Intelligibility and Cellularity
摘要
The designs of the sixteenth-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio are renowned for their symmetry and proportion. In contrast, the early designs of twentieth-century French architect Le Corbusier are famous for their white, functionalist aesthetic. Despite obvious differences, Colin Rowe’s The Mathematics of the Ideal VillaMathematics of the Ideal Villa (The) compares the two architects’ design thinking and spatial properties to reveal several unexpected parallels, as well as previously overlooked differences. Two of Rowe’s arguments are about how Palladio’s and Le Corbusier’s planning differs in terms of spatio-cognitive properties and response to the technologies available. Specifically, Rowe claims that Palladio’s villa plans are more intelligible and cellular than Le Corbusier’s villa plans. The former property, intelligibility, is concerned with the capacity to understand the totality of a building from within. The latter property, cellularity, is about the general arrangement of rooms in a plan, which can reflect the technology used for its construction. To explore Rowe’s ideas, this chapter measures intelligibility and cellularity in six works: Palladio’s villas Malcontenta and Rotonda, Le Corbusier’s villas Stein and Savoye and Eisenman’s houses I and VI. The first four were the subject of Rowe’s original arguments, and the last two were chosen as a counterpoint. In addition to developing data for these six, the chapter discusses the results with reference to six additional works: Palladio’s Villa BadoerVilla Badoer and Villa Cornaro, Le Corbusier’s Maison-Atelier OzenfantMaison-Atelier Ozenfant and Villa CookVilla Cook, and Eisenman’s House IIHouse II and House IIIHouse III. With a focus on the plan of the main floor or piano nobilePiano nobile, in each case, the chapter employs two established computational techniques, axial lineAxial Line Analysis (ALA) analysis (ALA) and visibility graphVisibility Graph Analysis (VGA) analysis (VGA), to measure intelligibility and cellularity. Four hypotheses are developed for testing, and two different interpretations of each are measured. One interpretation relates to the visible space in each design, and the other to the occupiable space. Both are required because vision and movement shape spatial experience in distinct ways. The chapter concludes by presenting data related to the hypotheses and discussing what the results may say about Rowe’s claims and the spatial configurations and properties of these famous designs.