mapping the question: the perspective hinge by alberto perez-gomez and louise pelletier

in this book the authors examine the history of architectural theory and perspective through exploring the complexity and contradiction inherent in a linear history of representation. they tell the story of perspective, and use it as a "hinge" for architectural representation, examining a transforming relationship between practice and theory, between the making of images and the making of buildings. perez-gomez and pelletier are interested in virtual space (experimental video, computer graphics, and virtual images) and hope to show architects today the similarities with this contemporary means of representation through a linear history.

the relationships between the intentions of architectural drawings and the built objects they describe is ever changing. the meaning of an architectural work is never simply the result of its author’s will. it is subject to a place in the public realm, context, use, cultural associations, etc, that have an impact on how it is perceived. at the same time, the architect has an undeniable personal responsibility to the project.

in classical greece, vision was privileged over the other senses as the vehicle of knowledge. in western art, the artists of greek tragedies were separated from the audience; therefore vision was the means by which the audience participated (and hearing, both dominate). various thoughts of this time include: kepler, the idea of the retinal image; euclid, the appearance of objects as a function of their relationship to the observer, what a person experiences is not always what they saw; plato, light flows from our eyes and allows us to perceive colors of visible objects, humans commune with heavenly luminaries through vision; al-hazen, the act of perception occurs in the human head, not in the space in between that object and the eye; grosseteste, the material world first appears as light, light radiates in straight lines giving the world a geometrical shape so thus beauty appears through form.

renaissance theories include: the visual cone, a single point of view (although da vinci questioned this); there is a difference between human and divine sight where human sight is imperfect and divine sight is infinite and all-encompassing. renaissance architects and artist (as with classical) tried to avoid distorted perception caused by the position of the observer. they used mirrors to demonstrate the “truth” of perspective (brunelleschi). brunelleschi is credited with the earliest example of a systematically “constructed” linear perspective, although he thought he needed a mirror to view the image already constructed in perspective. others: alberti, the painter and the architect both reveal depth in their drawings, but in a different way; filarete, draws his ideal site as a plan superimposed on a landscape view of the site, combining the ideal and the specific forms of representation; filarete also likens the evolutionary process of architectural drawings to the changes observed in nature and not mathematical transformations.

this section ended abruptly, i’m not sure if this was intentional, but overall it was a useful overview of perception through history.