Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

Christoph Schnoor

Space-talk
It seems almost certain that space-talk made its decisive entry into the critical
vocabulary of American and English architects with the publication of Sigfried
Giedions Space, Time and Architecture in 1941, and Nikolaus Pevsners An
Outline of European Architecture in 1943. Certainly, before the early 1940s,
English-speaking readers appear to have been relatively underexposed to the
analysis of buildings in terms of space and, since then, have come to accept
such analysis (Bruno Zevi, Architecture as Space, 1957, might be an instance) as
a relative commonplace; and, quite possibly, Le Corbusier might be taken as a
representative of something to the same effect related to French usage. For,
while Le Corbusiers publications seem to be distinctly dumb as regards
space-talk, with him too the new critical vocabulary (ineffable space) seems
to insinuate itself during the course of the 1940s and to become explicitly
advertised in New World of Space (1948). However this may be, when AngloAmerican usage is considered, there remain two, possibly three, exceptions to
what has just been stipulated: Bernard Berenson; his disciple Geoffrey Scott;
and, maybe, Frank Lloyd Wright.1
British-born architectural historian Colin Rowe is well known for his intriguing
analyses of modern architecture. But rarely did Rowe examine architectural space
explicitly as a scholarly subject-matter as he commences to do here, in this footnote
to a 1979 lecture. And even as he does, the topic seems to be to him of such
insignificance that it can only be picked up with a note of contempt: space-talk
does not imply that anything serious could lie behind the word. Thus, this essay
investigates a neglected aspect, both in terms of Rowes essays as in scholarly
critique of them: neither has he himself explicitly written about space nor has any
scholar explicitly examined the role of architectural space in his writings which
might simply mean that there is nothing to say?
Despite such under-representation of the topic both on Rowes part and on
the part of his critics, this paper argues that not only does space play a very
Colin Rowe, The Present Urban Predicament, lecture delivered at The Royal Institution, London in
1979, in: Alexander Caragonne (ed.), As I was saying. Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, Cambridge,
Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1996, Vol. 3, 165220, here 219.
1

Journal of Art Historiography Number 5 December 2011

Christoph Schnoor

Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

important role in his writings, but also that Colin Rowe is in fact one of the few
post-war historians to have conveyed differentiated spatial analyses of modern
architecture. It is argued that their success lies in the fact that Rowe showed no
interest in the notion of pure space as Nikolaus Pevsner might have but that he
understood architectural space as relevant only when contaminated with
ambiguity and active character: Rowe categorizes modernist space in terms of
oppositions such as flatness versus depth and horizontal versus vertical, as well as
the overlap of conflicting scales or whole systems, while infusing space with the
notion of movement.2 Rowe also belongs to the small number of post-war historians
who introduced the analysis of modernist spaces to an English speaking audience,
having dealt with the subject in his pice de jeunesse of 1947, The Mathematics of the
Ideal Villa. Thus, he should have included his own writings in the introductory
quote. It is suggested that space plays the most important minor part in his
writings. This essay investigates how the above categories affect Rowes readings of
and writings on space and where their intellectual sources might be located; further
it suggests that it is through the marriage of aspects of composition with Rowes
intense interest in perception, that space becomes either the carrier or the other
central item that is used to transport his arguments.
The role of architectural space in Rowes essays has not been separately
addressed by scholars reviewing his writings, either. Out of Mauro Marzos 2010
volume LArchitettura come testo e la figura di Colin Rowe, a collection of essays on
Rowe as summary of a conference held in Venice in 2008, particularly Katia
Mazzucco, Francesco Benelli and Sbastien Marot establish the historiographic
background of Rowes education in art history as provided by Rudolf Wittkower in
London.3 Historian Anthony Vidler has, in his Histories of the Immediate Present,
recently described Rowes approach to historiography as Mannerist Modernism,
devoting a full chapter on Colin Rowe.4 Vidler lucidly points out the significance of
Rowes Mannerism and Modern Architecture of 1950, stressing how much Rowe
was inspired by Michelangelos architectural juxtapositions and clashes, and how he
applied them to his reading of, for example, Le Corbusiers architecture. Thus,
This paper was made possible by a travel grant by Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland, New
Zealand. The author was able to visit the Rowe library in Austin/Texas in 2010 which not only holds
Rowes books but additionally an assembly of Rowes documents fragments of published and
unpublished writings. The author gratefully acknowledges the opportunity to present preliminary
versions of this paper both at the Journal of Art Historiography Colloquium Constructing the Discipline
held in Glasgow in 2010, and at the Collins-Kaufmann-Forum at the Columbia-University in New
York. He expresses thanks to Katia Mazzucco for her comments, and to Mary McLeod and Barry
Bergdoll for their joint invitation and ensuing discussions. Further particular thanks go to Francesco
Benelli and Francesco Passanti for their assessments and advice.
3 These are: Katia Mazzucco, Lincontro di Colin Rowe con Rudolf Wittkower e unimmagine del
cosiddetto metodo warburghiano; Francesco Benelli, Rudolf Wittkower e Colin Rowe: continuit e
frattura and Sbastien Marot, Extrapolating Transparency, in: Mauro Marzo (ed.), Larchitettura come
testo e la figura di Colin Rowe, Venezia: Universit Iuav di Venezia and Marsilio, 2010.
4 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present. Inventing Architectural Modernism, Cambridge,
Mass./London: MIT Press, 2008, chapter Mannerist Modernism: Colin Rowe, 61-106.
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

Vidler suggests that Rowes central modus operandi was that of a Mannerist
Modernism: his art of producing unexpected juxtapositions and of finding
architecturally ambiguous situations is indeed central to Rowes writings and
possibly to his interest in architecture overall. Vidler, however, does not discuss
Rowes spatial analyses. Werner Oechslin has repeatedly pointed at the significance
of Rowes writings, not the least in his introduction to the German version of Peter
Eisenmans PhD thesis, where he locates Rowes approach to the analysis of formal
principles within the context of Rowes studies with Wittkower.5 Moreover, in the
introduction of Transparenz, the German version of Rowes and Robert Slutzkys
examination of phenomenal transparency, Oechslin traces the origins of this article
in the Texas-years of Rowe, Slutzky and Swiss architect Bernhard Hoesli.6 But as
much as analysis of formal principles is discussed, Oechslin does not approach the
spatial implications of such analysis. Alexander Caragonne ambitiously
reconstructed the Texas Rangers years and gave a historiographically significant
account of the work of the group of architects and historians at work in
Austin/Texas in the early 1950s.7
Rowes analyses of urban space, particularly in Collage City, and their huge
implications for urban planning from the 1970s onwards, do not form part of this
enquiry. Rather, and in order to stay concise, this essay predominantly draws on The
Mathematics of the Ideal Villa Rowes publication of 1976 which includes essays
dating from 1947 to 1959, augmented by archival material from Rowes estate. Of
the essays in this volume, at least six argue partially through the means of analyzing
space: The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal,
Chicago Frame, Neo-Classicism and Modern Architecture I/II and La
Tourette. Of these, particularly Mathematics, Transparency and NeoClassicism I/II are called on for closer investigation.

