Colin Rowe: 1920–1999


Colin Rowe:

1920-1999

Profoundly gifted as both a studio
teacher and a scholar, Colin Rowe's
erudition was legendary, his insights
extraordinary, his influence immense.
James Stirling was just one, if perhaps
the most distinguished, of his many
students. But perhaps his greatest
significance is, as Robert Maxwell
suggests, the fact that he 'established
a crucial continuity in architectural
culture". He is remembered here by
Maxwell, John Sergeant, Peter Carl and
Leon Satkowski. Also reproduced is a
perspective of the building designed
by Colin Rowe and Brian Richards
during theirfirst visit to North America.

Colin Rowe was an architect who
made his mark through his ideas
and writings rather than his built
work. In 1995 he was awarded the
Royal Institute of British Architects'
Gold Medal, only the second
scholar in the twentieth century to
receive the honour.

From the beginning, he seems to
have inhabited an ideal landscape,
that landscape where thought and
feeling combine in an event. It is as
if he faced the world the way the
figures do in a Claude Lorrain
painting, overwhelmed by the
architectural constructions, yet not

intimidated by them. His
observations were best heard in
front of the evidence, and, since his
subject was architecture, that
meant walking.

There was a period when the
coincidence of Colin Rowe and
Henry-Russell Hitchcock meant
prolonged walks through the city
of London, extending into the
small hours, examining the
evidence as it presented itself to the
eye. This immediacy had a lot to do
with Rowe's appeal, and it is
represented in both his writing
and lecturing style as a

letters arq • V0I4 • noi • 2000



io arq • V0I4 • noi • 2000 obituary

characteristically conversational
tone, as with most of the essays in
his bookAs I was Saying (1995). Rowe
could force a photograph to give up
its hidden qualities, to move before
one's very eyes.

Colin Rowe was born in 1920 in
Yorkshire, at Rotherham, but his
accent was metropolitan. He won
a scholarship to Liverpool
University in 1939 to study at the
School of Architecture, graduating
in 1946 following war service. He
continued his studies at the
Warburg Institute in London under
Rudolf Wittkower - his thesis was
on the theoretical drawings of
Inigo Jones - and spent a year on a
Smith-Mundt/Fulbright
Scholarship at Yale, studying with
Henry-Russell Hitchcock.

As a contemporary of Rowe's at
Liverpool University I succumbed to
his charm at once, and found it
difficult to throw it off. After he was
invalided out of the Parachute
Regiment in 1944 with a broken
back we were students together,
and after I returned from war
service in India he was lecturing at
the university and was my tutor for
thesis. He was and remained my
mentor, the one who awakened me,
as so many others, to the
excitement of the idea built.

Rowe was attracted by the
openness of American society
(he became an American citizen in
1984), and by the extraordinary
effect this freer horizon had on
architectural models imported
from Europe. After his year at Yale,
he travelled in the United States,
working on a number of
architectural projects before
accepting a post in 1953 at the
University of Texas at Austin.

During only five semesters when
he taught there he not only
revolutionized the teaching of
architectural design by bringing in
European models, but he alerted
Americans to their own heritage by
his praise for the city of Lockhart in
Texas and generally, by pointing to
the dynamic quality of American
settlements, and the American
revitalization of the Classical. It was
his peculiar virtue to be able to
imbue the present moment of
creation with an excitement
derived from past moments of
creation, and students were often
sent to the library to check out a
plan of a Palladian villa before
drawing up their plan for a
secondary school.

Between 1958 and 1962 Rowe was
a lecturer at Cambridge University,
where among other things he

became adviser to Peter Eisenman
and encouraged h i m to study
Terragni. Rowe's enthusiasm for the
inherent contradictions within
Italian Mannerism, allied to
frequent trips to Italy, created
something of a legend, and when
he came to inhabit the Palazzo
Massimi, during a spell running
the Rome programme of Cornell
University, it seemed perfectly
appropriate, a personal apotheosis,
even though his rooms were in the
attic. From that eyrie he could hear
the footsteps of the last scion of the
family promenading in the salone.
The Italian inheritance seemed like
a prolonged and radiant sunset.
Some warmth from Italian art may
also have promoted his long
friendship with the New York
architect Judy de Maio.

