A book explaining the optical corrections of the Doric temple
The optical corrections of the Doric temple were first mentioned by the Roman architect and writer Vitruvius. According to him they were meant to prevent optical distortions that otherwise would make the temple look faulty. This explanation has ever since been repeated by most scholars although some of them maintain that the corrections were actually implemented to bring vitality to the otherwise too static appearance of the temple.
The author of this book is an architect and a historian of ideas. He claims that actually the corrections, as well as all the other, specifically Doric features of the Doric temple, were simply means of the architects to make the Doric temple an autarkic unity although it was composed of many, a unity in plurality. This ideal, based on the heroic outlook inherited from the heroic past, became the most fundamental ideal for the citizens of the Doric city-states along with the development of the polis. All most important features of life were organized according to this ideal: the polis itself, its military organization; the hoplite phalanx, and finally the Doric temple, which was the ultimate symbol of the city-state.
The Doric temple was developed from an uncertain beginning through many, often contradictory, phases until the final goal; the ideal of unity in plurality was finally achieved in classical temples precisely with the help of the optical corrections. The author also claims that the interpretation of Vitruvius was actually a misunderstanding of the words of Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, because of different ideals between Classical Greece and the early Roman Empire.
See more information or buy the book here.
See also my blog about the problems with present views about Doric temples here
The author of this book is an architect and a historian of ideas. He claims that actually the corrections, as well as all the other, specifically Doric features of the Doric temple, were simply means of the architects to make the Doric temple an autarkic unity although it was composed of many, a unity in plurality. This ideal, based on the heroic outlook inherited from the heroic past, became the most fundamental ideal for the citizens of the Doric city-states along with the development of the polis. All most important features of life were organized according to this ideal: the polis itself, its military organization; the hoplite phalanx, and finally the Doric temple, which was the ultimate symbol of the city-state.
The Doric temple was developed from an uncertain beginning through many, often contradictory, phases until the final goal; the ideal of unity in plurality was finally achieved in classical temples precisely with the help of the optical corrections. The author also claims that the interpretation of Vitruvius was actually a misunderstanding of the words of Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, because of different ideals between Classical Greece and the early Roman Empire.
See more information or buy the book here.
See also my blog about the problems with present views about Doric temples here
Reviews
"The Optical Corrections
of the Doric Temple" by Finnish architect Tapio Prokkola is a totally
accessible book for the lay reader with an interest in ancient Greek
architecture and culture, and a must read for the historian of
architecture and ideas. The work evolved from a post graduate thesis
undertaken before Mr. Prokkola turned his attention to the practice of
architecture, but he never escaped his fascination with the project, and
neither will the reader.
The said "optical corrections" have been a matter of well intentioned
but mainly muddled discourse ever since Vitruvius brought them to the
attention of the Western world in the first century BC. The Italians of
the 15th century Renaissance, enamored of their Roman heritage and
mistaking faux Greek for the real thing, accepted without reservation
his learned assumptions. By the 19th century, when Europeans actually
had the opportunity to explore the profusion of Greek Doric temple
architecture and develop some idea of its time line from the Archaic to
the Classical, they looked with the eyes of men of their own times: why
did the buildings of the temple precinct seem to have no awareness of
each other (the unfortunate lack of axial situation on the acropolis?);
why was there no sense of interior space (what was architecture, if not
space?); why the peristasis, and why did those rows of columns swell and
lean in strange ways? Either through lack of curiosity or diligence,
they answered in the voice of Vitruvius -- a man who was himself half a
millennium out of touch and who lived in an entirely different culture.
Prokkola gives a fine ride through time as he solves the mysteries of the "optical corrections." It is tempting to shout out the answers; it seems so utterly simple once it is explained. Instead, let us begin by conceding that it was not the Doric Greeks who were incapable of mastering their architecture. The temple was an explicit manifestation of their culture. As the culture changed over several hundred years, so the temple was "corrected." The book has drawings, plans, and photographs to illustrate every step of the thesis and is remarkable if for that alone. But, basically, Doric is Doric, and as Prokkola says in closing, "We don't have to love the ideals behind this architecture, but we do have to admire the skill and sensitivity of the best of the architects that cut these ideals into stone."
Herder wrote of words being pale shadow-play if one tries to master peoples, times and cultures. "An entire living picture of ways of life, of habits, wants, characteristics of land and sky, must be added, one must start by feeling sympathy with a nation if one is to feel a single of its inclinations or acts, or all of them together." Or architecture, we might add. Tapio Prokkola has provided us this opportunity.
