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Page 1: Light, Wind, and Structure: The Mystery of the Master Buildersby Robert Mark;The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentaryby Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc;

Light, Wind, and Structure: The Mystery of the Master Builders by Robert Mark; TheArchitectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary by Eugène-EmmanuelViollet-le-Duc; M. F. HearnReview by: Carl F. Barnes, Jr.Isis, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Dec., 1991), pp. 732-733Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/233350 .

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Page 2: Light, Wind, and Structure: The Mystery of the Master Buildersby Robert Mark;The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentaryby Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc;

732 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 82: 4: 314 (1991)

dramas, the critical strategy that he uses at times is impeded by his romantic apprecia- tion that the Renaissance itself marks a golden age that might be a useful corrective to our own. Often the closing observations of his chapters draw some moral. For ex- ample, at the end of the chapter on Mar- lowe Mebane concludes that Doctor Faus- tus "cautions us to remember the dangers of casting aside too hastily our culture's in- herited awareness of the human capacity for idealistic rationalization of our own self- centered desires" (pp. 135-136). In a book that seeks to explore the association of the occult arts with a Renaissance longing for the Golden Age, it is ironic to find the Re- naissance itself idealized and viewed as a repository of lost values.

KENNETH KNOESPEL

Robert Mark. Light, Wind, and Structure: The Mystery of the Master Builders. (New Liberal Arts Series.) xviii + 209 pp., illus., index. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 1990. $19.95.

Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. The Ar- chitectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Read- ings and Commentary. Edited by M. F. Hearn. xx + 290 pp., illus., bibl. Cam- bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990. $14.95.

When I received these two books to re- view, it puzzled me why they should have arrived as a pair. When I had finished both, it became clear: both Viollet-le-Duc and Mark are ardent structural rationalistes, and these two books complement one an- other. Different as they are, however, each is meritorious in its own right.

Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814- 1879) was one of the first scientific restorers of French medieval buildings. While restor- ing, and saving from destruction, some of the most famous of such buildings, begin- ning with the Abbey of La Madeleine at Ve- zelay in 1840 and including the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, he developed a profound knowledge of historic architecture. Between 1854 and 1868 he published the ten-volume Dic- tionnaire raisonne de l'architecture francaise du XIe au XVIe siecle; it is through this work that historians of medi- eval architecture know Viollet-le-Duc best.

Of special interest to architectural histo- rians is the exposition (Ch. 4, "Restoring

Old Environments") on Viollet-le-Duc's approach to the restoration of historic buildings, a novel undertaking in his day. His intent was not historical accuracy-a point that has been controversial ever since-but "to reestablish . . . [the building being restored] in a complete condition that may never have existed at any given moment" (p. 6).

However, Viollet-le-Duc's great impact on modern architecture-M. F. Hearn claims that he is "generally acknowledged as the premier theorist of modern architecture" (p. xv)-came through his theoretical writings, most notably Entre- tiens sur l'architecture (1863, 1872), known in English as Discourses on Architecture. Architects as diverse as Antoni Gaudi, Hector Guimard, Le Corbusier, and, in America, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright were deeply affected by Viollet-le- Duc's theories, beautifully summarized by Hearn in his introduction (pp. 12-13).

The glory of Hearn's effort, however, is to have excerpted from the tens of thou- sands of pages of Viollet-le-Duc's writing passages that explain his views, and to have arranged these with bridges so that they flow reasonably smoothly. There is no substitute for reading the originals, of course; but one can gain great insight into Viollet-le-Duc specifically, and modern ar- chitecture in general, by reading Hearn's excerpts and bridges.

Viollet-le-Duc believed that the plan of any building should reflect its function; that its elevation should be determined by its plan, not vice versa; that materials should be used honestly; that structure should be expressed clearly; and that ornament should develop from structure and should be functional. In other words, technology was more important than design. These views were later turned into the cliche "Form follows function."

Robert Mark's first chapter is a litany of contemporary architectural disasters in which technology was slighted in favor of visual effects (the Sydney Opera, MIT's Kresge Auditorium, Boston's John Han- cock Tower) and is firmly in the tradition of Viollet-le-Duc.

Chapter 2 explains in simplified terms- but still not for the novice, despite his ear- lier disclaimer-the basic problems faced by historic builders in dealing with the real- ities of physics (compression, stress, ten- sion, wind loading, lighting, and the like)

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Page 3: Light, Wind, and Structure: The Mystery of the Master Buildersby Robert Mark;The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentaryby Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc;

BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 82: 4: 314 (1991) 733

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Illustration of Gothic construction and nomenclature, nave of Amiens Cathedral (from Mark, Light, Wind, and Structure).

and describes how Mark and his students developed physical and numerical modeling at Princeton University beginning in the 1960s. Mark believes that, using small plas- tic models, he can project and understand structural weaknesses in actual buildings.

Chapter 3 presents the results of model analysis of the Pantheon (A.D. 118-128) in Rome and Hagia Sophia (A.D. 532-537) in Constantinople, two of the greatest domed structures of antiquity. The two domes are of comparable span but different construc- tion; Mark proposes that Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorius of Miletus used win- dows at the base of Hagia Sophia neither to be audacious nor principally to create the visual effect of "floating" the dome above the walls of the building, but to reduce me- ridional cracking as found in the solid dome of the Pantheon. Chapter 4 concerns Gothic construction and summarizes what Mark covers in much greater detail in his Experi- ments in Gothic Structures (MIT, 1982).

Chapter 5, "Christopher Wren, Seven- teenth-Century Science, and Great Renais- sance Domes," proposes that in Saint Paul's Cathedral, London, Wren basically designed a medieval building whose flying buttresses and clerestory are concealed from the exterior by screen walls; Mark

also suggests that Wren hid the ingenious structure of his dome.

Mark concludes as he began, with a claim that good architecture cannot be cre- ated if technological considerations are not given due place in the planning process, noting that the dictionary definition of architecture includes design and construc- tion. Appropriately, his last chapter sum- marizes succinctly the influence of Viollet- le-Duc as a rationalist on twentieth-century architectural theory.

CARL F. BARNES, JR.

Nancy G. Siraisi. Medieval and Early Re- naissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. xiv + 250 pp., illus., figs., bibls., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1990. $37.50 (cloth); $10.95 (paper).

Nancy Siraisi's latest book is an introduc- tion to literate and technical medicine in Western Europe, placed in textual and in- stitutional contexts. The period covered is roughly the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, with an outline of earlier medi- cine and an epilogue on the fortunes of the topic in the Renaissance. The author argues

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