Against the notion of pure space

Space was not the primary topic of Rowes essays. This is visible even through
their titles which never contain the word space. Even more, he seems to be
sceptical towards the notion which theorists of modern architecture brought
forward: that architecture was first and foremost about space, a position which
would have brought together unlikely allies such as August Schmarsow and Bruno
Zevi. It seems that Rowe fought August Schmarsows notion that architecture was

Werner Oechslin, Out of History? Peter Eisenmans Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, in:
Peter Eisenman, Die formale Grundlegung der modernen Architektur, Zurich: gta, 2005, 1261.
6 Werner Oechslin, Transparenz: die Suche nach einer verlsslichen Entwurfsmethode nach den
Prinzipien der modernen Architektur, in: Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, Transparenz, Zurich: gta,
1997 (1968), 920.
7 Alexander Caragonne, The Texas Rangers. Notes from an Architectural Underground, London and
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

primarily the creatress of space.8 In an unpublished and unfortunately undated

fragment of a typescript that might have been entitled The nature of architecture9,
Rowe shows a distinct scepticism in relation to the idea of space:
Mr Bruno Zevi, following a well established tradition, has recently suggested
that the essential distinguishing quality of architecture is its possession of
interior space; but while this is a useful assumption in some investigations
[], the presence or absence of internal void can scarcely assist any attempt to
distinguish architecture from building [].10
In showing himself discontent with the assumption that interior space as such
would be the essential distinguishing quality of architecture, Rowe suggests that a
definition in these terms did not suffice to identify the (aesthetic) characteristics of
architecture; adding that architecture could be understood as an aspect of building
as much as literature was an aspect of speech. Nikolaus Pevsner gets a similarly
sceptical mention from Rowe. On the final page of his Outline of European
Architecture, Pevsner summarizes the bareness of modern architecture, explaining
it as a complete reinvention of architecture in terms of function and form. Further in
the typescript fragment, Rowe quotes Pevsners crucial phrase: In architecture,
sheer proportion at last took its legitimate place again. No mouldings, no frills were
permitted to detract ones attention from true architectural values: the relation of
wall to window, solid to void, volume to space, block to block.11 Rowes comments
are rather dismissive, even irritated: A distinctly platonic entity, a true
architectural value [sic] is preconceived, and this true value is further implied to
reside almost exclusively in sheer proportion and elementary geometrical
abstraction, while moldings or frills are reduced to the level of irrelevance.12
While Rowes scepticism is not limited to the topic of space, this remark does
indicate a critical distance on his side from Pevsners or Zevis notion of pure space.
The irritation may indeed lie in the idea of purity something that Rowe might
equate with emptiness, as for example his criticism of Superstudios projects
demonstrates.13 Indeed, if there is one central problem with modernism for Rowe, it
must be the idea of purity. Purity as a notion never held much attraction for Rowe,
rather the reverse would be true: irritation (the empty panel in an early modern
house such as the Villa Schwob), collision (as discussed in Collage City), ambiguity
(in many instances, not the least in Transparency), are central nodes of interest or
fascination for him.

Schmarsow spoke of Architektur als Raumgestalterin: August Schmarsow, Das Wesen der
architektonischen Schpfung, Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1894.
9 Notes in the margins by Rowe suggest this title.
10 Fragmented typescript, 32b, Colin Rowe library, Charles-Moore Foundation, Austin/Texas.
11 Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, London : John Murray 1948 (1943), 215.
12 Fragmented typescript, n. pag., Colin Rowe library, Charles-Moore Foundation, Austin/Texas.
13 Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978, 42.
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

Composition? Ordinance
If, on the one hand, the notion of pure space is met with scepticism, but space as an
aspect of architecture might indeed occupy a central minor role in Rowes work,
what aspects of aesthetic analysis and criticism does it need to be combined with in
order to become more acceptable? In 1956, two years after having written Character
and Composition (the essay was only published in 1974), one obvious hint comes
from an unpublished letter by Rowe to Louis Kahn, in which Rowe referred to his
conversation with Kahn of a few weeks earlier about their opposed interests in
growth and composition:
And I took the side of COMPOSITION and then had great difficulty in
explainin[g] what I meant by it. You deplored COMPOSITION because it
appeared to be no more than a manipulation of forms for the sake of effect.
You wanted to GROW a building, and I, I think, suggested that I wanted to
COMPOSE it. Or at least I was very emphatic about the PARTI.
I still am; but I do wish that I had had the time to explain myself more
completely, and had been able to indicate that the composition of which I was
speaking was the result of a process of dialectic, and not of an irrelevant
fantasy or purely arbitrary choice.14
Rowe adds what he understood composition to be: I dont like the word. I prefer
formal structure, or organisation, or perhaps anything ORDINANCE which implies
to me accepting of irreducible facts and the working out of their logical
consequences.15 One wishes to know the end of this conversation, but even from
this snippet it becomes apparent that while Kahn might have insisted on something
like letting the building compose itself, Rowe wished to understand composition
as entering into an argument with the objective data with a life of their own in
which one cant intervene as which he read Kahns hexagonal or cubic cells.16 He
was searching for the formal structure and for the logical consequences and
possibilities that derive from this structure.
It might be appropriate to listen to Rowes own words on composition in
order to determine what he meant by this. But his somewhat cryptic essay
Character and Composition that could provide clarification is indeed an oddball in
The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa. Attempting to historically trace the usage of the
terms character and composition in the English language architectural literature,
the essay clarifies as much as it obscures. Rowe points out that since both words are

Colin Rowe, letter to Louis Kahn of 7 February, 1956, unpublished typescript, Colin Rowe library,
Charles-Moore Foundation, Austin/Texas.
15 Rowe, letter to Kahn of 7 Feb 56.
16 Rowe, letter to Kahn of 7 Feb 56.
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

now somewhat suspect to the strictly orthodox, their suspicions do prompt some
investigation of a possible relationship and the ideas which this relationship
involves.17 It remains unclear whether Rowes attempt is to salvage both terms from
disappearance or whether the essay should be read as equally critical as supportive.
On the one hand, he sarcastically scolds the 1920s modernists for their functionalist
rhetoric and the partial irrelevance of their statements since their works were not
as functionalist as they professed them to be but on the other hand the essay is not
a full rehabilitation of the terms character and composition either.
The above mentioned letter dates from the time when Rowe analyzed a
project by Louis Kahn for a Jewish Community Center in Trenton, New Jersey.
Rowe assesses Kahns architecture as firm and palpable against the qualities of
Mies architecture as delicate and tentative.18 He summarizes Kahns Trenton
design as emphatically the most complete development to date of themes which
were there scarcely allowed to surface; and [] it seems so far to present the most
comprehensive solution to the problems initiated by the anxiety to introduce
centralization and/or the vertical stressing of space.19 This is of course a direct
reference to the compositional principles of the Beaux-Arts and thus one could
wonder about Rowes own personal preferences did he not propose to Louis Kahn
that he favoured composing a building over growing it? But it has to be clear that
Rowe, particularly in the 1950s, while attempting to reformulate the teaching
curriculum in Austin/Texas, at a school that had strongly relied on the Beaux-Arts
tradition, was trying to establish a sense of architecture as composed structural and
spatial entities: composition not as composition in the traditional Beaux-Arts sense,
but rather as using a system which underpins the design and which allows to work
with or against it, to support or to interrupt it.

