elegant curiosity

Elegant CuriosityAuthor(s): Marco FrascariSource: Log, No. 12 (Spring/Summer 2008), pp. 69-79Published by: Anyone CorporationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41765617 .

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Marco Frascari

Elegant Curiosity

The critical role of an architect is to perform acts of predic- tion by using elegant graphic utterances as a means to evoke

elegantly conceived buildings. Elegant lines and colors are the powerful expressions of the architectural prognostica- tions, which are essentially translated into elegant tectonic events that make the practice of a truly elegant life possible. Elegance is a special "tuning" of the mind and the body in

relationship to the materials and techniques of construction and their translations within the graphic and tectonic realms. Such, in turn, signals the twin concepts of elegant architecture and architectural curiosity, since without a conjectural curiosity there is no elegance.

Without hesitation, I admit that I have repeated the word

elegant too many times. However, I have done so intentionally because elegant is a very difficult concept to characterize for architecture, as it can invoke negative connotations associated with the fashion industry, plus all the problems of architecture as an ostensibly fashionable discipline. Our contemporary use of the word elegance conjures ideas about the contents of

glossy fashion magazines, vanity press architectural mono-

graphs, or elegant lifestyle catalogues. Nevertheless, elegance has a specific technical meaning with a long history. Putting aside its current status as merely a flattering remark, a term of

praise, or a synonym for "fashionable," "poetic," or "artistic," elegance truly designates the products and the procedures of a different form of theoretical intelligence. To understand the

implications of the concept of elegance for an architects work, it is essential to trace the word back to its original uses. In classical and Medieval Latin, as well as Renaissance

English, the use of the term elegance in architectural discourse indicated a particular and essential quality antecedent to the tangible form that was recognized as intensely signifi- cant for both making and inhabiting a proper architecture.

"Elegant solution" is the peculiar locution used by professional mathematicians, expert chemists, and professional killers to indicate the best and most efficient way to solve a

problem, a reaction, or a contract. Many restaurants claim

"elegant wine & dining," but they are clearly not referring to the required attire of the clients. In Elegans et utilis libellus de arte mensurandi cum cercino et regula (The elegant and useful 69



1. John Dee, Elegans et utilis libellus de arte mensurandi cum cercino et regula . . . (London: British Library MS Cotton Yitelius C. VII folios 14-24, undated). 2. Andrea Memmo, Elementi d'architettura Lodoliana: Ossia, l'arte del fabricare con solidità scientifica e con eleganza non capricciosa, Reprint of the 1833-1834 2nd edition by Fratelli Battara, Zara (Milan: G. Mazzotta, 1973).

art of measuring with a compass and a straight edge), the title of a manuscript by John Dee held in the British Library, elegant does not mean a chic use of drafting tools.1 In the 18th century, in an effort to correctly characterize the architectural theory of his mentor, Carlo Lodoli, who advocated functional solu- tions to tectonic problems, Andrea Memmo wrote a treatise on Lodolian architecture, which he titled Elementi d'architettura Lodoliana : Ossia, l'arte del fabricare con solidità scientifica e con eleganza non capricciosa ( Elements of Lodolian Architec- ture: Or ; the Art of Building with Scientific Solidity and Non-

capricious Elegance).1 The qualification "noncapricious ele-

gance" marks an important change in the connotation of the term; by this point in time, elegance had already lost its clear and immediate meaning.

The first realization made by looking at the historical uses of the term is that the word elegant can be both a subject and an object. An elegant building can be both an elegant edifice and an edifice elegantly erected and elegantly repre- sented by an elegant architect. This ambiguity is essential for the capacity of elegance in originating architectural conjecture and the elegant conjuring of buildings. The cause of architectural elegance is also a demonstration of its intrinsic

power to affect the thoughts of the perceiver. Elegance is a

special "tuning" of both mind and body in relation to materials and techniques of construction and their translations within the poetic dimensions of the graphic and tectonic realms. This connection is difficult to recognize because ele-

gance is no longer the fundamental nature of architectural tectonics and graphic construction. This condition stems from confusing and mystifying quests for conspicuous details, forgetting that tectonics is a search for an illumina- tion of the consciousness of the building that can essentially transform human perceptions to such an extent that the most mundane artifacts or processes of construction can

yield to elegantly estranging details and beautifully elegant arrangements.