Where Rowe had found Austin
disruptive, he found Cambridge
exasperating. In 1962 he returned
to America, and from then on
taught at Cornell University, except
for prolonged visits to Italy which,
by his own admission, made him
more or less italianizzato. At Cornell
his influence was directed at city
planning, not in the direction of
management, but of exploring that
margin where city form and
architectural form act together to
create a sense of place and occasion.
The current movement in new
urban design is a direct result of
the enthusiasm he inspired. In his
half-basement room at Cornell,
hemmed in by seemingly eternal
snows, he confirmed his opinions
through the books that
surrounded him, and his erudition
was based on an unerring sense of
character, and hence of
provenance.

Rowe will be remembered for his
conversations as much as for his
writings, which nevertheless,
through the good offices of his
editor, Alex Caragonne, form in the
end a considerable corpus,
committed to paper only in his
final years. His life was bent on the
discoveries that come only through
close reading; he did not pursue a
career.

A master of hermeneutics, he
thought nothing of cultural
studies and preferred to ignore 'the
whole semiology thing'. His first
essay, 'The Mathematics of the Ideal
Villa' (first published in The
Architectural Review, 1947), was in
some ways his best, but all his
essays were tremendous in showing
how modern architecture can be
understood through, the subtleties
of form that it employs. In this way

he established a crucial continuity
in architectural culture.

ROBERT MAXWELL

Colin Frederick Rowe, architectural
educator and critic: born Rotherham,
Yorkshire, 27 March 1920; Lecturer,
University of Texas, Austin, 1953-56;
Lecturer, University of Cambridge,
1958-62; Professor of Architecture,
Graduate School of Architecture and
Urban Design, Cornell University,
1962-85; Andrew Dickson White
Professor in Architecture, 1985-90
(Emeritus); died Washington DC 5
November 1999

(Reprinted with the consent of The
Editor, The Independent - in which it
was published on 8 December 1999)

Scrutinizing buildings like a text
It was probably October 1958:5 or 6
p.m., pitch dark, freezing cold with
folds of damp fog wrapping
themselves round Cambridge's
yellow streetlights. It was my first
tutorial session with Colin. I had
just come from rowing on the river.
The flat was in a college house near
Magdalene (the curved-wall end flat
in the 1930s Causewayside block of
general memory was yet to be). He
greeted me, wearing white shorts,
perhaps a white tennis shirt, and
barefoot. The temperature inside
was tropical. There was a chrome
Pither stove which he tended
religiously, maintaining the
conditions of a sauna.

I was shell-shocked. Nothing in
my small life had prepared me for
this. Colin must have got me over
my embarrassment and started the
conversation, but I cannot
remember it. Nothing was said
about supervisions1 but I was to see
him every week until my fifth year
when he abruptly disappeared, to
be replaced by Jim Stirling. Of
course I assumed that he had had
this role for aeons, but in truth it
was probably one of his own first
supervisions.

What we embarked on was a
close interrogation of the Oeuvres
Completes of Le Corbusier. With
Colin I mentally crawled through
every centimetre of the villas of the
'20s and '30s. We did this through
photographs, plans and sections
and the paintings, which he
compared more with those of Leger
than Ozenfant, Corb's fellow Purist.
The material we had was grey, or
black and white photographs, and
showed buildings to my eyes of
such alien boxiness that I dared say
nothing. But so well did Colin do



obituary arq • V0I4 • n o i • 2000 11

Proposed Sailors' Home, Vancouver, designed by Colin Rowe and Brian Richards, 1952-53 for Sharp,
Thomson, Berwick and Platt. Perspective of Garden Court. This building was later built in slightly
modified form as the Blue Cross Seamen's institute. (Collection Brian Hemingway Architect Ltd.)

his work that I became myself a
proselytizer, until that is, my own
first exposure to the Villa Savoie.

