Notes on Session Five

I think the primary take home consideration here is the value of architectural precedent. Clearly Colin Rowe finds it cardinal to the business of architecture, as did the generation of tutors who taught me, and as would most critics when it came to anything else; T.S. Eliot on literature for instance. Certainly Terry Eagleton accused us of amnesia. In the realm of 'digital knowledge' is precedent as applicable as it was?
Whatever the present case, in looking at Rowe's comparison of Palladio to Le Corbusier we noted that Rowe was doing what his tutor Rodolf Wittkower had done with Alberti and Palladio, and it seemed such a solid proposition that it might make ones contemporary efforts feel a bit feeble in backbone; what with references to Wren, Virgil and so on.
However when we looked at Rowe's 1961 essay on La Tourette we spotted something else; that he was missing out large chunks of what would seem critical to the understanding of that building and was instead focused on his experience of it and his personal interpretation. My view is that this is problematic, and I have written my own essay to explain why; published on my blog Architecture and Other Habits- as 'An Essay on La Tourette'. It comes up right at the top of a Google search.
So Rowe thought architecture was like playing chess or shaking hands; rich in structural protocol, but he also enjoys the personal. Nowhere is this more evident that in his descriptions of his academic environment (as presented in his three volume memoires 'As I was Saying') which seem to directly condition his thought processes; Cambridge, Texas & Cornell. Since I do not want to begin my book with 'Well at LSBU it's like this...' I might be a little wary of that.