Howdy folks! Today in architectural theory we’re going to get to one of the first examples of serious beef between two guys who wore the 17th Century equivalents of coke-bottle glasses and black turtlenecks. (I’m gonna guess it was powdered wigs.)

The beef, later canonized in theory as the “Ancients vs the Moderns” occurred between two dead French dudes: Nicolas-Francois Blondel and Claude Perrault.

Way less steamy than Team Edward vs Team Jacob, but we’ll work with it.

Player 1: Blondel

Francois Blondel (b. c.1618, d.1686) was a military leader, engineer, mathematician, diplomat and architect. He was appointed by Louis XIV to become the first director of the newly formed Royal Academy of Architecture in Paris. His main task as director was to design the school’s curriculum and pen a textbook.

The incredibly French frontispiece of the of said textbook (Blondel’s Cours d’Architecture, c.1674) Public Domain.

Architectural thought at the time revolved around the theory of Vitruvius as far as the role of the architect and further established the three Vitruvian qualities (firmness, commodity, and delight) as the main criteria for great architecture. However, theorists, especially Blondel, turned to Renaissance concepts of beauty as being something universal and absolute, and the idea (after Alberti) of “harmonic proportions.”

An academic at heart and a traditionalist to a fault, Blondel believed in the absolute perfection of the work of the Ancients, as exemplified by the temples of the Greeks and Romans. He was, you know, that guy.

Player 2: Perrault

Claude Perrault (b.1613, d.1688), was a guy who, for most of his life, was not the type to start architecture slap fights. He spent the majority of his career working as a surgeon and anatomist - not as an architect.

Perrault got roped into architecture through Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s Minister of Finance and Superintendent of Building, whose secretary (Charles Perrault, famous for being the father of the fairy tale) was Claude Perrault’s younger, more handsome brother.

In 1666, Colbert, acting on behalf of the king, asked Perrault to do a new French translation of Vitruvius for use as one of the textbooks for the newly formed Royal Academy of Architecture. In 1667, Perrault was appointed (by Colbert) to a three-person committee responsible for preparing a different design for the East Wing of the Louvre, which had been suspended after the design prepared by the Italian architect Bernini got dumped for not being French enough.

When a building’s Wikipedia page looks something like this, you know some serious sh*t went down.

Perrault’s concept for the East Wing was totally different than the architectural canon of the time:

Drawing from Blondel’s (a different one) Architecture françoise, 1756. Public Domain.

Looks like just another old building, right?
*leans into mic* Wrong.

Perrault’s design choices were unprecedented in French classical architecture, and even though his design (he took credit for the work of his colleagues almost immediately) was one of sophistication and visual lightness, the use of unusually thin visual proportions was basically taboo af.

And where did Perrault think it was a great idea to explain his design choices? In the gosh dang footnotes of his 1673 translation of Vitruvius, which was to be used by the kiddos at Blondel’s school.

Perrault’s Footnotes

This smug asshole opened up his defense with what seems to be two sentences formulated specifically to piss off Blondel the most:

Gothic architecture, which left behind little primary source documents (dark ages and all that), was totally refuted by the French academy as being ugly, overindulgent and grotesque.

(Photo taken by me!)

Perrault went on to justify his decision by appealing to Vitruvius’ description of the temple of Dionysus by the Greek architect Hermogenes, who devised for it a flexible system of proportions using the diameter of a column as a unit of measurement. Basically, argued Perrault, proportions were relative, and not absolute.

Perrault added (throwing some serious shade) that because the Ancients didn’t harp on Hermogenes for doing something different from the then-canon of architecture, Perrault himself shouldn’t be harped on for the same reason. (Also because his cool new engineer stuff expanded the structural capabilities of architecture but whatevs.)

Blondel’s Response

Blondel’s response to Perrault’s argument in his 1683 Cours d’Architecture textbook (that’s right: all this fighting was done in footnotes and textbooks instead of face to face like normal people) was:

Which was basically 17th century academic speak for:

(yes this is still in my drafts)

Perrault’s Response to Blondel’s Response

Perrault in the &#&@ing footnotes of the second edition (1684) of his translation of Vitruvius, offered these counterarguments to Blondel’s criticism:

It is FAKE NEWS that we’re not “allowed” to deviate from what the Ancients did and that by doing so we’d only invite “””””disaster”””” also btw the Ancients were new in their time. (checkmate ~~atheists~~ traditionalists)
It’s dumber to close the door on good invention than it is to open it “to those who are so ridiculous that they will destroy themselves.”
If the Ancients were perfect and architecture is perfect, are all those other arts and sciences that have improved upon the past totally wrong???
Just bc the goths did some tacky crap, they still created spaces that were open and full of light and we should’t hate them for it.

Bummer: Perrault got the last laugh because Blondel died. (RIP)

However, Perrault wasn’t done messing with architectural norms. In 1683, he published a super important treatise by the extremely catchy name of “Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients”

Perrault’s Last Stand

Perrault, in his treatise upended two major beliefs in architecture: the myth of so-called harmonic ratios, and the idea of absolute proportions.

Perrault, who made a career as a surgeon and studied anatomy, refuted immediately the idea that visual ratios worked the same way as musical harmony (an idea that goes back to Plato) by citing the obvious fact that the eye and the ear don’t work in the same damn way.

Long before the beginning of neuroscience, (and tbh he was kind of pulling this out of his ass) Perrault claimed that we don’t process visual stimuli in the same way we process auditory stimuli, in that visual stimuli plays a much larger role in how we perceive and interpret the world, adding that responses to visual dissonance are much less visceral than responses to aural dissonance.

More importantly, Perrault claimed that there were two types of beauty: positive and arbitrary.

Positive beauty consisted of things pretty much everyone could agree on: e.g. symmetry; the “magnificence” of a building, and the quality of its construction and materials.
Arbitrary beauty introduced the idea that beauty is relative to one’s cultural customs, as well as to the fashion of the times, and the weird inner-workings of people’s taste. Perrault claimed that the idea of “correct” architectural proportions is largely influenced by one’s customs, and therefore falls within the category of arbitrary beauty.

Well, that does it for this week’s bit o’ theory. Stay tuned for next week’s installment, as well as Wednesday’s continued trek through the 50 States of McMansion Hell, with a guaranteed awful house from Illinois.

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WAIT

I want to share with y’all this hysterical McMansion interpretation of the Vitruvian triangle from last week’s post created and sent to me by my new bff David Larsen:

Have a good week everyone!

McMansion Hell Does Arch Theory Part 2: The Ancients vs The Moderns