The methodological approaches of Colin Rowe: the multifaceted, intellectual connoisseur at La Tourette

In England, the establishment of art history as a professional discipline was consolidated by the foundation of the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1932, and the Warburg Library's move from Hamburg to London the following year due to the rise of the Nazi régime; a political situation that caused the emigration of German-speaking scholars such as Fritz Saxl, Ernst Gombrich and Rudolf Wittkower. Colin Rowe, an influential member of the second generation of historians of modern architecture, was educated as part of this cultural milieu in the postwar period, studying at the Warburg Institute in London. In the ‘Addendum 1973’ to his first published article ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa’ (1947), Rowe acknowledged the Wölfflinian origins of his analysis – Saxl and Wittkower had studied under Heinrich Wölfflin – and the validity of his inherited German formal methods. This assumption, in the opinion of one of Rowe's students, the architectural historian and critic Anthony Vidler, indicated the ‘still pervasive force of the late nineteenth century German school of architectural history in England in the years after the Second World War’.

In England, the establishment of art history as a professional discipline was consolidated by the foundation of the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1932, and the Warburg Library's move from Hamburg to London the following year due to the rise of the Nazi régime; a political situation that caused the emigration of German-speaking scholars such as Fritz Saxl, Ernst Gombrich and Rudolf Wittkower. Colin Rowe, an influential member of the second generation of historians of modern architecture, was educated as part of this cultural milieu in the postwar period, studying at the Warburg Institute in London. In the 'Addendum 1973' to his first published article 'The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' (1947), 1 Rowe acknowledged the Wölfflinian origins of his analysis -Saxl and Wittkower had studied under Heinrich Wölfflin -and the validity of his inherited German formal methods. This assumption, in the opinion of one of Rowe's students, the architectural historian and critic Anthony Vidler, 2 indicated the 'still pervasive force of the late nineteenth century German school of architectural history in England in the years after the Second World War'. 3 The impact that the German scholar of Renaissance and Baroque architecture Rudolf Wittkower had on Rowe is well known and widely acknowledged in the academic work of architectural historians. 4 11 Rowe's interest in the American art historical tradition was not new. It emerged after two Italian encounters, first in Florence in 1947 and later in Rome in 1950. The former chance encounter was an art historical confrontation between his Canadian travelling companion, Sydney Key, and an employee of a New York art magazine, Libby Tannenbaum -an event that, in Rowe's own words, 'was amusing for me because between Syd and Libby there developed a conversation from which I was completely excluded.
[…] I felt myself reduced to utter insignificance'. 12 Even though Rowe described North America as 'odd' following the conversation, this initial encounter planted the seed for his eventual migration. The second chance encounter was with Arthur Brown, an architect who had been Georges Gromort's student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Rowe described him as a 'great connoisseur' with whom he had an 'architectural revelation'. 13 Through their interactions, Rowe realised that Wittkower was not the sole authority pertaining to the subject of the Italian architect Carlo Rainaldi but that, in the United States, the same concern already existed expressed in a different art historical language. 14 These two unexpected meetings broadened Rowe's mind and directly exposed him to an art and architectural approach that was completely different from the German academic tradition he had learned from Wittkower; a transformative occurrence that made him feel the need for his own experience in the United States. 15 Rowe's analytical method was expanded in the United States. His first steps were directed by Hitchcock, 16 26 This ambiguous duality in Rowe's analytical approach to architecture has been highlighted by Peter Eisenman. He believed that Rowe underwent a methodological change due to his rejection of Wittkower's analytic tradition. The key rupture was Rowe's move 'from the abstract and conceptual tradition to the empirical tradition'. 27 The greatest sign of this empirical shift was a sudden attraction to an English architecture that he had, before, refused. The architect Edwin Lutyens became a central figure for Rowe. According to the architectural historian David Watkin, Lutyens was the personification of Scott's ideals. He believed that The Architecture of Humanism influenced him, especially after having discovered a copy of that book, belonging to Lutyens, signed and dated from December 1914, when the architect was on board the ship that took him to India. 28 Vidler categorised Rowe's use of these two opposite methodological attitudes as 'Rowe's ambiguous relationship' between the professional art history, 'represented by Wittkower and the Warburgians', and the gentleman amateur, 'cultivated by the English school and championed by Bernard Berenson'. 