Shape

341 They’re Shapes before They’re Plans
Ice-rays can be used widely in many different ways; but, of much greater importance,
schemas can, too. This is certainly prima facie evidence that design is calculating,
although showing that calculating pays off in studio teaching and creative
practice is the real test. Professional disciplines are apt to have stubborn customs and
recalcitrant standards—that keeps them exclusive. And art and design are hardly
exceptions to this rule, so it helps to have more to go on before asking artists and
designers to try something new that breaks with traditional methods of teaching and
practice. Whatever they are, teaching and practice simply can’t be calculating with
shapes and rules. No—calculating is never ever creative.
They’re Shapes before They’re Plans
I’m going to do Andrea Palladio’s famous villa plans, with the Villa Foscari as my main
example
They form a style apart, vital and never diminishing in the capacity to entice others into emulation,
but evasive of definition.
I’m interested in Palladio, just as I’m interested in Klee and Chinese window
grilles, and my paintings, as well, to show that design is calculating. But of greater
importance for buildings is that functional, social, and aesthetic relationships—things
in the architect’s Vitruvian canon of firmness, commodity, and delight—aren’t beyond
shapes and rules. Many find this surprising, even though these relationships are
expressed in form. They’re all about shapes, so calculating according to rules makes
sense. However, I’m not going to do Palladio’s system of proportions as part of what I
show. Numerical relationships are easy in my schemas and rules, yet calculating with