The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries

by Robin Evans

Robin Evans recasts the idea of the relationship between geometry and architecture, drawing on mathematics, engineering, art history, and aesthetics to uncover processes in the imagining and realizing of architectural form. Anyone reviewing the history of architectural theory, Robin Evans observes, would have to conclude that architects do not produce geometry, but rather consume it. In this long-awaited book, completed shortly before its author's death, Evans recasts the idea of the relationship between geometry and architecture, drawing on mathematics, engineering, art history, and aesthetics to uncover processes in the imagining and realizing of architectural form. He shows that geometry does not always play a stolid and dormant role but, in fact, may be an active agent in the links between thinking and imagination, imagination and drawing, drawing and building. He suggests a theory of architecture that is based on the many transactions between architecture and geometry as evidenced in individual buildings, largely in Europe, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. From the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey to Le Corbusier's Ronchamp, from Raphael's S. Eligio and the work of Piero della Francesca and Philibert Delorme to Guarino Guarini and the painters of cubism, Evans explores the geometries involved, asking whether they are in fact the stable underpinnings of the creative, intuitive, or rhetorical aspects of architecture. In particular he concentrates on the history of architectural projection, the geometry of vision that has become an internalized and pervasive pictorial method of construction and that, until now, has played only a small part in the development of architectural theory. Evans describes the ambivalent role that pictures play in architecture and urges resistance to the idea that pictures provide all that architects need, suggesting that there is much more within the scope of the architect's vision of a project than what can be drawn. He defines the different fields of projective transmission that concern architecture, and investigates the ambiguities of projection and the interaction of imagination with projection and its metaphors.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Theory

452 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 1995

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard about this book from another book I read which was Stan Allen's 'Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation'. Allen is currently the dean at the school of architecture at Princeton University and he spoke very highly of this book and prompted me to purchase it and read it for myself. The book discusses the process of architecture in a unique way: by looking through art history and in particular--perspective drawing and he talks about the relationship between the ways architecture has been represented and how this can determine/limit/expand the end result.

The book is a highly academic read and learned a lot I didn't know about architecture and art history which is slightly embarrassing as a graduate from Architecture school. As an architecture student I give this book five stars but unless you have an interest in art or architecture you probably won't enjoy this book that much.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the very introduction, Evans challenges other architectural writers (such as Bonta and Eco). He cautions that writing about architecture from 'outside' architecture is a risk in which insight might be gained, but something intrinsically architectural is lost. Evans implies that architecture should be studied architecturally, and that reframing it through alternate lenses, such as literature-reviews, risks a loss of meaning via extrapolation. That said, he also notes that architecture does not stand alone; its peripheries are always touching other fields; its borders are in a state of flux. Assessing some of these transactional overlays, therefore, has merits that outweigh the risks. Geometry is one of those ways, as it is only a "small step" outside of architecture.
For my thesis, it makes me wonder; what if we heed his warning, but still follow his lead. If no building is an island, then there is no harm using metaphorical language, their game-play and mixed meanings, as our tour guide of the pseudo-island's pseudo-tide-line.

As Evans investigates both building and drawing, he notes that we cannot use (semiotic) arguments of speech vs writing to review drawing vs architecture. "Likeness is not identity; orthographic projection is not orthography; drawing is not writing, and architecture does not speak." Later he writes; "The portrait is not the person. A church is not the cosmos, but..." He then goes on to concede, if it was thought of that way, what was emphasised and why? He notes that architectural symbolism can be described in two ways; translation ('this means that') or description/explanation ('this means that because of these'). It occurred to me that my thesis will instead be a deliberation on the consequences of particular translations. If the historical reading of architecture says 'dome means sky,' my aim is not to challenge the validity or origin of such a theory, but to determine the consequences of this interpretation. Whilst it sounds obvious in hindsight, this distinction or clarification is an important step forward for me in structuring my literature review – so thank you, Mr Evans.

Evans' first chapter on Renaissance churches was not entirely applicable to my thesis, though it did set the scene and had an (in passing) message towards the end which resonated. Gothic churches, he wrote, focused on the all-suffering redemptive-powers of Christ-crucified (demonstrated by the Latin cross). The Renaissance church, on the other hand, was focused (and formed) on Christ Pantocrator (the all-powerful-being) who was usually represented in art as a man with a halo filled with a squared cross, essentially the same outline as the floorplans of the buildings. Perhaps it is an oversimplification, but the relationship between dogma, art and structure fits too neatly in place to ignore.