Aspects of spatiality
Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: ambivalent readings of space
In The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa of 1947, Rowe introduces a set of opposites in
order to examine the similarities and differences between some of Palladios and Le
Corbusiers villas. With this, Rowe lays the foundation stone for most of his later
examinations of spatial aspects in modern architecture.
The topic of illusion and confusion is introduced in the comparison of Le
Corbusiers Villa Stein/de Monzie with Palladios Villa Malcontenta, in saying that
there is at Garches a permanent tension between the organized and the apparently
fortuitous. Conceptually, all is clear; but, sensuously, all is deeply perplexing.20 At

Colin Rowe, Character and Composition, in Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other
Essays, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976, 62.
18 Colin Rowe, Neo-Classicicm II, in Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 154.
19 Rowe, Neo-Classicicm II, 154.
20 Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, in: Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 12.
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

this stage, Rowe does not yet have the methodological tools to structurally analyze
this confusion; the discovery of phenomenal transparency will assist him in this.
Rowe also establishes the notion of space as implying movement. But it is
not the movement of a visitor through space; instead, it is a notion of movement that
implies volition on the part of the architecture, in this case the Villa Stein/de Monzie
as initiated by its architect:
That is, by gouging out a large volume of the block as terrace and roof garden,
he introduces a contrary impulse of energy; and by opposing an explosive
movement with an implosive one, by introducing inversive gestures alongside
expansive ones, he again makes simultaneous use of conflicting strategies.21
An important dichotomy that Rowe establishes in Mathematics is the
relative flexibility of the plan in Le Corbusiers Villa Stein/de Monzie in combination
with rigidity in section versus Palladios limited possibilities in plan but freedom in
section: Rowe relates such choices of freedom, based on the structural system used,
directly to the question of centrality and peripherical quality of a plan, establishing
that in the Villa Stein/de Monzie, the necessary equidistance between floor and
ceiling conveys an equal importance to all parts of the volume in between; and thus
the development of absolute focus becomes an arbitrary, if not impossible,
proceeding.22 He further points out that Le Corbusier accepts the principle of the
horizontal extension; thus, at Garches central focus is consistently broken up,
concentration at any one point is disintegrated, and the dismembered fragments of
the center become a peripheral dispersion of incident, a serial installation of interest
around the extremities of the plan.23 This establishes a framework Rowe was able to
pick up some ten years later, in his Neo-Classicism essays, when analyzing
modernist notions of space in terms of what he called International Style space.

Neo-Classicism: Centralized versus peripherical

The decentralization of the floor plan and its development into a pinwheel or
related, peripherical systems is one of the central topics by which modern
architecture is defined for Colin Rowe. This notion is tested and argued repeatedly
in his essays. Since this possibly represented the main achievement of modernism to
him, Rowes irritation is understandable in his realization of the extent to which
post-war architecture was apparently reverting to the traditional, superseded notion
of a centralized plan. Such is the motivation of the two essays Neo-Classicism
and Modern Architecture I and II, written in 1956 and -57. Rowe examines
examples of post-war American architecture that appear more Palladian to him than

Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 12.

Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 12.
23 Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 12.
21
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

truly modernist, as they seem to have reintroduced the cult of the axis.24 These are
Louis Kahns project for a Jewish Community Centre in Trenton of 1956 and houses
by Marcel Breuer or Philip Johnson, but also by less well-known practices as John
Johansen or Bolton and Barnstone, all of the decade between 1947 and -56. In the
first of these articles, Rowe predominantly examines the underlying theory, whereas
in the second essay he investigates the formal appearances of modernist space.
Wondering about the theoretical implications of a reappearance of symmetrical
layout that could be termed neo-Palladian, Rowe formulates the problem as
follows: Either we are scarcely able to accept these buildings as examples of
modern architecture; or we are scarcely able to accept modern architectures
theoretical professions.25 It must be clear that Rowe is prepared to accept neither of
his own propositions, calling the one absurd and the other distressing. Admitting
that modernist theory is something less than a consistent doctrine and something
more than a body of principles26, and thus prone to some contradictions in itself, he
undertakes an analysis of what he terms International Style space, in order to be
able to examine the neo-Palladian design characteristics against the modernist forms
they deviated from:
[S]ince it is implied that, while the elements of this new spatial order may all
have been present for many years, their effective synthesis was an
achievement of the twenties, it will be useful to clarify certain precepts of what
will here be called (for the want of any better term) International Style space.27
For the purpose of his investigation, he defines International Style space particularly
as the space of Le Corbusiers Villa Stein/de Monzie in Garches of 1928, Mies van
der Rohes house for the Berlin Building Exhibition of 1931 and of Le Corbusiers
foyer for the Centrosoyus Building, Moscow, which he reads as manifestations of
the spatial revolution of the twenties.28 To this list, Mies van der Rohes Barcelona
Pavilion could easily be added and its space described as follows:
In the Barcelona pavilion the walls are screens but they do not define a fixed
volume. The volume beneath the post-supported slab roof is in a sense
bounded by imaginary planes. The walls are independent screens set up
within this total volume, having each a separate existence and creating