Today's wealth of analysis, of
Curtis, of von Moos, of a dozen
more, was all in Colin's head; he
was writing it, or laying its
foundations. With hindsight, it was
a huge privilege to be working with
just him, and the Oeuvres in all their
didactic freshness. There were
numerous deviations from our
road, many far above my head, and
all I now realize following some
current or recent Rowe work. For
example he had a passion for
Mannerism, and I remember
writing my only essay for him,
trying to wring something cosmic
from my analysis of Parmegiano's
Madonna del Collo Lungo. However,
what was ostensibly a taste for
Giulio Romano, turned out 1 think
to be a more general predilection
for the warping and subversion of
given rules (Laurenziana Library
stair-lobby, Florence). Indeed I
suspect that in the clubby workings
of those days this more general
trait may have brought about his
departure.2

In design, the given rule was
Modernism, Corbu's Maison
Domino, and he would grind the
wall-free column grid into our
skulls. He never tired of drilling
this into our overlays or our
sketchbooks: he did it in that
quivering, intense way with a stub
of pencil pushed round and round
so hard that it often went right
through the paper or left an
indelible mark on the board
beneath. Once he felt that he was
understood he would urge its

subversion, but the problem was
how, not just for me, but also I
think, for him. He did not or could
not draw, and words were his guide.
He spoke frequently of the Polish
School at Liverpool;3 among their
number had evidently been an
individual who could achieve this
alchemy; near-symmetries were set
up, but broken, and by so doing,
ambiguities introduced. My friend
Sumet Jumsai showed him plans of
Thai and Indian temple complexes
and Colin was silent. I like to think
that his later American students
translated the challenge into
complete work, but this may have
been wrecked on the rather littoral
reefs of early Michael Graves or all
Richard Meier.

My closest contact with Colin in
the studio was in second and
fourth years. First year studio had
been firmly and refreshingly run
by Sandy Wilson, so imagine our
reaction to the amazing
combination of Colin and Peter
Bicknell4 as joint second year
masters. Colin started us off with a
block planning project - a
shopping centre, bank, perhaps a
library, complex along the south
side of a large open green space in
the city, Parker's Piece. I did this
well and seemed to go up in his
estimation. He also seemed to enjoy
my interpretation of our next
project, Dons' Housing for
Peterhouse. The brief called for
accommodation for a number of
couples without children, and I
assumed that this was because they
were old rather than young, and
disposed them into a severe,
asymmetrical group of mastabas,

in effect a funerary complex.
Colin encouraged individual

struggle for vocabulary at a time
when the school was
overwhelmingly Brutalist in
expression and I suspect that this
catholic attitude showed in our
design examinations.5 It would be
fascinating to exhume that work,
but it was probably destroyed. In
third year Peter Eisenman appeared
as Colin's PhD student5 and our last
contact was during fourth year
while I was involved in a gigantic
housing project. He helped me find
the context for my fifth year
project: the Cadogan Estate in
Knightsbridge, where the leases
were about to fall in.' It was
salutary to complete it without
him.

Colin showed us how to
scrutinize buildings like a text; his
scholarship was erudite and
breathtaking for us and he won our
admiration. It was good that so
many of us were there at the RIBA to
witness him receiving the Gold
Medal.

JOHN SERGEANT

Notes
1. A supervisor at Cambridge is

appointed by a Director of Studies,
her/himself being responsible to
the College of the student, not the
Department of the University. To
this day I do not know what Colin's
role was: he never told me, and I
remember no supervisions with
anyone else. Universal practice was
learn as you go'.