The concept of elegance entered architectural thinking with Yitruvius, a Gnostic Hellenist architect. In Vitruvian

language, elegance is a rhetorical faculty that becomes a fundamental architectural utterance. At the beginning of the first book of his treatise De Architectural Yitruvius lists cate-

gories of architecture, and among these is Dispositio ( Arrangement ), a procedural term that rules the composition of a discourse and is one of the five basic attributes necessary to produce elegant arguments in classical rhetoric. In Vitruvian analogical thinking, elegance also rules the place- 70



3. Laurie Schneider, "Leon Battista Alberti: Some Biographical Implications of the Winged Eye," Art Bulletin 2 (1990): 261-70. 4. For a different and a purely numerical discussion of the meaning and uses of concinnità s, see Luigi Vagnetti, " Concinnità s: Riflessioni sul significato di un termine albertiano," Studi e documenti di architettura , 2 (1973): 137-61; Robert Tavernor, " Concinnità s o la formulazione della bellezza," in Leon Battista Alberti , ed. Joseph Rykwert and A. Engel (Milan: Electa, 1994), 300-15.

ment of building elements, both structurally and visually. Vitruvius's interest in the discipline of rhetoric led him to use it as an analogical model for structuring his theory of architecture. For Yitruvius, rhetoric foreordained a conse-

quential chiastic relationship between techne and logos ; in other words, between a body of constructional principles and a body of poetic principles in the art of building.

Concinnitas Leon Battista Alberti, Renaissance architect and theoretician, elegantly and sensibly wrote about political, social, literary, architectural, and artistic issues and theories, but also, with a

very elegant leap, he was capable of jumping over the head of a middle-height man. Attesting to the covert power of tradition, this curiously edifying reference reveals the nature of the cultural scope of Albertus work more effectively than the many specialized works produced during the past years. In an article on the biographic connotations of the winged eye, Albertus greatest emblem Qimpresay ca. 1446-50), Laurie Schneider raises a compelling parallel concern .* Schneider

points out that too many art historians have examined the work of this great Italian humanist from the point of view of his architectural and artistic theories, overlooking that Albertus principal field of creativity and expression had been the exercise of language, as well as of the body. In his gossip- mongering masterpiece, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550), Giorgio Vasari mali-

ciously states that Alberti was versed more in the art of writ-

ing than in the art of drawing, even while recognizing that Alberti was undoubtedly the finest architect of his time.

Similar discriminating lenses have been used to analyze Albertus aesthetic theories. Through the monodirectional effect of these polarizing lenses, the idea of concinnitas has been singled out as the crucial principle informing Albertus architectural aesthetics. Many essays have discussed and

explored the role of this harmoniously and proportionally pleasing notion of literary composition, transmuted by Alberti to a principle of architectural composition.4 These studies have reached antiseptic and insipid conclusions - most of them reduce Albertus concinnitas to a harmony without taste or odor, and, above all, without a flavorful "sauce." Concinnitas is presented merely as a recipe of numerical proportions. Clearly, the savory origin of concinnitas is over- looked. This wholly Roman concept emerges from a figurative metamorphosis of the original culinary meaning: it is a

metaphoric translation into textual-harmonic qualities of

71



5. Pierre Monteil, Beau et Laid en Latin étude de vocabulaire (Paris: C. Klinck- sieck, 1964), 170. 6. Leon Battista Alberti, L'architettura. ( De re aedificatoria ), trans. Giovanni Orlandi, Voi. 2, Book 6, Chapter 2 (Milan: Edizioni II Polifilo, 1966), 4-44-50. 7. Imaginai reflections belong to the realm that Henry Corbin has named mundus imaginalis. See Henry Corbin, "Mundus imaginalis ou l'imaginaire et l'imaginai," Cahiers internationaux du symbolisme 6 (Bruxelles, 1964): $-26. 1 am using the term to avoid any confusion between what is the object of imagina- tive or imaginai perception and what we ordinarily call the imaginary. 8. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 7. 9. Leon Battista Alberti, L'architettura C De re aedificatoria ), trans. Orlandi, 18-19 (my translation to English of Orlandi's Italian).