Colin Rowe, Neo-Classicism and Modern Architecture I, in: Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal
Villa, 121.
25 Rowe, Neo-Classicism I, 121.
26 Rowe, Neo-Classicism I, 123.
27 Rowe, Neo-Classicicm II, 141.
28 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 141.
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

subordinate volumes. The design is unified by the slab roof on its regular
supports, not by the usual continuous screen walls.29
The plan can be composed almost entirely in terms of the needs it must
provide for, with only minimal concessions to the inescapable needs of sound
construction.30
But these lines are not from Rowe. Instead, they are taken from Henry Russell
Hitchcock and Philip Johnsons 1932 publication in which they coined the term The
International Style. Surprisingly, in their above sketch of the Barcelona pavilion
they show a disregard for any discussion of modernist plan and space from an
aesthetic and perceptual point of view, despite their mention of space as volumes.
Their analysis of this space, as witnessed in Mies van der Rohes Barcelona pavilion,
is neither very haptic nor precise, and their analysis of the plan is almost
functionalist, despite their claim to define a new style.
Rowe is more sophisticated in his analysis of International Style space. He
firstly summarizes the underlying principle of the new kind of space, stating that it
was demanded that columns be disengaged from walls and be left free to rise
through the open space of the building. [] Detached from the liberated columns,
the walls were now to become a series of freely disposed screens.31 And in variation
of what he had outlined in his 1947 comparison of Palladio with Le Corbusier, Rowe
emphasizes that the International Style Space was characterized by a tendency to
emphasize a peripheric rather than a central expression of the building.32 Referring
to Theo van Doesburgs spatial drawings, he adds that the center was to be
gradually abolished and the composition was to be developed in the opposite
direction. Or to paraphrase Gropius, the new demand led to the dead symmetry of
similar parts being transmuted into an asymmetrical but equal balance.33 Exploring
the specific relationships between column, roof and wall, Rowe notes the necessary
abolition of visible beams in this system and thus highlights a central aspect that led
to the perception of a new kind of space:
Further it should be noticed that, on the whole, International Style space was a
system which tended to prohibit any display of beams; and, rather than the
upper surface of the roof slab being flat, it seems even more certainly to have
required that the under surfaces of the roofs and floors should present
uninterrupted planes.34

Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style, New York and London: Norton,
1966 (augmented edition of The International Style: Architecture since 1922, New York and London:
Norton, 1932), 48.
30 Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style, 41.
31 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 141.
32 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 143.
33 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 143.
34 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 143.
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

Taking the intended freedom of the plan as a starting point, he argues that column
and underside of the roof had to remain separate in order not to lead to a
compartmentalization of space and thus to a violation of something of the freedom
of the plan.35 He further asserts that
the appearance of beams could only tend to prescribe fixed positions for the
partitions; and, since these fixed positions would be in line with the columns,
it was therefore essential, if the independence of the columns and partitions
was to be asserted with any eloquence, that the underside of the slab should
be expressed as an uninterrupted horizontal surface.36
Without explicitly naming it so, Rowe thus describes the character of the
International Style Space as a partly a-tectonic, sculptural space whose exponents
had to go through considerable efforts in order to arrive at a symbolic highlighting
of the new spatial achievements. Tectonic expression of the post- and lintel system
would have led to a structured, interrupted underside of the ceiling and would
have meant spatial expression of structural bays or cells. Rowe further clarifies that
[l]ike all other spatial systems that of the International Style resulted from a
reappraisal of the functions attributed to the column, the wall, and the roof.37
Therefore, it is only logical that he should investigate their new roles in detail. But
as innocent as his remark like all other spatial systems may seem, it indicates that
Rowe thereby positions the International Style Space within the history of
architectural theory in which the role of the column in relation to the wall has been
discussed for centuries. Abb Laugier, whose Essai sur larchitecture might have
influenced Le Corbusier in the development of his Maison Dom-Ino principle, for
example had demanded that the column must be free-standing so that its origin
and purpose are expressed in a natural way38, and had claimed that the use of
pilasters is one of the great abuses that have found their way into architecture.39
Thus with his spatial-structural analysis of the International Style space, Rowe
implicitly refers to the century-old debate of the role of the column in architecture.
Yet, Rowe does not quite go as far in this essay as assessing the symbolic role
of this detachment of column and wall; whereas, in his Chicago Frame essay of
1956, he had established the reasoning behind Mies van der Rohes decisions as to
symbolize the skyscrapers role for modernization.40 In his pre-war buildings such
as the Barcelona Pavilion, Mies used the columns to express a sense of a higher

Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 143.

Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 143.
37 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 141.
38 Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture. Translated and with an introduction by Wolfgang
and Anni Herrmann, Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1977 (Essai sur larchitecture, 1753), 14.
39 Laugier, Essay on Architecture, 17.
40 Colin Rowe, Chicago Frame, in: Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 1056.
35
36

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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

order permeating the building. Instead of pointing this out, Rowe simply identifies
the column particularly in Mies architecture to be a caesura in a general space41
that does not spatially express the structural bay or of structural cells.
In Neo-Classicism II, Rowe further points at the different priorities of
Mies and Le Corbusiers spatiality. He differentiates between Mies who provided
the most literally perfect transcription of this delicate and complex system of logic
and Le Corbusier who did not seem to be concerned with so much consistency,
calling his distinctions between support and enclosure often perfunctory.42 He
points at the horizontality of Mies spaces, stating that his vertical planes trail out
suggestively, peripherically, into the landscape,43 whereas Le Corbusier had not
avoided the conflict between the inherent horizontality of the structural system and
the closed verticality of his buildings. Rowe suggests that in the Villa Stein/de
Monzie in Garches, Le Corbusier condensed all the long walls which contribute to a
rotary, pinwheeling moment to Mies buildings into the perimeter of a single block
where they acquire an explosive, emphatic, enriched quality very different from
Mies spaces.44
Rowe continues with a lucid analysis of Mies use of columns as it changed
from Berlin to Chicago, but it is here where this essay should be left. It will have
become obvious by now that Rowe manages to talk about space without talking
about space, that he does not attempt to define the qualities of the empty volume
that space is, but that he examines it through the analysis of the space-defining
elements, as walls, floor, ceiling and columns. He approaches spatiality through the
elements that intentionally order, rhythmicize and structure space.
In reassessing Hitchcock and Johnsons brief description of the Barcelona
Pavilion, one will find that they do attempt to name space, in saying that the walls
are screens but they do not define a fixed volume and that the walls are
independent screens set up within this total volume, having each a separate
existence and creating subordinate volumes. They speak about a hierarchy of
perceived volumes, whereas Rowe tends to define the space through the tangible
elements, and in this is more precise than Hitchcock and Johnson.

Transparency: flatness versus depth

In their article Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal of 195556, Colin Rowe and
Robert Slutzky interpret Le Corbusiers Villa Stein/de Monzie in Garches as
phenomenally transparent.45 Phenomenal transparency constitutes another aspect of
Rowes interpretation of space through aspects of composition (as contaminated as

Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 143.

Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 144.
43 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 144.
44 Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 144.
45 Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky: Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, in: Rowe, The Mathematics
of the Ideal Villa, 1976.
41
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the term composition is in the context of modern architecture). Rowes earlier

investigation of faades has taken a decisive leap forward. Whilst he, in Mannerism
and Modern Architecture of 1950, juxtaposed the provokingly empty panel on the
street faade of Le Corbusiers Villa Schwob with comparable faades by Andrea
Palladio and Federico Zuccheri, both of the 1570s, he had literally not gone
beyond the faade itself. But with Transparency, a new complex investigation of
notions of flatness versus spatial depth is developed, and these prove to be a rich
source for further investigations, so rich that Bernhard Hoesli, Rowes and Slutzkys
comrade in battle in Austin/Texas, took this principle back to Switzerland in order
to turn it into a design method practiced at the ETH in Zurich.
Rowe and Slutzkys instrument of analysis is predominantly based on
Gyorgy Kepes, who in his Language of Vision of 1944 had established the notion of an
alternative reading of transparency to the everyday sense of the word.46 It is
surprising not to see Rowe and Slutzky mention Henry-Daniel Kahnweiler, whose
Der Weg zum Kubismus of 1920 was available, since 1949, in English as The Rise of
Cubism.47 Kahnweiler, Picassos art dealer, had analyzed the implications of the
Cubist innovations as early as 1915:
This language has given painting an unprecedented freedom. It is no longer
bound to the more or less verisimilar optic image which describes the object
from a single viewpoint. It can, in order to give a thorough representation of
the objects primary characteristics, depict them as stereometric drawing on
the plane, or, through several representations of the same object, can provide
an analytical study of that object which the spectator then fuses into one again
in his mind. The representation does not necessarily have to be in the closed
manner of a stereometric drawing; colored planes, through their direction and
relative position, can bring together the formal scheme without uniting in
closed forms.48
This freedom of bringing together elements without uniting in closed forms seems
to be one of the fundamental preconditions of the idea of phenomenal transparency,
and it has to be assumed that either Rowe or Slutzky knew Kahnweilers remarks on
Cubism. Instead, they quote Kepes in length, who established:
If one sees two or more figures partly overlapping one another, and each of
them claims for itself the common overlapped part, then one is confronted
with a contradiction of spatial dimensions. To resolve this contradiction, one
must assume the presence of a new optical quality. The figures are endowed
with transparency: that is, they are able to interpenetrate without an optical
Gyorgy Kepes, Language of Vision, Chicago: P. Theobald, 1944.
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Rise of Cubism, New York: Wittenborn Schultz, 1949 (Der Weg zum
Kubismus, Munich: Delphin-Verlag, 1920; written 1915).
48 Kahnweiler, Rise of Cubism, 12.
46
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destruction of each other. Transparency however implies more than an optical

characteristic; it implies a broader spatial order. Transparency means a
simultaneous perception of different spatial locations. Space not only recedes
but fluctuates in a continuous activity. The position of the transparent figures
has equivocal meaning as one sees each figure now as the closer, now as the
further one.49
In order to illustrate this understanding of an interpenetration without optical
destruction, Kepes uses Picassos portrait of Kahnweiler, Amede Ozenfants
Purist Still Life, a photograph of a house by GF Keck and a Space Construction
1930 by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. But, according to Rowe and Slutzky, Kepes is unable
to fully understand his own interpretation in translating it into architecture. They
prepare for their intellectual blow by almost maliciously saying that Kepes
appears to consider that the architectural analogue of these [Braque, Gris and
Lger] must be found in the physical qualities of glass and plastics, that the
equivalent of carefully calculated Cubist and post-Cubist compositions will be
discovered in the haphazard superimpositions provided by the accidental
reflections of light playing upon a translucent or polished surface.50
And their coup is to pull, out of their hat, like magicians, Le Corbusiers Villa
Stein/de Monzie in Garches as being phenomenally transparent, while this building
shows almost no elements of the literal transparency that for example Gropius
Bauhaus in Dessau does. This could be understood as a serious intellectual short
circuit: it is not surprising to be able to analyze someones work according to his
own rules because that is, simply said, what Rowe and Slutzky are doing:
identifying that Le Corbusiers architecture is achieving what he set out, with
Ozenfant, to do in painting. It seems therefore that their real trick lies in leaving out
not only Kahnweilers The Rise of Cubism, but much more importantly, the link
between Cubism and modernist architecture: Jeannerets and Ozenfants technique
of Purism, and particularly Le Corbusiers own paintings. But then, mention of this
might well have diminished the impact of their carefully orchestrated essay.
Despite this trick, it has to be said that their observations mark a real
discovery which helps Rowe to specify the elements of the conflicting strategies
that he had found in Le Corbusiers Villa Stein/de Monzie and described in
Mathematics. Thus Rowe establishes the foundation of his later interpretations of
spatial ambivalence. As Rowe and Slutzky describe the Villa Stein/De Monzie,
throughout this house, there is a contradiction of spatial dimensions which
Kepes recognizes as characteristic of transparency. There is a continuous

49
50

Kepes, Language of Vision, 77.

Rowe and Slutzky, Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, 166.

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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

dialectic between fact and implication. The reality of deep space is constantly
opposed to the inference of shallow; and, by means of the resultant tension,
reading after reading is enforced. The five layers of space which, vertically,
divide the buildings volume and the four layers which cut it horizontally will
all, from time to time, claim attention; and this gridding of space will then
result in continuous fluctuation of interpretation.51
This topic of depth versus flatness is a recurring element in Rowes writings,
perhaps summed up by an undated set of four manuscript pages, in which he lists
four postulations, the first of which is: A slightly bizarre but tenable proposition:
that, while painting is always the simulation of three dimensions in the reality of
two more often than not great architecture is the simulation of two dimensions
in the reality of three.52

Possible sources of Rowes space-talk

What has become clear so far is that Rowe does investigate notions of spatiality in
modern architecture but that these investigations are always coupled with analyses
of either structural systems or of compositional or perceptual systems. Rarely,
however, does he discuss the sources of his ideas, since he enjoys remaining
mystical or nebulous, as he confesses in an (undated and unpublished) manuscript
for a lecture on the Villa Schwob: Personally I like to pull things out of the hat as a
surprise.53 Thus the footnote to his essay The Present Urban Predicament of 1979,
the introductory quote, constitutes a useful exception to the rule. In sketching the
dissemination of space-talk in Anglo-Saxon architectural literature, Rowe firstly
names Sigfried Giedion, stating that it seems almost certain that space-talk made its
decisive entry into the critical vocabulary of American and English architects with
the publication of Sigfried Giedions Space, Time and Architecture in 1941, and
Nikolaus Pevsners An Outline of European Architecture in 1943.54 Giedions certainly
is a book of central importance, for Rowe as much as it was for the general audience
since Giedion introduced ways of seeing, reading and articulating the spatial
characteristics of modern architecture as influenced by Cubist art and De Stijl; he
introduced the concept of space-time to the wider public.55 It may, however,
surprise that Rowe should mention Nikolaus Pevsners An Outline of European
Architecture of 1943 as an equally significant work in this context, since although
Pevsner referred to earlier buildings in terms of their spatial achievements such as,

Rowe and Slutzky, Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, 170.

