The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture: Speculations on Ornament from Vitruvius to Venturi

by George Hersey

Book Overview

Why do architects still use the classical orders? Why use forms derived from ancient Greek temples when ancient Greek religion has been dead for centuries and when the way of life they expressed is extinct? And why decorate a contemporary courthouse with the bones, eggs, darts, claws, and garlands that an ancient Greek would recognize as the trappings of animal sacrifice? With these provocative questions George Hersey begins his recovery of the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262580896
• ISBN13: 9780262580892
• Release Date: February 1988
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 201 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

blood sport

its wonderful to read details regarding the birth of greek architecture, the birth of classicism. the heads above arches, those sorry warriors, beaten. the blood letting flutes, fat dripping thigh bones, guttae from the triglyphs if i remember correctly. no wonder classicism is so haunting - sometimes touching - the echinus shape on the capital of tuscan and doric is also the name for "hedgehog" - its gently sloping butt is the same and also for "little cake" as in the sloping crescendo of a risin cupcake's belly. humane architecture has its birth in death - modernism is only intellectual. a subjective dream of babel. in the study of words are clues to the strength of classical architecture.

Hersey at his best!

I bought this book and finished it the day it arrived. I couldn't put it down. It reads like a detective story for architecture enthusiasts. Hersey begins this work by introducing a cluster of tropes that at first seem disparate items. As he develops his arguments (and there are many) he weaves a beautiful tapestry with these tropes. Hersey brings the roots of Greek architecture alive (literally). If he were a philosopher I would be tempted to compare him to Nietzsche in his ability to uncover the conceptual ruins of ancient art. I also recommend Hersey's other work, but this one is my favorite.

A wonderful, provocative book

The book discusses the persistence of ideas and the ways that ancient belief systems can work their way right into our language and the way we perceive the world. This is certainly a major contribution to the philosophical literature architectural historians have produced.

Extroadinary

A marvelous marriage of language and the language of Architecture. Finally, someone has had the courage and talent to take this thing back to the (bloody) beginning. I have read it a couple of times, and given it to about 6 friends.