The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste

"The Architecture of Humanism" by Geoffrey Scott, an English architect, is an important and inspiring book. Written by a scholar of profound and comprehensive historical knowledge, thoroughly trained in philosophic thought, the work is not an involved and tedious presentation of an esthetic theory, but rather a most clear and fascinating study of architectural taste during the past half-millennium.That the book is solely an attempt to justify Baroque architecture, as some of Mr. Scott's critics have assumed, is a grave misconception of the author's purpose. That he presents the later phases of the Renaissance with freshness, if not from an entirely new point of view, is true; but he goes much further in attempting to lay the foundations for a more logical criticism and appreciation of all architecture; herein lies the chief merit of the work.Beginning with a quotation from Sir Henry Wotton's adaptation of Vitruvius, that "Well-building hath three conditions: Commodity, Firmness, and Delight," he deduces the fact that the criticism of architecture has wavered between these three values, not always distinguishing very clearly between them. It is with the third value, "Delight," that the author attempts chiefly to deal."The science, and the history," he says, "are studies of which the method is in no dispute. But for the art of architecture, in the strict sense, no agreement exists." And further, "Hardly ever, save in matters of mere technique, has architecture been studied sincerely for itself. Thus the simplest estimates of architecture are formed through a distorting atmosphere of unclear thought. Axioms holding true in provinces other than that of art, and arising historically in these, have successively been extended by a series of false analogies into the province of architecture, and these axioms, unanalyzed and mutually inconsistent, confuse our actual experience at the source. To trace the full measure of that confusion, and if possible to correct it, is therefore the first object of this book."