Interpretations of Vitruvius Critical misunderstandings

Extract

In ‘A Primitive exchange: on rhetoric and architectural symbol’ (arq 8/1, pp39–45), Stephen Frith mounts three distinct arguments. The Vitruvian story of the ‘agonistic’ origins of building, drawn from Book II, is initially used to claim that de Architectura proposes a primitive origin for the essential elements of architecture. This, through a somewhat curious imputation of Aristotelian thoughts on causality and limit, is then claimed as evidence (along with a supplemental argument regarding the importance of eloquence) of Vitruvius's use of rhetoric as a model framework for architecture (‘The way Vitruvius teaches us to design a work of architecture is similar to that for putting a speech together’). And the importance of the use of rhetoric is that ‘Rhetoric and architecture share the same symbolic heritage. Both rely on “figurative” language, the analogous relations between things … [from which it follows that] Proportion becomes a symbol, a metaphor of order … of substituting this for that’.