2. There was a student legend that the
Cambridge Senior Common Rooms
had been set aflutter by Colin's MA
ceremony (this honorary degree is
conferred on all non-Cambridge
lecturers in order to enable them to
'belong'). On being introduced to
the Congregation, in Latin, Colin
had seemingly failed to walk across
the Senate House to kneel before
the Vice Chancellor, but had
crawled as before an Eastern
potentate to finally end up
prostrate with his head on the
cushion. There was even a version,
which went on, that so encumbered
with scarlet and ermine was the VC
that he could not lay his hands
upon Colin's, which were fluttering
at his feet (the correct position
being clasped in prayer, a quaint
medieval memory). So bulldogs
(non-academic University servants
with great boots and legendary
running powers deputed by
Proctors to catch any student not
wearing a gown on the streets by
night) were dispatched to elevate
him for this purpose. However



arq • V0I4 • noi • 2000 obituary

these gentlemen were themselves
either carrying an axe, or chained
to a copy of the Statutes. So, all in
all, his Degree induction was less
solemn than the norm. Even if it
was untrue this story was for us
bound into Colin's mystique.

3. At that time, the Liverpool
University School of Architecture
where Colin studied and later
taught was, together with the
Architectural Association, the
leading British architecture school.
During Colin's time in Liverpool,
the Polish School, made up of exiled
staff and students, was established
there and operated parallel to its
English host.

4. Peter Bicknell was the architect for
the 1930s Fen Court at Peterhouse
and lectured on British
Architecture. We thought him past
the best of his powers and knew
nothing of his polymath nature. He
was an authority on J. M. W. Turner
and the Picturesque and his annual
firework parties were apparently a
local sensation.

5. These took the form of brief and
site given cold, and designed and
drawn up in the examination
room; six hours or one day for first
year, two days for second and three
days for third. I suspect that today's
students would be distraught at the
prospect, with no opportunity to
seek a tutor's opinion. They should
be revived.

6. Peter set us a sketch design for a
pedestrian bridge over the Mi
motorway and came over like a
football coach: 'You gotta work like
hell'.

7. On our walks in west London a
bump in the road would identify a
building campaign or change of
titled estate. He knew every event,
every date, acquisition by marriage
or inheritance. The streets spoke
with him.

The gossipy nature of these
footnotes has been intentional, and
tries to echo the endless sub-texts
and anecdotes of our mentor,
without perhaps his occasional
waspishness, nor, of course, his
virtuosic sentence structure. J. S.

A distant recollection
Colin Rowe was always a fairly
remote figure - even when we
worked together briefly, I gave him
less than he gave me. Perhaps this
was more common than others
who worked with him longer led
me to suspect; but none of these
earned specific annoyance in print
... a matter of personal regret,
therefore. However, the remoteness
itself had many levels which

required several years to
understand.

Architecture at Princeton in the
late '60s was dominated by Le
Corbusier and Colin Rowe. Their
physical absence - Le Corbusier had
died the previous year and Rowe
was teaching at Cornell - allowed
them to mingle as one
authoritative voice. My teachers at
that time included Peter Eisenman
and Anthony Vidler, both Rowe
students at Cambridge, as well as
Anthony Eardley and Michael
Graves, both close adherents of
Rowe's interpretation of
architecture. Ken Frampton was a
more independent member of this
circle; but even Emilio Ambasz,
who arrived from Argentina as a
proselyte of Semiotics, was
responsible for assembling a
samizdat collection of Rowe's
articles nearly 15 years before the
publication of Mathematics of an
Ideal Villa and OtherEssays. Eisenman
concentrated upon the formalistic
side of Rowe's interests, Vidler upon
the political side and Graves the
architectural synthesis of Le
Corbusier, Cubism and Terragni.
Rowe was the spiritual, largely
legendary, centre of this triangular
division of a fairly comprehensive
approach to architecture and its
possibilities.

