Geometry
Sebastiano Serlio is the author of Tutte l’opere d’architettura, et prospettiva, in this series of books Serlio writes about the basic notions of architecture. He describes what an architect needs to know to design and adds drawings to his treatise to make his description more understandable. I chose the word geometry because the first book of his project « Sette Libri » is titled Geometry. Sebastiano Serlio thought that the beginning of all architectural notions began with the first principles of geometry. I quite agree with his thought. What I liked the most when I was browsing through the book was the small descriptions of the fundamental geometry written next to the clear and simple drawings. The first description is about rigid lines which then evolutes into different triangles and then transformes into the perfect rectangle and the square to finally achieve the perfectness that is the circle. For me, Serlio has a very patent approach of architecture and starts very slow which could be seen as useless or even annoying but it is in fact cleaver to begin with easy structures for in this way everyone takes up with the same basics without any misunderstanding, putting all on the same level. People don’t usually think directly of geometry when they consider architecture, they immediately think of impressive buildings or big bridges suspended over the water.
People forget all the very simple notions that an architect would need to make these great buildings. We must not overlook the fact that Sebastiano Serlio published his books in 1584 with the idea of covering the subject of architecture at length so that the whole of Europe could understand the fundamental basics of this subject. Printed copies travelled across Europe and made the knowledge of Italian architecture possible. I chose the aspect of the beginning of the author’s book series because it is with the first book that describes the definition and examples of geometry that the reader can understand the rest of the books and thus architecture in all its aspects and rules. It is necessary to try to understand the complexity of architecture by means of easier subjects, like geometry but also perspectives (2nd book of Serlio) and churches. Serlio tried to translate the ancient Italian knowledge into a kind of encyclopaedia that brings together all the subjects necessary for the most complete theory of the very complicated and rich subject that is architecture.