the harmonic flavors of a dish well cooked, where the vari-

ety and measure of the ingredients have been properly pro- portioned.5 With Alberti, concinnitas undergoes another transformation, becoming a concept for the formulation of architectural congruity: nothing can be added or taken away without impairing that quality. Alberti is clearly aware of the culinary beginning of the concept. In his De re aedificatoria (14-85), he laconically recalls that concinnitas is "the force and quasi sauce" ( vim et quasi succum ) of architecture.6

The historian/critic's polarizing lens no doubt has ex-

panded the definition of the concept, but it has also removed the possibility of imaginai reflections.7 The use of such a prosa- ic tool prevents the understanding that the idea of concinnitas

belongs and works within the conceptual and cultural sphere of the idea of elegantia. By submitting De re aedificatoria to a

quantitative analysis testing the frequency of the lexicology, it is possible to single out the dissimilar and hierarchical weight of the two terms. Concinnitas and its derivatives appear 2] times; elegans and its derivatives appear 41 times.

Elegans A foreseeable criticism to this statistical analysis is that elegans and elegantia are, in reality, purely terms of compliment and

praise. They are forms of repetitive praise, but without any specific connotation. Their frequency can be attributed to rea- sons of style, rather than to a meaningful use. If one accepts this point of view, elegans , elegantia , and other derivatives should be considered simple, appreciative expressions without

any theoretical connotations. This one-dimensional view of

elegance seems to govern concern among the translators of the text. This can be easily ascertained by comparing translations. Trying to avoid the use of a cognate word that they consider

empty of moral and aesthetic meaning, Albertus translators

prefer to use other expressions that may carry plausible meanings in the context. For instance, in the latest English translation (Rykwert et al.), the first phrase of the first book of the treatise, in which Alberti points out that the principal aim of his writing is the discussion of the process of design, a triumvirate of translators found themselves face to face with the obstacle of translating elegantia . Consequently, in the translation, the adjectives optimum and elegantissima - used

by Alberti to qualify the nature of his recommendations - have become "soundest" and "useful."8 The same passage, in its Italian translation by Giovanni Orlandi, uses valido ("valid") and prezioso ("precious") instead of optimum ("best") and elegantissima ("very elegant").9 72



10. Pierre Monteil, 168. 11. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De natura deorum (On the Nature of the Gods)} trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1930» Book II, Chapter 2. 12. "Qui autem omnia quae ad cultum deorum pertinerent diligenter retractarent et tamquam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi ex relegendo, ut elegantes ex eligendo ex deligendo diligen[te]s ex intellegendo intellegentes." Cicero, De natura deorum , trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1961), Book II, Chapter 72, 19*.

In characterizing that the purpose of architectural

design is elegance, many translators have faced issues of difficult cultural and intellectual digestion and assimilation.

Accordingly, interpreting Albertus recommendations as "useful or precious," although entirely opposed in meaning, has its raison d'être within a tradition. If we carefully observe the text, we can see that Alberti is using a superlative to characterize his own counseling. He sets himself and the text in a condition of unjustified narcissism that is not

appropriate for his style of writing, or for his character. However, if we consider that the term elegantia connotes more than utility or preciousness, Albertus use of this term is

charged with a different set of expectations. Alberti uses the terms elegans and elegantia the way the great Roman orator Cicero, well recognized as Albertus foremost literary model, elaborated them in the edifying plays of his orations.

In Cicero's complete oeuvre, the word elegans and its derivatives occur 125 times; he uses them more frequently than all other classical Latin authors. Cicero gives to "ele-

gance" a full and pointed meaning. The adjective elegans is the participle of the verb elegare : a word that disappeared from Latin before it became a written language.10 The root

leg is also encountered in legere , meaning "to pick up" and "to choose." Found also in eligere, the same radical denotes

specifically the concept of choice. Philologists have pointed out that, anthropologically speaking, the verb eligere origi- nated in the pious action of picking up human bones after cremation. Cicero explains the etymological bond between

elegans and eligere in a passage of his De natura deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), written in 45 BC.11 In order to

enlighten us about what religious people do (his book is a treatise on Stoic and Epicurean theology), Cicero offers an

extraordinary sequence of derivative words using the powerful, Latin rhetorical technique of alliteration, which allows words to echo within each other ( verbis verberare ): Those who carefully cared for and took in hand all things pertaining to the cult of gods were called religiosi [religious people] from relegendo [treating carefully ], as elegant people from eligendo [choosing], diligent people from diligendo [ entrusting J, intelligent people from intellegendo [ discerning J.12

