VIEWPOINTS
Three key words:
- Truth
- Perspective
- Opinions
The concept of the book that I chose is: VIewpoints. The book in question is „dispareri in materia di architettura e perspectiva“ written by Martino Bassi, and is a collection of letters between the writer and several experts of different fields about the construction of the Dome of Milan.
Martino Bassi didn’t agree with how Tibaldi built the Dome. In order to prove that the way in which Tibaldi’s work was done, is not wright, Bassi asked several other architects, engineer and so on, for their opinion of the building. His aim was to show the truth, regardless of the opinion the experts had for or against Bassi.
By collecting all different kinds of viewpoints, Bassi legitimized the fact that Tibaldi did not build the construction in the wright way, by keeping in mind every architectural and mathematic aspect of a construction. One point on which Bassi disagrees with Tibaldi is the Perspective view, where the architect does not take into consideration that the perfect geometry of a construction, does not necessarily imply the perfect pleasant view to the human eye, and therefore architects have to keep into consideration the way in which people see the building.
Bassi does not ask the opinion about the building to random people, instead he writes to most well know and specialized professional of that time and age. As we all know opinions are subjective, like most of the things in life, therefore is it extremely difficult to prove something.
By collecting many opinions, you should find a result that is based on a majority. Even though there is no hundred percent certainty, you can find a common ground, that is much more objective that one single opinion.
Since the book is in a way written by different authors (Martino Bassi and several letters from different authors), there are different ways of writing about the disagreements: some wrote a linked text, others made a list of points, or even wrote with symbols with a mathematical language.
If people already have so many opinions about one subject, I can’t imagine how many opinions and ways of doing architecture has, since it is an ensemble of different fields! And this is exactly what fascinates me: in such a subjective world how can someone be absolutely sure that something is wright? Is it necessary that we classify something as wright or wrong?