The importance of Rowe's
concern for decorum eluded us at
that time. Where, for example, we
indulged in elaborate analyses of a
recently completed addition to the
Institute for Advanced Study, Rowe
asked simply, 'Can you imagine
Einstein having to work here?' Nor
did we strive to link this question of
decorum to Rowe's argument,
which had the strange quality of
deploying examples from history as
if they were his own works. In many
senses they were, since his
interpretations were unlike those
of conventional architectural
history or the pronouncements of
architects themselves. However, the
effect was to make him transparent
for the history of which he spoke, a
history which only came through
him. The uniqueness was enhanced
by his manner. By comparison with
my American colleagues, Colin
spoke, or rather declaimed, like the
House of Lords, or R. H. Tawney, and
his intense eyes always seemed to be
focused somewhere beyond
immediate circumstances. Once
heard, one could not forget the
voice; and he wrote as he spoke.

Rowe's arguments were always
aimed at current practice and
understanding - he seemed to

operate in an eternal present more
nuanced and relevant than that of
Giedion. It was possible to travel
from Italian Mannerism via
Letarouilly to Le Corbusier and
Terragni without pause. Even when
the argument was concerned to
demonstrate the great difference
between the richness of Mannerist
architecture and urbanism by
comparison with the present, the
argument itself depended upon the
intrinsic properties of the
architecture. Born out of Rowe's
remarkable powers of observation,
such demonstrations paradoxically
made it possible for students to be
far more attentive to architectural
physiognomy than to the culture
which the architecture seemed so
effectively to embody. Emblematic
in this respect was his apercu that
the Unite d'Habitation was
effectively cast from the mould of
Vasari's Uffizi. Everything that
needed to be said about the urban
discontinuity and the architectural
continuity seemed to reside in that
pair of slides. Correlatively, the
cultural integrity and richness of
present proposals depended upon
a fastidious attention to a
particular physiognomic
complexity that possessed its
highest horizon in the issue by
which Rowe attained his ultimate
remoteness - phenomenal
transparency.

The formalism which supported
such exercises did not become
apparent until the appearance, in
the early '70s, of a counter-
argument launched by Robert
Venturi and Vincent Scully at Yale.
They deployed similar means -
readings of plan-configuration,
architectural physiognomy and
iconography - to reach cultural
ends opposite to those of Rowe.
What was known on the East Coast
of America as the battle of the
Whites and the Greys effectively
summarized the instability of
formal argument - the accusations
of'elitism' levelled at Rowe came
from a species of populism made
safe for university consumption.
However, the conflict had the effect
of displacing attention from the
means to the cultural content, and
it was on this that Tafuri pounced
shortly afterwards in his article
'L'architecture dans le boudoir'.

At this time, American
architectural debate was divided
roughly between the massive
industrial icons of Kevin Roche, a
revived International Style, the
small town iconography of Venturi
and the typology emerging from



obituary arq • V0I4 • n o i • 2000 13

the Fifteenth Triennale. In 1977,
Michael Graves arranged that I
work with Judy DiMaio and, later,
Stephen Peterson, assisting Rowe
on his portion of the Nolli Plan (the
Forum, Palatine, Aventine and
Celio) for the Roma Interrotto
exhibition. I was extremely
surprised to discover that Rowe
intended to pursue this exercise in
re-opening a dialogue with
tradition by adopting a scenario in
which Napoleon's son - the Roi de
Rome - inhabited a renovated
Palatine Palace, and by developing
our contribution strictly within
those historical circumstances. I
was even more surprised to
discover that all the formal
apparatus that had been
transmitted to me by his students
was, for Rowe himself, only the
visual support for an elaborately
detailed cultural vision, for which
the Roma Interrotta contribution
was a minor manifesto. The most
significant memory of the event
was Rowe devouring in an
afternoon an entire roll of yellow-
trace in re-drawings of the urban
lay-out, all the while accompanying
his efforts with a running
commentary upon the presumed
inhabitants and their disposition
in the plan. Princes, princesses,
nobles, courtiers and members of
every other level of society were
summoned as if they were known
to him personally and were very
much alive. This was - and still is -
utterly unique in my experience: as
if Baedeker and Goethe of the
Italian Journey had taken up a felt-
tip pen and were recalling the town
from which they had come for the
benefit of a contemporary
American audience.