These Ciceronian lines present an accurate analogical portrayal of the power of the derivation of elegans from

eligendo provoked by the sequence of euphonic denotations and connotations ranging from religion to election, from

diligent to intelligent. In the prolongation of the passage, Cicero tries to raise the notion of the vir elegans (elegant n



1}. Aldus Gellius, Noctes Attiene, ] vols., trans. John C. Rolfe (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1927). 14. Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, ed. Lee Honeycutt, trans. John Selby Watson. http://honeyl.public.iastate.edu/quintili an/ (accessed July 2}, 2007).

individual) to a condition equivalent to vir pious (righteous individual) by making elegance a true Roman virtue.

Elegantia is an exclusively Latin notion, completely unknown in other tongues. In Latin discourse, at the beginning of its use, the adjective elegans did not express a defect or perfection. Only later, and very slowly, did it acquire a

consistently positive connotation. Some evidences of this

change of value are in Aulus Gellius's Noctes Atticae ( Attic

Nights) ß However, as previously mentioned, the term and its derivatives take on a precise connotation of virtue only with the writings of Cicero.

Cicero's suggestion is that elegantia attests a constructive

category of thought and social practice. Elegantia is a beauty that is judged. In elegantia, there is a central concept that does not exist in what can be called the "beauty triad" of Roman aesthetics: venustas (venomously beautiful), pulchritudo (physically beautiful), and concinnitas (calibratedly beautiful). All three are subsumed in elegantia, but elegantia cannot be subsumed in them. Elegantia is a merging of the values of a venustas , a pulchritudo, or a concinnitas sanctioned

by an authority in a discriminating manner. Something or someone can be elegant or can cause elegant effects; a build-

ing can be elegant but also can be designed or built elegantly. Strictly speaking, for Quintilian and many traditional

Roman rhetors , elegantia was the conjunction of two linguistic modalities in rhetoric: on one side latinit as, or appropriateness, and on the other perspicuitas , or clarity.14 Latinitas

belonged at the level of grammar and had to do with recte dicere, with accurate communication; perspicuitas , on the other hand, belonged at a level higher than that of mere

grammar, though its linguistic base remained latinitas . It was, therefore, considered by Quintilian the first of the rhetorical virtues, and implied something more than mere recte dicere - to speak correctly or accurately. (For Aristotle

perspicuitas was a "central" virtue.) Therefore, this virtue had to do with bene dicere (to speak with propriety); that is to

say, using the appropriate words. The shortcoming of latinitas , therefore, was the construction fallacy, a reduction to grammar, while the shortcoming of perspicuitas was the lexical improperness that produced ohscuritas: a dark text

presenting variable meanings in the shadows cast by the ornatus rather than crude elucidations. None of this had to do, then, with elegantia, with the distinction, grace, or beauty of

speech. Rather, these constituted the superior level of rhetoric, the level of ornatus and venustas, whose purpose was delectation . For Quintilian, elegantia was correct construction, 74



15. Lorenzo Valla, Lawrentii Vallae De lin- guae latinae elegantia libri sex . . . Eiusdem De reciprocatione sui, & suus, libellus ad prime vtilis. Antonii Mancinelli Lima locis congruis: & opportunis infine apposita. Iodici Badii Ascensii Epitomatis capitibus singulis infine appositis . . . Eiusdem in Antoniům Raudensem Annotationes. Apologus in Pogium Florentinům. Alia quoque haud contemnenda in Benedictum Morandum ad finem operis . . . (Venetiis: In Aedibus Ioannis Tacuini de Iridino, die XII septembris 1536). 16. Mariangela Regoliosi, Nel cantiere del Valla: Elaborazione e montaggio delle 'Elegantie' (Rome: Bulzoni, 1993)- 17. Salvatore Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo e teologia. Presentazione di Eugenio Garin (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1972).

and the appropriateness, suitability, and results reveal, even now, in the jargon of rhetoric, that elegance designates the

guessed right selection within the lexicon of a selected field of expression.