His second chapter on deconstruction / fragmented architecture was beneficial as it included a case study of Tschumi's Parc de la Villette. I particularly enjoyed the fact that he pointed out that nothing the Decon architect could create by way of 'lunacy' or 'horror' in his follies could compete with the original use of the site (the city's abattoirs).

The following chapters were less relevant but no less impressive. There is one that deals at length with Le Corbusier's Ronchamp, which he feels walks a fine line between magic and mockery. The farce, he says, relates to the ambiguity of its form, its almost caricature-like appearance. That it can be either the Ark of the Covenant or 'bits of broken china,' "an alighting dove or a sitting duck" is its strength and its problem. Good taste wants us to see the former, but the latter is still visible, and sometimes more so. Another chapter towards the end of the book investigates 'new' geometry in which Einstein's relativity and related ideas defy clarity, often being describable, but not draw-able, and the influence this had on architecture.

In an oblique passage towards the end of a chapter, near the end of the book, Evans states that there are three geometries; Compositional (essentially ancient/crystalline); Projective (perspective-orientation of the Renaissance onwards); and Signified (in which impossible geometries such as hypercubes are alluded to rather than used). These three styles, Evan says, are not linear, but more or less chronological laid one on top of the other like "the sediment of an epoch of investigation." Larger historical forces shape each layer, and by inference, the geometry is both a by-product of and a contributor to its times. The allusion is interesting because it makes modern experiments in architecture seem both archeological (backward-looking) and edificial (newly constructed). It also reiterates that architecture is both representative and influential of any moment in time, both innovative/messiah and sponge/follower. Metaphor, like projection, "breaches the boundary between world and self, the objective and the subjective."

There is a quote in the middle of the book where Evans says: "I do not wish integrity to be taken in some vague metaphorical sense; I mean it quite literally." This idea sums up Evan's writing perfectly. His writing style is literal. Very literal. Evan's does use metaphor in some wonderful instances, such as "Even were we to agree, we could notice that things do not develop by continuous extrusion through time like toothpaste squeezed from a tube." On the whole, however, his writing is straight down the proverbial line, from eyeball to vanishing point. He writes in a serious way about what he sees as a very serious subject.

In his conclusion, he notes that "architecture begins and ends in pictures," or what he calls 'arrested images.' Evans cautions us against our modern 'Leviathan/Narcissus' selves and the study of image for images' sake - don't "fall victim to the illusion of plans" he writes. He also warns that unlimited imagination needs checks and bounds, less, like Hamlet "we end up as kings of infinite space bounded in a nutshell."

In his final pages, he notes that "imagination is not held within the mind, but it is potentially active in all the areas of transition from persons to objects or pictures. It operates, in other words, in the same zones as projection and its metaphors." It is hard to know whether I agree with Evans, as it is hard to be sure that I have understood much of what he says. I do, however, appreciate the philosophical notions of imagination-as-transition, and the synergy it has with metaphor, which itself is a vehicle for transferring meaning.

My main complaint regarding this book would be the pictures – or lack thereof. There are so many frescoes and buildings referred to, but only a small percentage of them were illustrated. I spent much of my time reading, then turning to the computer to search for images to understand the text. Perhaps Evans and his publishers assumed his readers would have assumed-knowledge, and I am not the core readership, but there were surely too many examples to be familiar with all of them.

The abrupt ending reminds me of Kafka's The Burrow, which similarly remained unfinished due to the author's untimely passing. Here, as in Kafka's work, the non-resolution seems especially painful as you feel that Evans was close, so close, to finishing properly.

Although not specifically about my thesis topic, overall, this book is complex and insightful and deserves the (considerable) amount of time it takes to read and process.

[Halit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read couple chapters of the book earlier two years ago, struck by its content, I decided to dedicate more time for a new thoughtful study. Here it is in the beginning of 2022 that I revisit the book.

Reading about projections in architecture and its relation to geometry might not be a passion for many but the way Robin lays it is interesting. Revisiting some of the neglected corners of the profession and building a bridge that connects today's world with that of past.

Enlightening, truly enjoyable, and extremely rewarding

[Alfonso Romero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Treatise on the sempiternal art of building concepts with light.