Indeed, I was so perplexed by the
historicism that I missed the point.
Moreover, I think the historicistic
and iconographic excesses of the
immediately ensuing Post-
Modernism have contributed to a
general missing of the point,
particularly since much of its
imagery seemed so similar to
Rowe's. From the early essay,
'Lockhart, Texas', through Collage
City to The Architecture of Good
Intentions (each separated by 20
years), Rowe's affirmation of
nineteenth-century towns and
architecture was only partly
concerned with spatial
sophistication or even the details of
planning, ornament and furniture
which so obviously absorbed his
consummate depth of perception
and passion. All this was the
scenography of a society dependent

upon individual strength of
character, depth of commitment,
profound sensitivity, and a wit
occasionally touching on the
violent (neither, therefore, the
mono-cultures of early Modernism
nor a vacuous pluralistic
polyculturalism). The 'aristocratic'
content of this society had little to
do with birthright and far more to
do with a moral or political
imagination, integrity and
generosity of understanding.

What Athens or Rome had been
to earlier generations, the
nineteenth-century European city
was for Rowe, useful particularly
since it required less of an exercise
in translation for present
consumption. It was not 'laid up in
heaven' but, like his conception of
Utopia, a 'tragic' manifestation of
human possibilities in this world.
Unable to find a setting suitable for
Einstein in even the best Modernist
architecture, he resorted to, for
example, Early Romantic Munich as
an approximate paradigm. The
'problem of conscience which no
responsible person can evade' (The
Architecture of Good Intentions) is
intrinsically remote from everyday
needs and desires. It is a matter of
cultural imagination, and resides
in its freedom. If this, ultimately, is
the source of Rowe's remoteness, it
is also so remote from present
architectural or cultural
preoccupations as to pass
unrecognized. Of Rowe's rich
legacy, however, it deserves to be
recalled first.

PETER CARL

Looking with Colin
In his writings and teaching, Colin
Rowe fundamentally altered our
understanding of modern
architecture by demonstrating its
relationship to the world of ideas.
Although this notion is considered
self-evident by many architects, it is
not universally embraced by
historians of art and architecture.
In part this is due to a
misunderstanding by those who
saw his writings as an apology for a
kind of formalism while ignoring
his readings of Modernism's
historical, ideological and aesthetic
roots. In part this is also due to
Colin's generosity in sharing ideas
with friends and colleagues before
their (often much-belated)
appearance in print. But most of
all, Colin's historical method - if he
can be said to have one - combined
aspects of formal study, literary
biography and political history, the

history of ideas, and his own
experiences. This form of
speculation ran against the current
of Germanic positivism, still the
prevailing ideology in the study of
architectural history.

This can be illustrated by Colin's
sometimes tenuous relationship
with Rudolf Wittkower, his first
and major teacher. Colin frequently
remarked that The Mathematics of the
Ideal Villa and Mannerism and Modern
Architecture were not well received
by Wittkower, though both were
close to his mentor's interests both
in and out of print. There were
suggestions that the articles
involved the misuse of historical
concepts and their evidence was
wrong. Presumably Colin's
historical career would be best
served by a strong dose of that
German elixir, archival research.
Although the relationship between
the two men remained cordial,
Colin was miffed when he was not
invited to contribute to the
Wittkower Festschrift.

The architectural essay rather
than the scholarly book or article
was Colin's preferred literary form.
For this task he was self-taught but
remarkably well prepared. Blessed
with a prodigious memory, he
could recite long passages from
poets as diverse as Shakespeare and
Byron, or historians as dissimilar as
Mary McCarthy and Henri Focillon.
His personal library was extensive
and reflected his catholic taste for
Serlio or Scamozzi in their original
editions, the collected works of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, the diaries of
James Lees-Milne, or the
biographies of the notable families
of Europe and America. Colin took
particular delight in reciting the
family trees of royalty, and when
Princess Diana died, all work
stopped because friends
continually telephoned for his
prediction on the future of the
House of Windsor.

