On the Human Figure
in Architectural Representation
Alex T. Anderson, University of Washington
This essay argues for the more thoughtful use of human Ž gures in architectural
drawing. In most contemporary architectural drawings, human Ž gures help to
provide simple and clear indications of scale or a proper sense of depth. These
scale Ž gures need not be merely metric, however. They can also help to project
some of the immeasurable qualities of architecture. If they are well conceived
and rendered, human Ž gures in architectural drawings can help to show how
projected buildings might be perceived and inhabited. They can also be used to
understand how architecture can be shaped to accommodate human experi-
ences and actions.
Human Ž gures help to provide simple and clear indications of di-
mension in scaled orthographic drawings; in perspectives they con-
tribute to the depiction of a proper sense of depth. These are the
most basic purposes of scale Ž gures in architectural drawing, but
their potential extends well beyond these limited functions. Even
as indicators of scale, human Ž gures illustrate qualities of scale that
are otherwise difŽ cult to depict. Whereas other means such as
graphic or numerical keys indicate the projected dimensions of a
building more precisely than do scale Ž gures, human Ž gures seem
to promote an intuitive understanding of scale. Scale Ž gures are
particularly effective because one can very quickly associate the fa-
miliar shape and size of the human body with the dimensions of
things that surround it. Because people naturally associate the di-
mensions of their own bodies with those of the Ž gures depicted,
they can also develop a sense for how big or small (which are relative
dimensions) the objects depicted in the drawing appear. When Ž g-
ures are drawn in such a way that people can identify with them,
they can help to exemplify an experience of scale: how imposing or
diminutive a building might seem, how lofty or compressed its
spaces would feel.
Although human Ž gures are conventionally used to express
scale in architectural drawings, they need not be constrained to this.
Human Ž gures can also provide clients or potential users effective
points of association through which to develop an understanding
of how a building might affect them in other ways. If Ž gures are
drawn as inhabitants or occupants of a projected space, for example
(rather than as stylized, metric Ž gures placed in the drawing), they
can help to express a range of possible actions and experiences.
These might include projected patterns of occupation, use, and
movement, anticipated lines of sight, points of physical contact with
the building, and so on. Such Ž gures can also help designers to
speculate effectively about the actions and experiences of users and
the elements that might be developed to accommodate them.
Journal of Architectural Education, pp. 238–246
Ó 2002 ACSA, Inc.
May 2002 JAE 55/4 238
Marco Frascari argues that “in contemporary architectural
drawing, the presence of the human Ž gure, to give scale, is abso-
lutely indispensable.”1 Although this assertion is not necessarily
supported in the contemporary practice of architecture (many ar-
chitects do not use scale Ž gures in their drawings, relying instead
on numerical and/or metric keys to “give scale” to them), it is
nevertheless a point that demands careful consideration. Without
necessarily contending that they are indispensable, this essay argues
for the more thoughtful use of human Ž gures in architectural rep-
resentation. Scale Ž gures need not be merely metric; they can also
help to project some of the immeasurable qualities of architecture.
If they are well conceived and rendered, human Ž gures can help to
show how projected buildings might be inhabited and experienced
or how they might respond to human actions.
To support the contention that human Ž gures should be used
more thoughtfully in architectural representation, this essay Ž rst
explains how they are typically used in contemporary practice. It
then goes on to show, through a series of examples drawn from
historical and contemporary sources, how they might be more ef-
fectively used. A secondary purpose of this essay is to recount the
changing fate of human Ž gures in architectural representation. The
examples are arranged chronologically to describe a perceptible shift
in the role that human Ž gures have played in architectural draw-
ing—from describing the radical anthropomorphism of classically
inspired architecture to showing the increased emphasis on embod-
ied experience in architecture during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
Frascari suggests that human Ž gures used by most contem-
porary architects “have lost any ontological dimension; they are
simply a form of communication oriented to the common man and
to the technician, or a formal representation to other architects of
the possible problems of scale and dimension.” 2 The highly stylized
Ž gures that many architects place in their orthographic drawings
are often stripped of features that are expressive of anything but a
very general human shape. (Frascari refers to Robert Venturi’s scale
Ž gures as “biped balloons with pointed feet and  oating heads.”3)
This may be because, when its function is solely to indicate scale,
a Ž gure need not be realistic or expressive. These stylized scale Ž g-
ures work well as scale Ž gures, but they do little else. In contem-
porary perspective drawings, by contrast, it has become common
practice to use more fully articulated Ž gures. However, although
these may be accurate depictions of human beings, they rarely seem
to have much to do with the buildings or spaces depicted, much
less the narratives that might take place in them. They often appear
to be merely pasted into the scene. This is literally the case in many
instances because architects often use Ž gures from clip-art cata-
logues that depict people in a great variety of positions and modes
of dress (a popular one, called Entourage, contains hundreds of such
Ž gures).4 One need only pick the Ž gure that “looks right” in the
scene, reduce or enlarge it to the appropriate size and trace it on,
attach it to, or digitally paste it into the drawing. 5 Although these
Ž gures could help to demonstrate the character of projected build-
ings, they rarely do. Because they are pasted onto the drawing rather
than conceived and integrated with it, they seem hardly even to
occupy the spaces of the drawing, much less interact with them.
They often appear out of place and disengaged from their contexts,
and for this reason their role is usually reduced almost entirely to
that of demonstrating scale.
Frascari’s lamentation of a “lost ontological dimension” in
the use of human Ž gures implies that at one time, at least, human
Ž gures served to indicate more than scale and dimension in archi-
tectural drawings. In fact, the need to argue for the incorporation
of human Ž gures into architectural representations is a relatively
recent development.6 Architecture was, for a very long time, thor-
oughly intertwined with images of the human body. Throughout
much of architectural history, architecture, and the elements of
architecture were considered to be profoundly, spiritually, symboli-
cally linked to the human body, its form, and proportions. 7 Con-
sequently, architectural drawings were often replete with human
Ž gures.
In his treatise on architecture, Filarete (Antonio Averlino)
demonstrates that not only did practical, corporeal needs provide
humankind with reasons to build, but that the body itself provided
a model for the Ž rst architectural construction. Filarete’s poignant
drawing of Adam cast out from the Garden of Eden shows him
with his hands raised in anguish to protect himself from the rain,
shaping a roof over his head. (See Figure 1.) Filarete asserts: “It
must therefore be believed that Adam, having made himself a roof
with his two hands, considering the need for making a living, he
re ected and exercised himself to make himself some habitation
to defend himself from these rains, as well as from the heat of the 1. Vitruvio Adam. Adam cast out from the Garden of Eden,
sun.”8 Filarete, c. 1461.
Although Filarete’s description of the origins of architecture
is unusual for its direct incorporation of the human body into the
design of the Ž rst hut, association between body parts and building
elements was commonplace in Renaissance architecture. 9 Francesco ing details. (See Figure 2.) Human scale is of no particular concern
di Giorgio Martini, another Renaissance architect and theorist, il- in these drawings; it is the Ž tness of corporeal arrangement and
lustrates this association at a great range of scales. In his drawings, proportion that matter. Francesco di Giorgio emphasizes that prop-
images of the human body provide order to city plans, to the ar- erly designed buildings must demonstrate the divine order en-
rangement of buildings and facades, and to the intricacies of build- shrined in the human body.10