Elegans is an able outcome, elevating efficient cause

among the classical Aristotelian four causes - final, material, formal, and efficient - as the inherent matrix of all the causes

ruling human making and judgment. Elegantia is a force that acts both in a reflexive and dynamic way. This duality is the essential power of the concept. In a dynamic sense, elegantia designates someone who knows how to conceive in a refined manner, to choose or to elaborate an object. In a reflexive sense, elegantia characterizes the object that in the choice or in the manner of its execution shows the competence of who knows how to appreciate or make it.

To further characterize and discern the significance of

elegance in Albertus architectural rationalization, it is in- evitable to set a link with Lorenzo Valla's Elegantiae (1471), one of the greatest texts of Italian humanism.15 In the pref- ace of this oeuvre, construing philosophy as philology, Valla elaborates a powerful elucidatory image by setting the architectural ruins of Rome as analogous to the shattered remains of the Latin language.16 This pregnant metaphor transmutes Valla's Elegantiae into "a construction site" Qun cantiere) for the reassembly of the Latin idiom. He advises that architects collect in their sketchbooks the details of the great Roman edifices to understand them and rebuild a better architecture, as humanist scholars should be collecting fragments of the Latin Grammatica to rebuild their contemporary discourse. For Alberti, Valla's elegant images mirror the architectural site. Valla's three categories of verba traslata

(metaphors), ficta (neologisms), and prisca (archaisms) complement the visual metaphors, tectonic neologisms, and constructional archaisms of the art of building proposed by Alberti. In a double mirroring of elegant philological principles, the architectural details of great Roman architecture have been translated, copied, contrived, and transmogrified through the philosophical and philological searches of lan-

guage constructs elaborated by Valla into Alberti's philological and philosophical mapping of constructions within the urban contexts of Rome.

In a magnificent study on Valla's work, Salvatore

Camporeale demonstrates that traces of the Regulae by Alain de Lille ( Alarms de Insulis, the doctor universalis) can be found within the first book of Valla's Dialecticae disputationes (1440).17 Furthermore, Luca Boschetto has demonstrated

75



18. Luca Boschetto, Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze : Biografìa , storia, letteratura (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2000), 79-81. 19. Alain de Lille, The Plaint of Nature , trans. James J. Sheridan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980). 20. Ibid., PL CCX 45?. 21. Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), Jl-52. 22. Alberti, L'architettura (De re aedifìca- toria ), trans. Rykwert et al., 4. 21 Ibid., 77.

that Alberti^ concept of nature may possibly be linked with the Latin poetry of the 12th century and should be related to the analogies between language and cosmology, and the depic- tion and personification of nature as elaborated by Alain de Lille in his poem, De planetu naturae (The Plaint of Nature) In this poem describing a complaining Lady Nature, he recog- nizes God as the supreme builder, following the intellectual tradition of the Neoplatonic school of Chartres.19 For de Lille, God is an architect because He builds our cosmos as a royal palace, and its marvels result from a refined elaboration and use of musical consonances.20 In his categorization of the divine architect, de Lille makes the unfortunate translators face a conceptual difficulty, since he describes his medieval and Neoplatonic God as an elegans architectus. In all translations of De planetu naturae , the translators always paraphrase the definition "God: elegant architect" with other related terms such as "God: lofty architect" or "God: sublime architect." In his reading of the work of de Lille, Otto von Simson, a great scholar of Gothic architecture, translates the

passage as "God: artful architect."21 1 have not yet found a translation of De planetu naturae where the author's locution has been translated simply as "elegant architect."

Although for modern translators the sanctioning of God as an elegant architect is unacceptable, it was without doubt

perfectly acceptable for Alberti. In the prologue of De re aedi -

ficatoriay Alberti reveals his interest in elegant architecture and in being an elegant architect. Using a proper active imagination, he affirms that elegance is a fundamental gauge for

judging and modifying buildings erected by other architects: It often happens that we ourselves, although husj with completely different things, cannot prevent our minds and imagination from projecting some buildings or other. Or again, when we see some other person's building, we immediately look over and compare the individual dimensions, and to the best of our ability consider what

might be taken away, added or altered, to make it more elegant.22 This possibility of an architectural imagination that is

also elegant is a polarization of the definition of concinnitasy where a building is perfect in its beauty, when nothing could be added or removed: We need to be strict and meticulous in our planning, therefore, and to take care that nothing is included except what is elegant and well proven, and that everything fits together so well, in terms of dignity and grace, that were you to add, change, or take away anything, it would be to the detriment of the whole. 2*