Colin's fondness for the minutiae
of interpersonal relationships
allowed him to detect subtleties of
wit and (sometimes biting)
humour. As an outsider to the
rarefied world of art history, Colin
had little patience for the
attribution of late medieval
paintings and once described
Hitchcock's unfinished PhD
dissertation as the 'designated
pursuit of Merovingian bric-a-brac'.
About Minneapolis he remarked
how skyways could be anchored by
an upper level hotel lobby at one
end and the ladies' lingerie section
of a department store on the other.



14 arq • V0I4 • n o i • 2000 obituary

On the other hand, Colin observed
that in Charlotte irony had become
a tragedy; here skyways were an
agent of racial segregation, with
black on the street and whites in
the passageways above.

Above all, Colin recognized the
mythic dimension of writing
history and was not above creating
a good myth just when one was
required. The classic example is, of
course, the fictitious late Father
Vincent Mulcahy, S.J., invented by
Colin for the Romalnterrotta
exhibition in 1978. Even though
fake scholarship was in keeping
with the idea of the exhibit, there
were unintended consequences of
the spoof. It surprised Colin how
many readers thought that the
yarn was genuine, and discretion
prevents me from revealing the
name of a noted historian of
Roman urbanism who, knowing
my ties to Colin, wanted to borrow
my copy of Father Mulcahy's
magisterial achievement, the
catalogue to Rome: the Lost and
Unknown City.

When infirmities confined Colin
to his Washington apartment, his
appetite for reading increased, as
evidenced by the heavy cartons of
books that would arrive with
regularity every several weeks.
Although he never consciously
attempted to keep up with 'the
literature', friends would bring
him books by Richard Sennett or
Henri Lefebvre, usually for their
mutual provocation. The New York
Review of Books and Book Review
Section of the Sunday New York
Times were inexhaustible resources
for conversation. Even if Colin read
widely, he was disarmingly candid
about his lack of interest in specific
areas, most notably in ancient and
medieval art and architecture.

Colin's writings and teaching
were the consequences of the
authors whom he read with
admiration. His respect for Karl
Popper and Isaiah Berlin is well-
known, but none mattered more to
him than Bernard Berenson.
Although Colin appreciated
Berenson's perceptive observations
and frequently quoted BB in his
writing, I suspect that his respect
for the Renaissance art connoisseur
and passionate defender of Western
culture went deeper. The core of
the admiration lay in Berenson's
capacity for the sustained visual
study of paintings and the
emphasis on their intrinsic values.
To claim that Berenson's aesthetics
influenced Colin's concept of
modern architecture would be a

gross exaggeration. Admittedly, the
influence of Berenson is indirect
and reached Colin through S. J.
Freedberg's Painting of the High
Renaissance in Rome and Florence.
Still, something of Berenson's
concept of tactile values underlies
the Transparency articles and those
that deal with Italian subjects.
Rightfully Colin never took up
Berenson's case for 'life enhancing'
qualities of art, which he must have
considered overly Utopian.

Colin's last years vacillated
between self-imposed isolation and
the legendary admiration that
consumed Berenson throughout
his long life. To me, the accounts of
Colin's drives into the Virginia
countryside recalled descriptions
of Berenson's giri to Assisi and
Vallombrosa in the last years of his
life, though without BB's
enfeeblement. Even more so than
his house in Ithaca, the apartment
in Washington became his own I
Tatti, an exile's habitable museum
and library with its own stream of
guests. Here the collective efforts of
former students brought an order
to Colin's affairs that Signor
Gioffredi did for Berenson. In an
irony of biblical proportions, two
sisters, each named Mary, cared for
Colin's personal needs at the
Kennedy-Warren with the same
care that Nello and Liliana did for
BB at I Tatti.