Bookreview.com rates The Optical Corrections of the Doric Temple as Excellent.
Messages of gods and men
"The main focus of this study is on interpretation, i.e. we try to answer the question why”. Tapio Prokkola, Oulu architect, researcher and thinker, does not avoid difficult questions or shy away from proposing alternatives to the earlier interpretations by even well-known scholars. He writes that many of the interpretations of Vitruvius in fact misunderstand the architectural aspirations behind the Parthenon due to the different ideals of classical Greece and the Roman Empire. He also criticizes the viewpoint of eminent historian and Yale University Professor Emeritus Vincent Scully, according to which the surrounding nature controls the effect of the built environment, in which case the explanatory factors in the design would be the meanings that nature has implanted in humans.
The riddle of the definition of architecture, as well as Vitruvius' trinity of "firmitas, utilitas, venustas”, inevitably arises along such paths of inquiry, as does the concept of art. It is common to attempt to define art, but it seems nevertheless an impossible task. Some philosophers have attempted to define an artwork, which seems a justified approach. However, as soon as some definition is established an artist will come along and create a work that overturns the definition.
The problem with definitions is that they often concentrate on the form of the artwork. An artwork that fulfils expectations may be aesthetic, even beautiful, but it is not an artwork without a sense of meaning. This meaning will not, however, let itself be expressed conceptually, not even in literature or poetry.
If architecture would be experienced in the desired way, it would feel correct and beautiful. We could build a Doric temple even today, but no matter how beautiful we would make it, it would not feel "right” since it is not “true" tor the person who experiences lt. Our world view is quite different from that of the ancient Greeks, Prokkola states.
While Vitruvius deals with the Doric temple as an example of optical corrections, without which the temple would seem "wrong”, some scholars see the optical operations as an attempt to enliven a too static impression of the temple. Prokkola in turn transfers the optical problem to the level of social ideology. He believes that the Doric characteristics were simply the architect's means to consolidate the temple as an independent entity built up of many sub-solutions.
Prokkola believes that it is impossible to establish any theory of Greek archaic or classical architecture, because the original texts have disappeared in the stream of time. The key objectives of their architecture may never even have been recorded at all because they are based on the world view of their time and are perceived as self-evident and obvious. On the other hand, it may also be true in regard to Doric temples that there can be no centuries-long tradition of temple building without some sort of image of the ideal they strived tor. "This image, apparently well developed and based on the general cultural ideals of the time, is at the same time the subject of my research,” says Prokkola in elaborating the problem.
The book builds a bridge between form and meaning. The author's main argument is that the meanings of architectural forms cannot be derived from the forms themselves. In order to interpret the messages of a certain historical period of architecture one must understand the values of the people that built it.
In the sphere of ideas the main role begins to be taken by man, in his past, present and future guises. Prokkola quotes Pentti Renvall, according to whom history is not born without a relationship to man. Man ties the different events to a cohesive totality and thus creates a historical situation. In order to understand the achievements of the individual, historical research must reconstruct a common field of action for several people. Also an overall view of the context must be created because all topical background factors converge in the individual. The dominant structural prerequisite is man's attitude, which determines the meaning of each sub-factor within the totality of the situation.
What I took personally from Prokkola’s book is that it constructs a whole series of bridges to our own age, to our mental image of what this age is about, and to who we are - as well as who those people from a past time are, whose language and mind no longer convey a message to us, not to mention those people yet to come. I am reminded of V. A. Koskenniemi's poem "The Etruscan vase"(Elegioja ynnä muita runoja, 1917), in which a man had made a vase for his beloved and had drawn on its side three words. Koskenniemi - also a son of Oulu - rounds off the poem with the lines:
Who now will read my riddle?
A new strange language rings
around.
Hearts and kin pass away
and silent beauty alone will live.
Matti K. Mäkinen, professor architect SAFA.
Published in the Finnish Architectural Review 1/2012
Prokkola gives a fine ride through time as he solves the mysteries of the "optical corrections." It is tempting to shout out the answers; it seems so utterly simple once it is explained. Instead, let us begin by conceding that it was not the Doric Greeks who were incapable of mastering their architecture. The temple was an explicit manifestation of their culture. As the culture changed over several hundred years, so the temple was "corrected." The book has drawings, plans, and photographs to illustrate every step of the thesis and is remarkable if for that alone. But, basically, Doric is Doric, and as Prokkola says in closing, "We don't have to love the ideals behind this architecture, but we do have to admire the skill and sensitivity of the best of the architects that cut these ideals into stone."