Discreet rather than pretentious, elegance is a dignifying presence. For Alberti, the beautiful is what is elegant, and it

76



24. Alberti, L'architettura. (De re aedifìca- toria), trans. Orlandi, 18-19. 25. Alberti, L'architettura. (. De re aedificatoria), trans. Rykwert et al., 121. 26. Ibid., 171. 27. Ibid., 201. 28. Ibid., 184. 29. Ibid., 218-19.

has been carefully selected and named for that part of the construction.24 Discussing the construction materials, Alberti

suggests that none of the materials employed should be

inelegant. Architectural elegance is temperate rather than

pretentious, becoming a powerful presence of dignity. Alberti counsels that a king's palace has to be positioned within the urban core, and it must be elegant because in this

way it maintains its dignity and importance and avoids being conspicuous: "A royal palace should be sited in the city cen- ter, should be of easy access and should be gracefully deco- rated, elegant, and refined, rather than ostentatious."25

Furthermore, Alberti points out that there are hidden

perils in the term elegance : The lesson to be learned here, I feel, for anyone wishing to make his possession really long-lasting is that they should be constructed

of stone that is neither weak nor jet so elegant that it mil be

promptly desired or may easily be removed,16 Tombs should not be unduly elegant, as they would not

last. Unduly precious, they would likely be spoiled (pillaged) by succeeding generations who might become enchanted by their valuable and delicate nature. In this affirmation, Alberti demonstrates that elegance has to be controlled by the concept of mediocritaSy an internal ethical parameter always guiding the design of a proper architecture. An amazing demonstration of how Alberti is correct in his assumption has been tak-

ing place at Carlo Scarpa's Brion Cemetery in San Vito d'Ai ti vole, where small and, perhaps, too elegant details of the edifices and garden have been taken by visitors and architects wanting a souvenir.

In discussing the art of building, Alberti enumerates a few elements that he holds fundamental for bestowing the

necessary elegance on buildings. For example, the selection and composition of openings give elegance to the dining and

living rooms. But the element par excellence that most digni- fies our constructed environment by bestowing elegance is the column. The choice of columns is fundamental, because real architectural elegance cannot exist without a manifesta- tion of the carrying frame presented by the columns. If "the columns are to confer elegance on the building,"27 then

"expenses should not be saved to make colonnades elegant."28 The material of the columns and their decoration make them elegant. Furthermore, the following of proportional rules and the proper modification following utilitarian needs make colonnades essentially elegant, and the proper solution to structural and constructional problems contributes always to the elegance of the work.29

77



30. Robert Joly, "Curiositas," L'Antiquité Classique JO 0961): 33-44. See also, A. Labhardt, "Curiositas, notes sur l'histoire d'un mot et d'une notion," Museum Helveticum 17 0960): 206-24. $1. Eugenio Garin, La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano. Ricerche e documenti (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1961); "Il pensiero di L. B. Alberti: Caratteri e con- trasti," Rinascimento , Vol. XII 0972): 3-20; "Il pensiero di L. B. Alberti e la cultura del '400," Belfagor , XXVII 0972): 501-21. 32. Voltaire, Memnon: Histoire orientale , (London [probably Amsterdam or Paris]: Pour la Compagnie, 1747). NB: This was the title for the first published edition of a novel by Voltaire, which later appeared under the title Zadig, ou, La destinée (Zadig, or, The Book of Fate).

The conclusion that can be derived from reading Alberti is that a work of architecture is beautifully elegant if elegant architects with an elegant technology, elegant bearing struc- tures, elegant proportions, and elegant materials make it. However, to become an arbiter elegantiarum (elegant innova- tor), an architect must exercise a proper constructive curios-

ity, that is, a conjectural rule for selection.

Curiositas Curiositas (curiosity) kills cats but not architects. Curiosity, the English cognate word, does not carry the exact same

meaning as the Latin original. However, I will use the

English word with its original value of being a virtue rather than a vice. Architects are gifted with something that can be called curiositas , a constructive curiosity that cannot be stig- matized as vana curiositas or tur fis curiositas Architectural

curiosity is a reflective and dynamic or, better yet, a specula- tive and effective procedure, which ensures that the constructed world results from elegantly composed conjecture. This concern for minutiae develops a visual clarity, which also causes a peculiar lulling of the mind: the undeclared aim is to lead distracted dwellers to their frontier of visual clarity. The consequence is that buildings "move" us as we "are moved" by them.