Manuscript of four pages, Colin Rowe library, Charles-Moore Foundation, Austin/Texas.
53 Manuscript on the Villa Schwob, Colin Rowe library, Charles-Moore Foundation, Austin/Texas, 6.
54 Rowe, The Present Urban Predicament, footnote 18, 219.
55 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, London: Geoffrey Cumberledge and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1954 (1941).
51
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for example, Balthasar Neumanns Vierzehnheiligen (174372)56 even a superficial

analysis of his descriptions of modernist buildings in this very book reveals that he
neither properly analyzed nor really discussed their spatial formations.57
In the introductory quote, Rowe introduces possible exceptions to the small
list of three architects or writers that already had investigated the idea of
architectural space in English before the 1940s. These are Bernard Berenson and
Geoffrey Scott and, maybe, Rowe adds with caution, Frank Lloyd Wright.58 In
addition, Rowe more or less directly accuses Berenson and Scott of having disguised
the influence of German language art historians (amongst them August Schmarsow
and Adolf von Hildebrand) on their work, since these first discussed space as a
phenomenon. Rowe almost casually adds: That Anglo-American spatial discourse
became trapped by Berenson and Geoffrey Scott who, both of them relating to
Vienna, kept something up their sleeves, should not be a great matter of surprise.59
He accuses Scott, whose Architecture of Humanism still makes no reference to
Vienna, no reference (so far as my patience is aware) to Hildebrand, Lipps,
Schmarsow.60 Rowe may have been too impatient to remember that Scott indeed
mentioned Theodor Lipps in his Architecture of Humanism, and that he, Rowe, had
himself read and marked important passages from this volume, particularly Scotts
following sentence: The whole of architecture is, in fact, unconsciously invested by
us with human movement and human moods.61 Scott further explained: So, too, by
the same excellent because unconscious testimony of speech, arches spring,
vistas stretch, domes swell, Greek temples are calm, and baroque facades
restless. Here, then, is a principle complementary to the one just stated. We
transcribe architecture into terms of ourselves.62 These lines by Scott point at a
crucial intellectual source that is Theodor Lipps and the idea of Einfhlung.

Wfflin via Giedion?

A further exception to not mentioning sources can be found in the 1973 addendum
to The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, where Rowe calls his approach to the
Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, London : Thames and Hudson, 2009 (1943),
1456.
57 It should also be kept in mind that Rowe and Pevsner cannot have been on too friendly terms,
particularly after Rowe had provoked the German migr writer with his criticism of Gropius
architecture in Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, so that, in turn, Pevsner apparently rejected
the publication of the essay, as Werner Oechslin in his Introduction to Transparenz, 10.
58 Wright indeed needs to be treated with caution here, following Cornelis van de Ven who asserts that
Wright only began to describe space and depth in 1928, long after he had worked with it, possibly
influenced by the contemporary European writings on this topic. Cf. Cornelis van de Ven, Space in
architecture, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987, 236.
59 Rowe, The Present Urban Predicament, footnote 18, 219.
60 Rowe, The Present Urban Predicament, footnote 18, 220.
61 Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism. A Study in the History of Taste, London: Constable, 1914
(quoted from Rowes 1924 edition, 213).
62 Scott, The Architecture of Humanism (in Rowes 1924 edition), 213.
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comparison of Palladios and Le Corbusiers villas Wlfflinian.63 This makes sense

since it is the formal principles that he investigates in this famous piece, even if the
comparison between the two ideal villas has less to do with spatial analysis than
with the analysis of composition in terms of proportions and rhythm. In Rowes
essays belonging to the volume The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, there is a distinct
interest, maybe even infatuation, with Sigfried Giedions work leading back to the
writings of Heinrich Wlfflin. In many of these essays he takes Giedion as the
starting point of his own investigations, at times to expand on them, at other times
to take them as a basis for contradicting and arguing alternative viewpoints.
Anthony Vidler has recently pointed out that in contrast to Giedion who saw
baroque and cubist precedents for modern architecture as in some post-Hegelian
sense, genetic or formative, Rowe would have read such precedents as in some
ways homologous, structural, and parallel paradigmatic formal procedures
allowing for deeper interpenetration of difference and similarity.64
Rowe directly references Wlfflins method when he describes his own set
up of his formal analysis of Palladios Villa Malcontenta and Le Corbusiers Villa
Stein/de Monzie in Garches:
A criticism which begins with approximate configurations and which then
proceeds to identify differences, which seeks to establish how the same
general motif can be transformed according to the logic (or the compulsion) of
specific analytical (or stylistic) strategies, is presumably Wl[f]flinian in origin;
and its limitations should be obvious. It cannot seriously deal with questions
of iconography and content.65
This critical reflection on his own use of Wlfflins methods, written 26 years after
the publication of the Mathematics essay, is noteworthy as an admission, since in
1956 he had criticized Giedion for exactly this. In Space, Time and Architecture,
Giedion compares Daniel Burnhams Reliance Building in Chicago (1894) and Mies
van der Rohes project for a glass skyscraper at Friedrichstrasse, Berlin (1921),
calling the Reliance Building an architectonic anticipation of the future.66 Rowe
criticizes Giedions concern with the similarities of the two buildings since he sees it
as a Wlfflinian tendency to ignore problems of content (implying that roughly
identical forms suppose roughly approximate meaning).67 This seeming
contradiction on the one hand an acknowledgement of his own use of Wlfflinian
methods, on the other hand the rejection of Giedions use of such techniques raises
the question of to what degree Rowe consciously used elements of Wlfflins
analytical methods despite their methodological problems. Clearly, he was
Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 16.
Vidler, Mannerist Modernism, 623.
65 Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 16.
66 Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 386.
67 Colin Rowe, Chicago Frame, 105.
63
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

convinced of the efficacy of an immediate visual analysis that was primary to

perception and any iconographic or historical framing.68
It should go without saying that, more directly, Rowe adopted his method of
analysis in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa from his supervisor Rudolf
Wittkower. Along with his letter to Louis Kahn of 1956, Rowe sent Kahn a copy of
Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, adding that I chose the Wittkower
book [] because of the influence it has had upon me.69 Through Wittkower and,
indirectly, through Aby Warburgs position, Rowe would have found the basis to
brush history against the grain. He may have shocked Wittkower with his
comparison of Palladio with Le Corbusier, as he stated in the foreword to the
German translation of the Mathematics volume.70 But somehow, Wittkower should
not have been too surprised about this jeu desprit, as Rowe himself thought it to be;
after all, Wittkower had defined three definitive subjects in his teaching at the
Warburg Institute: the first consisted of the search for the immutable, eternal rules
of architecture that could be deduced from Vitruvius and classical models; the
second was that of identifying the creative aspect, independent of rules and canons;
and the third that of showing how Michelangelo transformed the classical legacy
into his own personal architectural language.71
One less obvious title should be introduced as possibly having created a
resonance with Rowe. Gustav Adolf Platz, Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit of 1927
constitutes one of the very few German language titles in Rowes library.72 This
review of contemporary architectural theory and practice contains a chapter entitled
Die Gesetze der architektonischen Komposition the laws of architectural
composition. But rather than being a handbook for the correct application of
compositional rules as other contemporary sources might have been, Platz discusses
compositional aspects such as static versus dynamic form, proportion, symmetry
and rhythm. In particular, the underlying proportional scheme of Peter Behrens
design for the Oldenburg exhibition of 1905 is contrasted with Le Corbusiers Villa
Schwob in La Chaux-de-Fonds of 1916.73 It seems that Colin Rowe could have
arrived at his idea of comparing Palladio with Le Corbusier through precedents like
these, in conjunction with his learning from Rudolf Wittkower.
Investigating Bauhaus schemes such as the ones by Farkas Molnar of the
early 1920s, Rowe presents them as complete illustrations of the Giedionesque

Vidler, Mannerist Modernism, 623.