'You must look, look, and look
until you are blind with looking',
Berenson was reputed to have said,
'and out of blindness will come
illumination.' All of us who have
looked with Colin are the better for
i t .

LEON SATKOWSKI

Robert Maxwell is Emeritus Professor of
Architecture at Princeton University

John Sergeant practises in England and
Spain

Peter Carl is a Lecturer at the University
ofCambridge

Leon Satkowski teaches architectural
history at the University of Minnesota
and studied with Colin Rowe at Cornell.
He wos working with Rowe at the time of
his death on a book surveying sixteenth-
century architecture in Italy



CAMBRIDGE

Ciulio Romano
ManfredoTafuri
The Giulio Romano exhibition in Mantua
in 1989 was the occasion for the
publication, for the first time, of a full
and thorough account of Giulio's art.
Now this lavishly illustrated book,
selected from the original Italian
catalogue by the late Manfredo Tafuri,
brings together essays by a distinguished
team of scholars to provide a full picture
of Giulio's activities as an architect.
£75.00 HB 0521573394 345PP
Architecture in Early Modem Italy

A History of Venetian Architecture
EnnioConcina and Judith Landry
Ennio Concina's comprehensive survey of
Venetian architecture draws on extensive
original research on the city's cultural
history. From its classical roots, to the
twentieth-century battles against flood
and economic decline, Concina discusses
the influence of Venice's extraordinary
position in history and geography on
architectural styles.
E50.00 HB 0521573386 362pp

The Architectural Treatise in the
Italian Renaissance
Architectural Invention, Ornament and Literary Culture
Alina Payne
Vitruvius's Ten Books of Architecture was the
fountainhead of architectural theory in
the Italian Renaissance. This treatise did
not, however, address all of the questions
that were of concern to early modern
architects. This study examines the
Italian Renaissance architect's efforts to
negotiate between imitation and
reinvention of classicism.
£50.00 HB 0521622662 32opp

Wren's 'Tracts' on Architecture
and Other Writings
LydiaM.Soo
This book examines the theoretical work
of one of the most important architects of
early modern Europe. Wren posited a new
version of the origins and development of
the Classical style, thereby becoming one
of the first to challenge theoretical
principles of architecture that had been
upheld since the Renaissance.
£45.00 HB 0521573696 236PP

Decoding Homes and Houses
Julienne Hanson
Decoding Homes and Houses uses a
computer-based method of analysis to
explore the relation between the design
and layout of traditional, vernacular,
speculative and architect-designed
houses and people's evolving tastes,
lifestyles, habits and domestic routines.
£47.50 HB 0521572843 328pp

Space is the Machine
A Configurational Theory of Architecture
Bill Hillier
In this ground-breaking book, Bill Hillier
looks at a wide range of architectural and
urban problems. Using new techniques of
configurational analysis he shows that
the patterns of space created by buildings
are the key to how buildings and cities
work for people.
£17.95 pB 052164528 X 475PP

Now in
Paperback)

Lewis Mumford and
American Modernism
Eutopian Theories for Architecture and Urban Planning
Robert Wojtowicz
Lewis Mumford and American Modernism
examines the career and writings of
America's leading critic of architecture
and criticism. His numerous books on
the history of architecture have proved to
be prescient, forming the basis for
architecture and urban planning at a
time of transition and redefinition at the
end of the twentieth century.
£16.95 pB 0521639247 240PP

Unity Temple
Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture
for Liberal Religion
Joseph M.Siry
This is the first in-depth study of one of
the seminal works of America's most
renowned twentieth-century architect.
Unity Temple is treated as a work of art
that embodies both Wright's theory of
architecture and his liberal religious
ideals.
£18.95 PB 0521629918 383PP

Now in
Paperback)

Cambridge books are available from good
bookshops, alternatively phone
UK +44 (0)1223 325588 to order direct using your
credit card, or fax UK +44 (0)1223 325152.

C A M B R I D G E The Edinburgh Building
UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK

http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk