BETWEEN ANGELS AND LOVERS (The Architect's Proper Embrace)

Abstract

For architect-authors from antiquity and the Renaissance, the architectural treatise served as an expressive vehicle for performing a curious act: the subsuming of forbidden space as the proper “property” of architecture. While devoting much textual space to delimiting the categories of high and low, inside and outside, authors of the early treatises—among them Vitruvius, Alberti, Palladio, Colonna and Filarete—have effectively defined the forbidden, low and outside space as a proper place within the urban, architectural order; this, to appeal to a generalized, cultural fixation on “propriety.” Reflecting on the moral imperatives of these old stories of architecture may perhaps motivate contemporary architects to embrace architecture more as “angels and lovers” than as the owners of afield.