Rowe, Letter to Kahn of 7 Feb 56. Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism,
London: Warburg Institute, 1949.
70 Colin Rowe, Die Mathematik der idealen Villa, Basel: Birkhuser, 1998, foreword, 8.
71 Francesco Benelli, Rudolf Wittkower e Colin Rowe: continuit e frattura in Marzo, Larchitettura
come testo e la figura, 236.
72 Gustav Adolf Platz, Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit, Berlin: Propylen-Verlag, 1927.
73 Platz, Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit, 1467. Platz, of course, discusses Hendrik Petrus Berlages
Grundlagen und Entwicklung der Architektur, Berlin: Bard, 1908, a book that Le Corbusier possibly used
for the development of his own tracs rgulateurs.
68
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

concept of space-time for which the Bauhaus is justly so famous.74 He quotes

Giedion in saying that they are compositions which the eye cannot sum up at
one view; which it is necessary to go around [] on all sides, to see from above
as well as from below.75 To this, Giedion adds in the source text: This means new
dimensions for the artistic imagination, and unprecedented many-sidedness.76
Building on Giedion, Rowe has distinctively changed the historiography of modern
architecture through his search for the unsettling, the enriching, and the collagist
aspects of modern architecture. In that sense, he certainly prepared the post-modern
understanding of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, as Robert Venturi
titled his book of 1966.77 Where other writers might have sought to identify
simplicity or a standardization of interpretation, as Hitchcock and Johnson had
attempted in their christening of the International Style,78 Rowe searched for the
complex nature of modern architecture, and he did so in analyzing plan, elevation
and spatial organization. Following his analysis of the Bauhaus building, he says:
In this idea of disturbing, rather than providing immediate pleasure for the
eye, the element of delight in modern architecture appears chiefly to lie. An
intense precision or an exaggerated rusticity of detail is presented within the
bounds of a strictly conceived complex of planned obscurity; and a
labyrinthine scheme is offered which frustrates the eye by intensifying the
visual pleasure of individual episodes, in themselves only to become coherent
as the result of a mental act of reconstruction.79
The frustration of the eye and visual pleasure become apparent as observational
motifs of Rowes visual analysis. The observer seems to be invested with powers to
switch between the observation of the plan and the interior of the building. Giedion,
on his part, interpreted the Bauhaus building as follows:
The ground plan lacks all tendency to contract inward upon itself; it expands,
on the contrary, and reaches out over the ground. In outline it resembles one
of those fireworks called pinwheels, with three hooked arms extending from
a center. The impression one receives from it is similar to that produced by the
glassed staircase in Gropius exhibition building of 1914: it suggests a
movement in space that has been seized and held.80

Colin Rowe, Mannerism and Modern Architecture, in: Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 44.
Rowe, Mannerism and Modern Architecture, 44.
76 Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 493.
77 Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966.
78 Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style.
79 Rowe, Mannerism and Modern Architecture, 45.
80 Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 493.
74
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

Giedions and Rowes ways of reading the architecture of the Bauhaus building are
very closely related in terms of the metaphors used and in their shifting between
analysis and taking the perspective of the observer, as far as the comparison
between Space, Time and Architecture and Mannerism and Modern Architecture of
1950, is concerned. However in Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, written six
years later, Rowe almost completely reverses his admiration for Gropius
achievement, criticizing him for the adherence to literal transparency, indirectly
distancing himself from Giedion, while celebrating Le Corbusiers technique of
creating phenomenal transparency, in the simultaneity of opposing ways of reading
architectural figure or space. Transparency is one of the few co-authored essays in
Rowes career and indeed a central one. Maybe a third author should have been
mentioned, even if he was not directly part of the writing as such. It seems that
architect Bernhard Hoesli was involved in the discovery and interpretation of
architectural phenomenal transparency from the start, and that this involvement led
to a historiographic complexity that still needs to be disentangled.81 What is clear so
far is that Rowes perception of space changed and possibly became more complex
through his proximity to Slutzky and Hoesli during his Austin years.
The potential intellectual short circuit in Transparency as discussed above
needs to be picked up because it points in two directions: Rowes is the approach of
an intellectual eye, and there is a close similarity between Le Corbusier and Rowe,
in terms of style and content, and, to take this further, it could be claimed, that there
would be no Rowe without Le Corbusier.82 The various instances discussed all
indicate that his writing is not concerned with space as a void, perceived by the
spectator standing inside such as one could imagine experiencing the Pantheon
but that he appreciates the artistic and intelligent manipulation of forms in order to
arrive at double readings. These double readings can take place as reading of
flatness versus depth on the faade of the Ca dOro or the Villa Schwob, or they
appear between faade and volumetric development, as in the Villa Stein/de
Monzie.
They also happen in urbanism, as Rowes interpretation of the Manica Lunga
on the Quirinale in Rome demonstrates. The reader may allow the slight digression
into urban questions: Rowes examination of the Manica Lunga has always been
overshadowed by its much better known brother idea, the comparison of the Uffizi
with the Unit. But where the Uffizi-Unit pairing is a very obvious dichotomy of
figure and ground, Rowes attention to the Quirinale reveals his interest in spatial
complexity: in order to demonstrate how the shortcomings of Le Corbusiers Unit
Rowe speaks of its own emphatic isolation could be addressed in terms of urban
space, he decides to more closely address the Palazzo del Quirinale:
This will have to remain the subject of another paper which is currently under development.
As indicated in Christoph Schnoor, Drawing with words: Colin Rowes imaginative historiography,
in: Michael Chapman and Michael Ostwald (eds.), Imagining. Proceedings of the 27th International
Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), Newcastle,
Australia, 2010, 35964.
81
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In its extension, the improbably attenuated Manica Lunga (which might be