Herder wrote of words being pale shadow-play if one tries to master peoples, times and cultures. "An entire living picture of ways of life, of habits, wants, characteristics of land and sky, must be added, one must start by feeling sympathy with a nation if one is to feel a single of its inclinations or acts, or all of them together." Or architecture, we might add. Tapio Prokkola has provided us this opportunity.
Bookreview.com rates The Optical Corrections of the Doric Temple as Excellent.
Messages of gods and men
"The main focus of this study is on interpretation, i.e. we try to answer the question why”. Tapio Prokkola, Oulu architect, researcher and thinker, does not avoid difficult questions or shy away from proposing alternatives to the earlier interpretations by even well-known scholars. He writes that many of the interpretations of Vitruvius in fact misunderstand the architectural aspirations behind the Parthenon due to the different ideals of classical Greece and the Roman Empire. He also criticizes the viewpoint of eminent historian and Yale University Professor Emeritus Vincent Scully, according to which the surrounding nature controls the effect of the built environment, in which case the explanatory factors in the design would be the meanings that nature has implanted in humans.
The riddle of the definition of architecture, as well as Vitruvius' trinity of "firmitas, utilitas, venustas”, inevitably arises along such paths of inquiry, as does the concept of art. It is common to attempt to define art, but it seems nevertheless an impossible task. Some philosophers have attempted to define an artwork, which seems a justified approach. However, as soon as some definition is established an artist will come along and create a work that overturns the definition.
The problem with definitions is that they often concentrate on the form of the artwork. An artwork that fulfils expectations may be aesthetic, even beautiful, but it is not an artwork without a sense of meaning. This meaning will not, however, let itself be expressed conceptually, not even in literature or poetry.
If architecture would be experienced in the desired way, it would feel correct and beautiful. We could build a Doric temple even today, but no matter how beautiful we would make it, it would not feel "right” since it is not “true" tor the person who experiences lt. Our world view is quite different from that of the ancient Greeks, Prokkola states.
While Vitruvius deals with the Doric temple as an example of optical corrections, without which the temple would seem "wrong”, some scholars see the optical operations as an attempt to enliven a too static impression of the temple. Prokkola in turn transfers the optical problem to the level of social ideology. He believes that the Doric characteristics were simply the architect's means to consolidate the temple as an independent entity built up of many sub-solutions.
Prokkola believes that it is impossible to establish any theory of Greek archaic or classical architecture, because the original texts have disappeared in the stream of time. The key objectives of their architecture may never even have been recorded at all because they are based on the world view of their time and are perceived as self-evident and obvious. On the other hand, it may also be true in regard to Doric temples that there can be no centuries-long tradition of temple building without some sort of image of the ideal they strived tor. "This image, apparently well developed and based on the general cultural ideals of the time, is at the same time the subject of my research,” says Prokkola in elaborating the problem.
The book builds a bridge between form and meaning. The author's main argument is that the meanings of architectural forms cannot be derived from the forms themselves. In order to interpret the messages of a certain historical period of architecture one must understand the values of the people that built it.
In the sphere of ideas the main role begins to be taken by man, in his past, present and future guises. Prokkola quotes Pentti Renvall, according to whom history is not born without a relationship to man. Man ties the different events to a cohesive totality and thus creates a historical situation. In order to understand the achievements of the individual, historical research must reconstruct a common field of action for several people. Also an overall view of the context must be created because all topical background factors converge in the individual. The dominant structural prerequisite is man's attitude, which determines the meaning of each sub-factor within the totality of the situation.
What I took personally from Prokkola’s book is that it constructs a whole series of bridges to our own age, to our mental image of what this age is about, and to who we are - as well as who those people from a past time are, whose language and mind no longer convey a message to us, not to mention those people yet to come. I am reminded of V. A. Koskenniemi's poem "The Etruscan vase"(Elegioja ynnä muita runoja, 1917), in which a man had made a vase for his beloved and had drawn on its side three words. Koskenniemi - also a son of Oulu - rounds off the poem with the lines:
Who now will read my riddle?
A new strange language rings
around.
Hearts and kin pass away
and silent beauty alone will live.
Matti K. Mäkinen, professor architect SAFA.
Published in the Finnish Architectural Review 1/2012
