Fórmulas temporais : no despertar do pensamento arquitectónico ocidental

Abstract

“Formulas in architecture” since ancestry made an invariable slide to the “mathematic”, Vitruvius posited a specific “proportion” underlying the “abstract procedure” present in the acquisition of tectonic integrity. And yet, prior to the Vitruvian “disembodied formulations” in “The Architecture”, both Plato and more capriciously Aristotle addressed the interconnexion between the mathematical and the artefactual, and with it the “harmonic” and the “scalar” within the architectonic mainly through their considerations into the proper rhetoric and poetic. Connection possible due to the inherent mathematical and architectonic qualities of the literary work. It is in this sense that the specific “abstract constructions” and, within these, the calibrations present in Hellenic conception in differentiation with the Egyptian naturally come to be derived from literary precepts. Firstly, with the assistance of the neo-Platonic Proclus, Plato’s consideration into the intricate mimetic nature of the Egyptian temple opens the way to the clarification of the multiple layers in which “the mathematical” is operative in the architectonic, as in addition, will crystalize a deeper understanding of the “calibrative” and “harmonic” that drives the tectonic beyond rigidity of the “symmetrical”. The dodge from the monoliticity of “spatiality” will be further reinforced by Plato’s rhetorical constitution on the Sophist and Pindar poetic institution. After this initial ground, Aristotle insights on literary constitution will lead into a specific scrutinization on the harmonic and scalar nature of architectonic institution, not mainly define by spatial relations, but order, symmetry and scale as determined fundamentally by “temporal calibrations”. Escalations that within determined restrictions allow the tectonic to express itself has a totality, or pass into colossally and positively determining the space define by architecture. In this context, “scale” comes to be a space structuralizer. Under this light, the “temporal scalations” determined by restrictions and polarized by conceptions have to be see has “temporal formulas”.