29 Rowe gradually alternated Wittkower's analytic formalism with novel methodological approaches after his arrival to the United States. Rowe In contrast, Scott's humanism was described as the 'body-consciousness of Renaissance artistic production', according supremacy to the 'physical/ perceptual moment over the rational/intellectual one'. 24 Scott's book was recommended by Rowe and the Swiss architect Bernhard Hoesli in their design course at the University of Texas, an unexpected move considering Rowe's academic training with Wittkower, whose book was not included in the reading list. 25  'spatial mechanics of the monastery's precinct', 36 which, according to Rowe, was Le Corbusier's subtle attempt at a commentary on Athenian material. This argument was supported by a paragraph consisting of several quotations, all drawn from various chapters of Vers une Architecture, in which Le Corbusier discussed the intrinsic relationship that existed between the apparent absence of order of the Acropolis' plan and the surrounding landscape. Part of Rowe's excerpt derived from the chapter 'Three Reminders to Architects: III. Plan'. The passage was an adaptation of the caption that Le Corbusier wrote in regard to a figure from Auguste Choisy's 1899 text, Historie de l'Architecture. Le Corbusier used this image to illustrate the experiential reading of the processional route of the Acropolis, the spatial sequence that the Soviet film director Sergei M. Eisenstein labelled 'the perfect example of one of the most ancient films'. 37 Choisy's sequential interpretation played a significant role in the elaboration of Le Corbusier's idea of the promenade architecturale. The idea of movement was insinuated in Choisy's image through the discontinuous line that appeared as a central focus, a notion that was expanded in the original volume by figures that revealed the sequential perspectives of the marked itinerary. In this third 'reminder', Le Corbusier established a causal relationship between the conceptual and the empirical: the plan was the generator of architecture, holding in itself the essence of sensation, but the spectator's eye, while in motion, was responsible for perceiving volume and surface. This idea was graphically reinforced by Le Corbusier's axonometric projections extracted from Choisy's book, a graphic resource which, as Yve-Alain Bois pointed out, was 'a mode of enunciating virtual movement', 38 because it stated the temporality of perception without referring to a fixed point of view. Rowe's brief preamble was followed by an analysis of La Tourette based on an empirical methodology. This was supported by his subsequent narration of the casual visitor's sensory perception as he approached the monastery, the same critical method applied by his friend and pupil, James Stirling, in the essay 'Ronchamp: Le Corbusier Chapel and the Crisis of Rationalism' five years previously, published in 1956. Both authors deliberately selected Le Corbusier's most recent building and their analyses were based on visual perceptions experienced along a promenade architecturale, or, in Stirling's words, 'the usual procedure in examining buildings'. 39 This experiential mechanism of analysis had, in Eisenman's opinion, 'gradually become one of Rowe's favourite devices', because it was 'thought by Rowe to be free of an ideological content'. 40 The internal logic of the promenade derived from the in situ experience of the observer, an empirical observation of partiality without any predetermined general purpose. Eisenman's argument coincided with the idea that Rowe expounded in his 'Addendum 1973', where he recognised the validity of the Wölfflinian method Gestalt psychology to the visual perception of twentieth-century art, a topic that inspired Rowe and Slutzky to co-write the text 'Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal' during their time in Texas. 31 Rowe's gradual shift in voice was again exhibited through the comparison between 'Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' and 'Transparency', two articles that attempted to unveil the hidden structures behind analysed objects, but from different standpoints; the first from the conceptual and the second from the perceptual. Christoph Schnoor, while studying the role of architectural space in Rowe's essays, stated that 'since Rowe argues at times with Gestalt theories, it may be seen as perceptual, but only in the abstract sense of an analytical perception, an intellectual way of seeing rather than an immediate, sensory perception'. 32 Together with Gestalt psychology-derived analysis, Rowe pursued a perceptual approach but from an empirical standpoint. Rowe's first attempt to put forward an experiential analysis of a body in motion was in 'Transparency', where he described the spatial stratifications that an observer would experience in the hypothetical axial approach to the auditorium of the Palace of the League of the Nations. 33 In his next article, 'Lockhardt, Texas', written with John Hejduk in 1957, Rowe included real subjective descriptions (urban and architectural) of the promenade architecturale, started at the central courthouse. 34 These types of analyses based on experiential descriptions were expanded in his essay on La Tourette. It is necessary to deconstruct this work in order to reconfigure a picture of Rowe's intent.
