The Rule and the Model: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism

When it was first published in France in 1980, "La Regle et le Modele" was awarded the prestigious "Grand prix de la critique d'architecture". In this translation of her seminal work on architecture and urbanistic theory, Francoise Choay elucidates the entwined fate of two theoretical genres. One is represented by Alberti's architectural rule book "De re aedificatoria", the other by Thomas More's idealizing projection of "Utopia". Choay pursues the trajectories of these two genres in order to trace the genealogy of a third, more heterogeneous discourse associated with the term "urbanism". "The Rule and the Model" elaborates Choay's hypothesis about the specialized tradition of theorizing architecture and urbanism, the origins of which she locates in Western society with its belief in the constitutive role of architecture in founding and tranforming human institutions over time. She demonstrates that since its emergence in the 15th century, this discourse has been organized by two prinicipal formulations: the "rule" and the "model". Choay surveys and rearranges the landscape of conventional historiography, assigning new value to the familiar landmarks, and tracing down to our own epoch texts descended from Alberti's treatise and More's utopian model. She proposes a coherent system for deciphering our master texts as well as a new means for considering the implications of our "de facto" mastery of the built environment.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - the choice of words. Part 1 Texts on architecture and the city: texts as "realizers", the "De Re Aedificatoria", inaugural text, the communal edicts and the fate of their argumentation, the pseudo-treatises of the Renaissance and the classical age; true and false Utopias, the "Utopia" of Thomas More, inaugural text, after "Utopia", from Theleme to Clarens, from the "Nova Atlantis" to contemporary futurology, rhetorical Utopias; texts as "commentators", the objectification of urban space, commentaries for and against the city. Part 2 The "De Re Aedificatoria" - Alberti, or desire and time: the architecture of the "De re Aedificatoria"; a theory of edification; the beautiful and its antinomies; Alberti and Vitruvius - of supra-structural borrowing; Alberti and Vitruvius - narratives and histories in the "De Re Aedificatoria"; the architect-hero. Part 3 "Utopia", or beyond the mirror: model space and spatial model - a phenomenological approach, protrait space and model space, a universalizable device, model and eternity, the "Pharmakon"; the mirror stage and the utopian stage; the mythic construction; More and Plato; More and the problematics of the Renaissance. Part 4 The posteriority of the two paradigms: the fate of the architectural treatises, the first generation, the vitruvianizing regression, two exceptions - the treatises of Perrault and Scamozzi; the resistance of the utopian figure, the reductive Utopia of Morely, the canonical Utopia - "Sinapia" and hyperspatialization. Part 5 A new figure in the making - drift and deconstruction: science and Utopia versus the architectural treatise - the fragmented treatise of Patte; pre-urbanism. Part 6 The theory of urbanism: the "Teoria" as paradigm, scientistic and scientific discourse, medicalization and Utopia, the dominance of the Morean figure - the pseudo-Albertian traits, the works of the "I" of the "Trattatisto"; other theories - from Sitte to Alexander, scientific discourse - simulations and realities, the predominance of the signs of Utopia, the pseudo-Albertian traits, variations on the "I" of the "Trattatisto"; "Ouverture" - from words to things; appendix - analysis of the construction of the "De Re Aedificatoria".