several Units put end to end), the Quirinale carries within its general format
all the possibilities of positive twentieth century living standards (access, light,
air, aspect, prospect, etc.); but, while the Unit continues to enforce its
isolation and object quality, the Quirinale extension acts in quite a different
way.83
That is, as Rowe explains: Thus, with respect to the street on the one side and its
gardens on the other, the Manica Lunga acts as both space occupier and space
definer, as positive figure and passive ground, permitting both street and garden to
exert their distinct and independent personalities.84
In an unpublished sketch for a paper on the Villa Schwob as found in his
personal papers in Austin/Texas, Rowe returns to his fascination with surface and
depth, as explored in Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal. In comparing the Ca
dOro in Venice to the faade of the Villa Schwob, he lucidly points out the
architects sophisticated manipulation of surface and the idea of spatial depth:
But it is in Venice where a third dimension can only be hinted at, where
almost nothing is free standing and where one surface has to do for all, that
what I am talking about seems to climax. For in Venice we are confronted with
perforations which present themselves as surface and surfaces which
announce themselves as depth. [] At the Ca dOro the ambiguities of surface
are very apparent; but, in the end, the ambiguities of depth are not any less
assertive. Real depth is presented in the loggie and is then advertised as
surface treatery. Real surface is presented in the flanking areas and then
systematically dissimulated.85
This passage might almost be taken as a direct continuation to Wlfflins
chapter on Plane and Recession in his Principles of Art History. Wlfflin had
developed the language and categories that Rowe was able to use, the comparisons
between the planar and the development of depth in faade and interior.86 It is only
one example of Rowes fascination with the dialectics between flatness and depth
that are revealed within a faade, i.e. the interplay between surface and spatial
depth. It seems as if, using elements of Wlfflins language and intellectual
categories, he was testing the possibilities of Le Corbusiers and Ozenfants purist
paintings over and over again. And it seems to be this space of illusion that he is
indeed interested in, rather than in the idea of space as an articulated void.
Rowe and Koetter, Collage City, 79.
Rowe and Koetter, Collage City, 79.
85 Manuscript on the Villa Schwob, Colin Rowe library, Charles-Moore Foundation, Austin/Texas.
86 Heinrich Wlfflin, Principles of Art History. The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, New
York: Doever, 1950 (Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 1915), 115ff.
83
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

One last element needs to be brought in, only hinted at so far: One of the
most important means of interpreting space for Rowe seems to be the idea of
movement implied in buildings. While in many instances he examines space by
analyzing object-qualities and the objects compositional properties, in his analysis
of International Style Space he gets much closer to space as a phenomenon. Having
summarily stated that the charm of Miess spaces at this date lay in their peculiarly
limpid quality, in their lyrical sensitiveness to the most expensive materials, he
compares Mies vertical planes [that] trail out suggestively, peripherically, into the
landscape, as already quoted above, with Le Corbusiers solutions that bring
together an outward movement with inward containment:
[Le Corbusier] had always been predisposed to internalize the peripheric
incident as, for instance, at Garches, where all the long walls which
contribute a rotary, pinwheeling movement to Miess buildings are condensed
into the compass of a single block within which they acquire an explosive,
emphatic, enriched quality, completely distinguished from the relaxed
Miesian serenity.87
Whereas above the emphasis lay in the comparison of the horizontality of Mies
architecture versus Le Corbusiers verticality, charged with tension, here it needs to
be observed that verbs like trail, and adjectives as peripherical, rotary,
pinwheeling, even more so explosive as opposed to relaxed are used to express
not only movement, but also to imply forces perceived behind the movement:
tension and pressure; an organic energy. These qualifications remarkably activate or
energize the built elements and illustrate what both a visitor to the spaces might
feel, and what the designer himself might have felt while drawing this element of
the building: invisible forces that offer and negate possibilities.88
As alluded to above, this technique goes back to Wlfflin and to Theodor
Lipps, the father of the theory of Einfhlung. On the one hand Lipps writings
informed Geoffrey Scotts Architecture of Humanism; and on the other hand, the idea
of Einfhlung, taken into Heinrich Wlfflins Prolegomena of a Psychology of
Architecture from Robert Vischer and Hermann Lotze, lies behind Wlfflins
analyses of the baroque in his Principles of Art History, which was in Rowes
possession. It is suggested here that Rowe, even if unwittingly, used analytical
methods and categories closely related to Wlfflins comparison of Renaissance and
Baroque in their relation to position and movement. In the section on the Linear and
Painterly in his Principles of Art History, Wlfflin says: Of course, all architecture
[] reckons with certain suggestions of movement; the column rises, in the wall,
living forces are at work, the dome swells upwards, and the humblest curve in the

Rowe, Neo-Classicism II, 144.

Peter Eisenman may have been able to develop his interest in implied movement in his analytical The
Formal Basis of Modern Architecture in his PhD thesis of 1963 through Colin Rowes influence.
87
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Colin Rowe: Space as well-composed illusion

decoration has its share of movement, now more languid, now more lively.89 And
the idea of movement is clearly expressed in Renaissance and Baroque:
Massiveness and movement are the principles of the baroque style. It did not
aim at the perfection of an architectural body, nor at the beauty of growth, as
Winckelmann would have put it, but rather at an event, the expression of a
directed movement in that body. [] Rather did the baroque concentrate the
whole strength of the building at one point, where it breaks out in an
immoderate display while the rest remains dull and lifeless. The functions of
lifting and carrying, once performed as a matter of course, without haste or
strain, now become an exercise of violent and passionate effort.90
Giedions and Rowes analyses of modernist buildings sound as if infused with this
quality of Wlfflins analyses of the Baroque.
Is it at the end, that Rowe combines van Doesburg with Wlfflin via Giedion
and his interpretation of Mannerism? Space is not described and analyzed as
experiential. Since Rowe argues at times with Gestalt theories, it may be seen as
perceptual, but only in the abstract sense of an analytical perception, an intellectual
way of seeing rather than an immediate, sensory perception. Rowes architectural
space might be the well-composed space of illusion and multi-layered perception,
the interplay between flatness and depth or between surface and space, combined
with a sense of Einfhlung into the movement and energy embodied in the elements
of architecture: column, wall and floor; and all this mostly found in and explored
through the work of Le Corbusier.
Christoph Schnoor is Associate Professor in Architecture at Unitec Institute of
Technology in Auckland, NZ; Programme Director for the Master of Architecture
(Professional) from 200709; forthcoming chapter Space and the body: Concepts of
the corporeal in Le Corbusiers work, in: Kirsten Wagner und Jasper Cepl (eds.):
Krperbilder in der Architektur / Images of the Body in Architetcure, Berlin: Wasmuth,
2012; authored book La Construction des villes. Le Corbusiers erstes stdtebauliches
Traktat von 1910/11, Zurich: gta 2008; current research on Colin Rowe in the larger
context of the analysis of spatial and formal principles in modern architecture.
Dr.-Ing. Christoph Schnoor
Unitec Institute of Technology
Auckland, New Zealand
[email protected]

89
90

Wlfflin, Principles of Art History, 63.

Heinrich Wlfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, London: Collins, 1964 (Renaissance und Barock, 1888), 58.

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