'La Tourette': the conscious equilibrium of two opposing analytic traditions Rowe began the text on 'La Tourette' in the same way that he had begun 'Mannerism and Modern Architecture' ten years previously: with reference to Le Corbusier's Villa Schwob at La Chaux-de-Fonds. The blank panel of its facade once again assumed the primary role within Rowe's discourse, becoming the element of comparison with the blank wall at the north side of the church of La Tourette. Both buildings possessed planar surfaces that, although they 'absorbed' the eye, they were 'unable to retain its attention'. 35 This initial similarity allowed Rowe to establish a chronological framework between Le Corbusier's first building of historical importance and his more recent works. Furthermore, it constructed a coherence of composition and intellectual unity with the stylistic change that the architect developed after the Second World War. In the following paragraph, Rowe proposed a second comparison; this time, between the 'patterns of organisation' of the Athenian Acropolis and the 'Together with Gestalt psychology-derived analysis, Rowe pursued a perceptual approach but from an empirical standpoint.' history arq . vol 22 . no 3 . 2018 209 The methodological approaches of Colin Rowe Raúl Martínez Martínez intellectual qualities of architecture prompted them to analyse both buildings from these two diverse architectural analytical methodologies, with the ultimate aim of explaining the domain of influence of each criterion. In 'La Tourette', it was permissible for Rowe to use both methods in tandem. On the contrary, in 'Ronchamp' it was only possible for Stirling to use the first of these methods due to the 'entirely visual appeal' of the chapel and the 'lack of intellectual participation' 49 demanded from the visitor.
In this 'inside out' section, Rowe returned to his conceptual analyses of the late 1940s. The determining element of the definitive solution for the building was, he argued, subordinated to Le Corbusier's personal style, rejecting the functional programme as a decisive factor. Rowe insisted that the architect's individual stylistic unity and coherence was reflected in Le Corbusier's building, which maintained a consistency with the style of his previous designs. The final result was determined by a formal preference of the architect (Le Corbusier's insistence on volumetric economy) linked to an abstract category (the ideal form of a Dominican establishment). These aprioristic deductions were, Rowe asserted, connected antithetically to the concrete conditions of location. In other words, a dialogue was established between opposites: between architecture and landscape, between a 'statement of presumed universals' and a contrary 'statement of particulars', between the 'idealist gesture' and the 'empiricist veto'. 50 The merging of these elements constructed his blueprint for understanding La Tourette and its formal organisation. Rowe also added another immediate cause. La Tourette combined, within a single block, the structural model of the Maison Domino (a sandwich concept) exhibited in the living quarters and the structural schema of the Maison Citrohan (a megaron concept) used in the church: two structural systems that had previously been used independently of one another. Rowe deduced that this unusual combination was the cause of the 'abnormality' of the experience to which the visitor had been subjected. La Tourette appeared to be a sophisticated construction, able to 'charge depth by surface', to 'condense spatial concavities into plane', and to violate a unity of conception by forcing together opposite elements that instigated sensations like those of 'tension and compression', and 'openness and density'. 51 In 1976, a second, extended version of this article was included in the book, The Mathematics because it appealed 'primarily to what is visible' and thus, 'making the minimum of pretences to erudition'. 41 In his description of the itinerary, or promenade architecturale, Rowe incorporated material on the topographical experience of the place, its architectural experience and visual perceptions, as well as optical impressions of a subjective nature, qualified by individual feeling and personal thought. The language used was familiar with physiological aesthetics, including descriptions such as 'a bastion supporting gesticulating entrails' and 'one is obliged to exchange a reliable womb'. 42  This body-centred conception of architecture was articulated by Robert Maxwell, who highlighted that one of Rowe's changes in architectural education, since his experience at the University of Texas, was that he 'promoted buildings as people, with fronts and backs' and he added, with this influence 'students began saying things like "my building addresses the park"'. 