’s to a libretto of catch-all terms. The Discipline of Architecture, edited by Andrew Piotrowski and Julia
Robinson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) , 83–102.
fifth century allegory, The Marriage of Philology Four Historical Definitions of Architecture will
and Mercury, is a remarkable case in point. At times, find a place on bookshelves alongside other recent
however, Parcell casts his net so wide that he makes studies of architecture’s relation to language and the
an occasional slip. For instance, contrary to Parcell’s arts, including Adrian Forty’s Words and Buildings,7
assertions (pp. 53, 96), St. Augustine, in his Confes- Joseph Rykwert’s Judicious Eye: Architecture Against
sions, likens God not to an architectus, but rather the Other Arts,8 and Hal Foster’s Art-Architecture

REVIEWS: HISTORIES OF ARCHITECURE 307

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Journal of Architectural Education

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Four Historical Definitions of Architecture

Lisa Landrum
Published online: 04 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Lisa Landrum (2013) Four Historical Definitions of Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education, 67:2, 306-307, DOI:
10.1080/10464883.2013.817184

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10464883.2013.817184

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