| Inauguration: Ritual Planning in Ancient Greece and Italy |
|---|
54 Birchgrove Road
Balmain NSW 2041 AUSTRALIA
In
his doctoral thesis (1937), translated as 'Architectural Space
in Ancient Greece' (1972), Constantinos Doxiadis argued that
the apparently haphazard layout of Greek temple sites could be
explained by a system of planning by 'polar coordinates'. From
a fixed pole, usually at the ritual entrance, the planner could
locate any building by measuring the distance to that building
and the size of the angle between two vectors or radii, here
sightlines from the viewer to the outer edges of that building.
Analysis of 29 ancient sites revealed two systems of ancient
planning - the Doric, based on a 12-part division of the 360-degree
visual field, and the Ionic, based on a 10-part division of that
field. In both cases, buildings were carefully sited so that
their outer edges (stylobates, cornices etc) appeared to the
viewer at canonic angles of vision, such as 30, 60, 90 (Doric)
and 18, 36, 72 (Ionic), thus creating a 'unified composition'
of the visible landscape. Doxiadis' theory is testable and was
confirmed by the discovery of a 30-degree angle between sightlines
from the top western step of the Propylaea to the outer edges
of the temple of Athene Nike.
A similar system of planning might have been used in Italy by
augurs practising the 'Etruscan Rite' which was also based on
a ritual division of the visual 'templum' (sacred space). Since
Joseph Rykwert's reconstruction of the Etruscan Rite, in The
Idea of a Town (1976), is confirmed by only one cardinally
oriented and orthogonally planned city (Marzabotto), I suggest
that the many irregular Italian sites (including Rome and Hadrian's
Villa) might have been ritually planned by methods analogous
to the Greek system and involving a 'Pythagorean' world-view
based on an 'harmonic' division of space and time.
Figure: Athens, Acropolis after 450 B.C. Perspective
view, reconstruction by C.A. Doxiadis, 1972. Courtesy of the
MIT Press.
About the author
Graham Pont is a philosopher
specialising in aesthetics of music and architecture. He is currently
working on the notation and interpretation of Handel's music,
the irregularities of Greek and Gothic architecture, and the
design philosophy of Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin..
.
|
K. Graham Pont, "Inauguration: Ritual Planning in Ancient Greece and Italy", pp. 93-104 in Nexus VI: Architecture and Mathematics, eds. Sylvie Duvernoy and Orietta Pedemonte Turin: Kim Williams Books, 2006. http://www.nexusjournal.com/conferences/N2006-Pont.html |
|
|
|
