Shape

347 They’re Shapes before They’re Plans
of which two—the fourth one with a central rectangle surrounded by seven squares, so
that there’s an open side, and the last one with a cross—appear in The Four Books of
Architecture in the Villa Angarano and the Villa Barbaro. Then for the Villa Foscari and
a five-by-three grid, there are two hundred ten alternative room layouts. Palladio
includes seven of these in The Four Books, and one twice—it’s remarkable how much
more there is to do. Of course, this is the kind of configurational enumeration that
I’ve been loath to recommend. Nonetheless, it’s not without precedent in design. In
fact, there are pattern books and the like—ones of late vintage and of combinatorial
interest include polyominos, rectangular dissections, and Lionel March’s remarkable
taxonomy of all floor plans in terms of planar maps. It’s useful to know what’s possible,
unless it interferes with seeing. Then the course is clear—stop counting!
Porticoes come next.
Often the porch is the only antique reference in the design; all the rest of the detail is simple
geometry, which is consistent with the concept of a hierarchy of elements.
Porticoes and like devices line up with interior walls, and when there’s more than one
portico or whatever, they line up together, as well. There are various schemas for this
that form a kind of architectural lexicon—I show how to define one entry below for
the Villa Barbaro—but the logic of schemas is pretty straightforward. On one side of
the plan, there’s almost always a portico—either in antis or prostyle, as in the Villa
Foscari. And then on the opposite side of the plan, there’s a portico in antis, a wall inflection
like this one
at the back of the Villa Foscari, or nothing at all.