45 For Rowe, this first section of the article represented the 'normal way of seeing' a building, an 'outside in' discourse that considered La Tourette as a perceptual structure, exposing the complexities of volumes and surfaces while approaching this 'machine à émouvoir'. In the second section, Rowe proposed an opposite formula with conceptual criteria in mind for the purpose of understanding La Tourette around what were, according to him, criteria for the 'normal way of making' 46 a building. This 'inside out' system of analysis suggested withdrawing 'attention from the more sensational aspects of the monastery and to consider instead what may be presumed to be its rationale'. 47 The article was a deliberate combination of two opposing methods: empiricalsensational judgement, and conceptual-intellectual judgement, an attitude that Maxwell summarised as 'the insistence [of Rowe] on seeing architecture at the intersection of thought and feeling'. 48  planes made the building a sort of 'dice', allowing it to free itself again from the limitations to which the idealist and empirical methodology had been subjected. This multifaceted methodological stance assumed by Rowe was not accidental, but rather, a deliberate response to the personal attributes of the architect who had designed La Tourette. In Rowe's opinion: [Le Corbusier] is one of the few architects who have suppressed the demands of neither sensation nor thought. Between thought and sensation, he has always maintained a balance; […] This is the obvious message; and thus, with Le Corbusier, the conceptual argument never really provides a sufficient pretext but has always to be reinterpreted in terms of perceptual compulsions. 54 Rowe's article on La Tourette is presented as the text where he intended to clarify a fundamental dilemma that had emerged in his reading of Vers une Architecture and that he had denounced a decade earlier in 'Mannerism and Modern Architecture': 'the incapacity to define an attitude to sensation'. 55 The enormous importance that Le Corbusier attributed to the intellectual content of architecture was in direct juxtaposition with the value that he placed on sensory perception in his book.
Although the business of architecture, as a plastic invention, was to establish invaluable emotional relationships, it was also an intellectual speculation that reflected thought. Le Corbusier's ambiguity between sensation and thought made it impossible for Rowe to provide an adequate answer to the meaning of words like 'comforting' ('comforting truths') or 'correct' (architecture is 'the masterly, correct and magnificent play of volumes brought together to light'), which could be interpreted indistinctly from an idealistic perspective ('the theory of the Renaissance') or from a sensorial point of view ('the theory of 1900'). 56 This unresolved dilemma from 1950 was interpreted in 1978 as an attitude of balance between the two concepts that were inherent to the architect himself. For Rowe, the truly great artistic personalities were capable of reaching this balance in the design process and, ironically Rowe himself achieved a similar equilibrium between empiricism and idealism in his analysis of La Tourette. In the same way that Le Corbusier understood architecture as a 'total invention, which depends exclusively on who designs it', 57 the insightful Rowe proposed that the tools of architectural analysis used to understand the complexities of La Tourette were those that gave an answer to the absolutely personal 'style' of Le impulse towards symbolic meaning. In order to substantiate the idea that modern architecture was not symbolically neutral, Rowe focused on one architect: Le Corbusier. Using Wittkower's text as a model, Rowe placed Le Corbusier into the role of Leon Battista Alberti and established comparisons that revealed the diverse symbolic content between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. While Alberti searched for the recovery of antiquity, Le Corbusier searched for a discovery, a standpoint that invoked a 'dialectic between a highly elevated conception of mechanism and a highly edited conception of antiquity'. 62 As in 'La Tourette', where Rowe represented Le Corbusier as the result of a dialogue between thought and sensation, in 'Iconography', Le Corbusier remained a product of these two approaches: the ideology of French positivism (engineering) and the influence of Vienna with its theories of pure visibility (aesthetics). Rowe ended the chapter by alluding to two drawings of 'opposition' by Le Corbusier: 'the face of Medusa and the sun' (published on the cover of the book) and 'The Tasks of the Engineer/The Tasks of the Architect'. These images revealed Rowe's deep-rooted fascination with establishing a dialectic between non-compatible elements, speculating on the product that emerged from their union. It appeared to be the resolution of the last two chapters, 'Mechanism' and 'Organism', where Rowe defined the lineage of these two title concepts within the French mechanicist tradition and its counterpart, the German and Anglo-American organicist tradition, deducing that modern architecture was a composite of both.
The same approach to placing opposing entities side-by-side recurs in several of Rowe's own texts but, in 'La Tourette', this duality is more pronounced because it is interwoven on different levels. First, within the structure of the article, the empirical methodology professed by Scott was complemented by the conceptual methodology supported by Wittkower, equipping architectural criticism with a multifaceted lens that enriched the discipline. Second, through the interpretation of this singular work, Rowe revealed that the Dominican monastery itself was a combination of two opposed structural systems represented by the Maison Domino (which emphasised horizontal planes) and the Maison Citrohan (which emphasised vertical planes). Third, through the intimate analysis of the building, Rowe offered insights into the nuances of Le Corbusier's ambiguous personality. This recurring interest in the expression of dialectics was one of the reasons why Rowe experienced such an attraction to Le Corbusier and his architectural work. Through his in-depth analysis, La Tourette became central to Rowe's stimuli, and forged a new way of thinking and understanding into the folds of modern architecture. 63 This fixation on dialectics comprised the foundation of Rowe's academic philosophy, as evidenced when he defined the duty of the educator within these same parameters: first, 'to encourage the student to believe in architecture rejection of the spirit of the age initiated in the United States, an echo that traces back to 'Character and Composition', which Eisenman considered a premonition of the Rowe who rejected 'modern architecture, the zeitgeist, and all that is purported to be rational and scientific'. 59 The zenith of this  In the 'destructive' portion, Rowe attempted to display and dismantle what he considered to be the constellation of ideas that gave rise to the emergence of a new architecture after 1919, a collection of fantasies that had, according to him, become devoid of meaning, held together by prejudice and blind passion. In 'Epistemology', Rowe scrutinised the paradox of two doctrines that remained invisible within the roots of modern architecture: the architect seen as the 'dedicated servant of technology' (a positivist argument about the architect as a scientist) and also the 'executive of the Zeitgeist' (a historicist argument about the architect as a protagonist of the will of the epoch).
In 'Eschatology', Rowe discussed the fallacy of the modern architect assuming a prophetic role, responsible for the salvation of the twentieth century while severing from the visual chaos of the 'diseased' nineteenth century. The objectives of these two chapters paralleled those pursued by Scott through his fallacies: to demonstrate how untenable these misconceptions were, to trace how they arose, and to reveal why they were still accepted. It appears that Rowe concurred with Scott's observation, that 'in these matters, it is not enough to argue against an opinion: the opinion will remain unless the roots of it are exposed'. 61 The third chapter, 'Iconography', introduced the 'constructive' part of the text. Just as Wittkower had made a decisive contribution by connecting the problem of form and meaning of Renaissance architecture, in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, Rowe sought to forge a similar path with reference to the earlier twentieth century, unravelling the supposed opposition of modern architecture to the nineteenth-century and Modern architecture', second, 'to encourage the student to be sceptical about architecture and Modern architecture', and third, 'to cause the student to manipulate, with passion and intelligence, the subjects or objects of his conviction and doubt'. 64