Suspicious minds

There is a confidence we have either gained or accepted about the written word, maybe I speak for myself but when I read a book, I believe it. I'm saying I necessarily agree with it, I hope I know my own mind enough not to be so easily persuaded but I definitely have an over whelming faith that the information is true and correct. It doesn't immediately occur to me that the writers have an agenda - pretty naive huh? but I suppose this is what this unit has been about, sussing out what the writers are saying and why they are saying it and so I have definitely become more suspicious about what I am reading.

This leads me to Colin Rowe essays "The mathematics of an ideal villa", and "La Tourette".

The first is comparison between classical and modern architecture and more specifically, a comparison between Le Corbusier thinking and design theories and Palladio.

This essay beings with a quote from Christopher Wren

"There are only two beautiful positions of straight lines, perpendicular 

and horizontal; this is from Nature and consequently necessity, no other than 

upright being firm."

A nice start to a text that was about to dissect mathematical influences from the two architects.

"La Tourette" is a run down of the La Tourette aesthetics, features and form and where I now refer to the earlier paragraph in this post about suspicion in reading texts.
Rowe manages to miss and mislabel some of the aspects of La Tourette and one can't help wonder why. Surely if some glaringly obvious things are not brought up for discussion then how can you possibility take the text as a serious critique of a building if it simply ignores or is ignorant of this. This is certainly no ode to Le Corbusier but possibly more of a revolutionary text to defy the thinking of the time "Form follows function". However, I do like the confidence in Rowe's writing and the fluid language is certainly a breath of fresh air in comparison to the other texts we've been reading.