239 Anderson
 John Shute, an English architect of the sixteenth century, seriously maintain, as did J.-F. Blondel, “that the character of a
illustrates this point in a series of drawings depicting the classical building might be in uenced and modiŽ ed by altering the size of
orders. (See Figure 3.) His drawing of the Doric order, for example, the moldings to Ž t the appropriate human proŽ le.”13
shows that the proportions of the column correspond to the pro- In classically inspired architecture, human bodies and build-
portions of a brawny male Ž gure, whereas the more slender and ings relate in subtle and intricate ways at many scales. Architects of
elegant Corinthian column re ects Ž ner feminine proportions. 11 such buildings tuned them to proportions embodied in the human
Shute’s drawings also demonstrate an important aspect of the physique but dictated by universal natural law (these were the same
relationship between buildings and bodies that is not as clearly proportions that ruled geometry, harmony, in music, and the mo-
evident in the earlier drawings of Francesco di Giorgio: that archi-
tectural character corresponds, in part, to variations in human phys-
iognomy.
The relationship between architectural character and human
physiognomy played an increasingly important role during the eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly among the aca-
demic architects of France. Rudolf Wittkower asserts that during
the eighteenth century “beauty and proportion were no longer re-
garded as being universal, but were turned into psychological phe-
nomena originating and existing in the minds of the artists.” 12
Thus, prominent architects of the late eighteenth century could

2. The body in the facade of a church, Francesco di Giorgio

Martini, c. 1492 ( The Dancing Column, MIT Press). 3. The Doric Order, John Shute, 1563.

