BOOKS:Four Books of Architecture

Palladio inspired Univ. of Virginia Library

In 1570, Venetian, Andrea Palladio set forth a grammar of architecture that still influences the design of buildings today. His Four Books of Architecture is a lucid testimony to his rigorous beliefs on how he thought buildings should be built__grand, symmetrical and beautiful. I Quattro Libri dell' Architecttura, as it is called in Italian, is a Palladian restatement of classical ideals. Much of what we today consider pleasing to the eye draws its genius from Palladio’s reconfirmation of the classical. That’s why this book is both important and essential to read. If you want to understand the underpinnings of the Western taste for proportion and symmetry, I Quattro Libri dell' Architecttura, should be part of your reading list. Dry reading, you think? Hardly. Robert Tavernor’s and Richard Shofield’s 1997 translation into English is both elegant and readable. The photographs and drawings are a perfect match for the text. In the, Four Books of Architecture, Palladio combined illustrations of ancient Roman construction, which he observed in Italy, with his own drawings demonstrating how the ancient principles of engineering, and design could be applied to buildings of his day. Even today in Europe and the United States you can see Palladio’s influence, especially in public buildings. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of Pallidio’s, Four Books of Architecture and based the design of his house Montecello and the University of Virginia Library on Palladio’s ideas. If you have the least bit of interest in what developed our historical and modern taste in buildings and what heavily influenced our ideals of beauty read, I Quattro Libri dell' Architecttura.