As Eugenio Garin has delineated in his refined reading of De re aedificatoria , an architect is a practitioner who

depends on clues and conjectural processes.*1 Adding this notion to Albertus use of the concept of elegance , it can be claimed that elegant architects are those who undertake their work following the conjectural method. Real architects know how to choose among the minutiae of construction and inhabitation; they can correctly select, a priori, the pertinent materials, products, and details that during the design process will bring clues that will fuel the force of architectural imagination. In other words, elegant architects write the specifications before the design takes place. Elegant architects are practitioners who depend on clues and conjectural processes and know how to choose among the finer points of construction and inhabitation. Elegant architects can, then, correctly "select the pertinent materials, products, and details" by following Zadig's method of explanatory hypotheses, which Voltaire describes in one of his contes

philosophique J1 Zadig's method is based on a process of rea-

soning in which explanatory hypotheses are formed and evaluated, and the evaluation is conceived in terms of coherence rather than deduction. As the Victorian biologist, pale- 78



33. Thomas H. Huxley, "On the Method of Zadig: Retrospective Prophecy as a Function of Science," in Science and Culture: And Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1881), 127-28. 34. Paul Thagard, Cameron Shelley, "Abductive Reasoning: Logic, Visual Thinking, and Coherence" 0997), http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/ Pages/%7FAbductive.html. See also Paul Thagard, Cameron Shelley, "Abductive Reasoning: Logic, Visual Thinking, and Coherence," in Logic and Scientific Methods , eds. M. L. D. Chiara, K. Doets, D. M undici, and J. van Benthem, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 413-27. 35. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols., Vols. I-VI, 1931-1935, eds. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, Vols. VII-VIII, 1958, ed. Arthur W. Burks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931-1958); See also Massimo A. Bonfantini, La semi- osi e l'abduzione (Milan: Bompiani, 1987). 36. Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), n. 13, 117.

Marco Frascari is director of the Azrieli School of Architec- ture at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He previously TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF Pennsylvania, Virginia Tech, and SEVERAL OTHER INSTITUTIONS. HE WRITES EXTENSIVELY ON THE TOPICS OF ARCHITECTURAL REPRESENTATION AND TECTONICS.

ontologist, and anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley has

pointed out, it is a method that works on "retrospective prophecies."^ A retrospective hypothesis in Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic language is called abductive reasoning - that is, reasoning in which explanatory hypotheses are formed and evaluated. "Explanation is not deduction; hypotheses are

layered; abduction is sometimes creative; hypotheses may be

revolutionary; completeness is elusive; simplicity is complex; and abductive reasoning may be visual and non-sentential."54 But above all, for Peirce, abductive reasoning is based on an

elegant sorting of clues and evidence, that is, a conjectural reasoning that infers by an elegant selection the presence of absent (invisible) entities from their perceptible traces.*5

What distinguishes the scientific method from the ele-

gant method is the need for science to be able to "measure and repeat" using mathematics and the experimental method. Conversely, the elegant method, a conjectural para- digm, may work from an individual case that may never be

repeated using speculation, clever guesses, and opinions based on incomplete facts. To express it in a different way, as Carlo Ginsburg suggests, "When causes cannot be repeated, there is no alternative but to infer them from their effects."*6 This is precisely what alchemists, cooks, hunters, physicians, rhetoricians, and architects do: elegantly infer causes from effects. Architects read signs and construct an identifiable

syntax from a swirling semantic pool, infer motives from the facts of dwelling and what people say about them, or diag- nose constructive syndromes from a selection of symptoms.

The winged eye of Alberti is then the elegant eye of architectural imagination. It is a clinical eye that, through conjectural procedures, is capable of organizing the problem and efficiently giving elegant directions to elegantly attain the union of the art of living, thinking, and building well. This is construction through active imagination. We construct elegant buildings, thoughts, and dwellings by placing the characteristics of the past as they set hypothetical devel-

opments for the future on the present. In other words, the conditions for architectural events to be elegant in any sense must be elegantly laden with their past and pregnant with their future.

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elegant curiosity

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