May 2002 JAE 55/4 240

tions of the heavens.)14 They also used analogous relationships be-
tween the human physiognomy and elements of buildings to
develop architectural character. Human Ž gures in their drawings
serve to demonstrate these associations; however, they rarely show
objective scale relationships or attempt to indicate human occu-
pancy in buildings. These sorts of relationships, although always
important, were often considered to be incidental to the more fun-
damental problems of form, order, and proportion.
Although generally neglected in orthographic drawings, these
issues of scale and use were often illustrated in architectural per-
spectives. Linear perspective, which was invented during the Re-
naissance as a technique for constructing scenographic content in
4. A metropolitan cathedral, Étienne-Louis Boullée, 1782 (British
paintings, is well suited for depicting human scale, as well as the Architectural Library, RIBA drawings collection).
actions and emotions of human subjects. Human presence is also
deeply insinuated in perspective technique, revealing itself as a point
of view at the convergence of visual rays. 15 Not surprisingly, when
architects used perspectives to illustrate design projects—a practice
that became increasingly popular during the eighteenth century —
they often included human Ž gures to clarify issues of scale and
dimension. They also gave these Ž gures realistic and sometimes
exaggerated attitudes to represent the momentary dramas that
might unfold in the buildings depicted. (See Figure 4.) The often
improbable simultaneity of events occurring in these drawings
seems to heighten their descriptive value by showing not only what
might happen in a building at a particular moment but what the
building will become because of these events. These scale Ž gures
demonstrate not only how people might occupy the building, but
they also help to elucidate its functions and its character. (See Fig-
ure 5.) When a building’s character is predicated primarily on the
actions that take place in it, as was the case with some modernist
projects, these Ž gures become indispensable for the proper ex-
pression of the designer’s intentions. 16 (See Figure 7.) Several
5. A Venetian Palace, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1864.
examples drawn from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth
centuries demonstrate that, when human Ž gures are conceived to
be integral to a drawing and are carefully composed, they can con-
vey information that a drawing would not be able to communicate ture.”17 They indicate the immense scale of the building, but their
otherwise. presence in the drawing also helps to express its character: not only
An interior perspective of “A Project for a Metropolitan Ca- immensity, but also “sublime grandeur.” The insigniŽ cance and ant-
thedral” by Étienne-Louis Boullée, for example, depicts an immense like busyness of the Ž gures contribute to an understanding of the
ediŽ ce occupied by the Ž gures of more than 150 people and several awesome physical and spiritual forces gathered in the building. “An
dogs. (See Figure 4.) Many of the people appear to be conversing ediŽ ce for the worship of the Supreme being!” Boullée declares of
quietly or strolling under the immense vaults of the cathedral; the project, “That is indeed a subject that calls for sublime ideas
others gesticulate animatedly, and still others rush to the left or to and to which architecture must give character.”18 Yet the variety of
the right. John Martin Robinson remarks that these people are activities and the care with which they are depicted in the drawing
“dwarfed to insigniŽ cance by the sublime grandeur of the architec- also indicate that this is very much a “metropolitan” cathedral. It

241 Anderson

6. The Doge’s Palace, Venice, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,
1864.
is not solely a place for ritual and solemnity but also for the con-
tingency and bustle of quotidian life in the city. The Ž gures in
Boullée’s drawing facilitate the expression of building characteristics
such as immensity, grandeur, and contingency that would otherwise
be difŽ cult to express—not only because they defy direct represen-
tation, but also because they are present only because of the inter-
action of people with the building.
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc uses human Ž gures to help
convey very different building characteristics in a drawing of “A
May 2002 JAE 55/4
Venetian Palace.” (See Figure 5.) The sectional perspective includes
six Ž gures. One sits on a gondola in the canal fronting the building;
a second Ž gure, evidently a porter, slouches on a bench in the canal-
level portico. Two Ž gures converse in the large vestibule beyond this
portico; one of them is animated, head cocked to one side, both
hands raised, as if to emphasize a point to his interlocutor. A Ž gure
dressed in aristocratic robes stands in the great hall on the main
 oor with hands outstretched, face turned toward the viewer; this
is no doubt the master of the household. A sixth Ž gure, a woman
also in aristocratic dress, climbs the stairway to the second  oor.
Although these Ž gures help to illustrate the scale of the building,
they also serve to demonstrate other important qualities. The rela-
tive informality of the portico, for example, is shown to contrast
with the formality of the great hall, not only in the architectural
details, but in the postures and dress of the Ž gures that occupy
them. The Ž gures also express gradations of privacy in the building,
from the open commerce conducted at the canal level (which is
illustrated by the casual meeting in the vestibule on the ground
 oor) to the restricted access at the main  oor (accentuated by the
stately pose of the Ž gure in the great hall), to the more secluded
feel of the living spaces and bedrooms (indicated by the presence
of the lady of the house on the second  oor). Viollet-le-Duc uses
this drawing to convey a sense that the typical Venetian palace “was
perfectly accommodated to the requirements of a noble family in
Venice.”19 The Ž gures play an essential role in this task.
Viollet-le-Duc used human Ž gures in a remarkably different
way for orthographic drawings, as his topographic elevation of the
Doge’s Palace in Venice illustrates. (See Figure 6.) The drawing
contains two Ž gures: one stands upright to the right of the palace
on the hatched ground line, and the other stands in the shadows
on the upper portico, behind the balustrade. Although each is
dressed in clothes appropriate to his position —the Ž gure to the
right in street clothes, the Ž gure on the balcony in the robes of an
aristocrat —each seems to remain aloof from the building. The Ž g-
ure on the balcony, for example, stands back from the balustrade
and looks not outward toward the view framed by the portico, as
would seem natural, but to the left, down the length of the portico.
The faces, which are seen in full proŽ le, appear to be consciously
averted as if to avoid the gaze of anyone looking at the drawing.
These Ž gures are evidently placed in the drawing primarily to help
indicate the dimensions of the palace. This function is served more
precisely, however, by a graphic scale drawn below the ground line
(indicating that the Ž gures are 1.8 meters tall). Why include both
a scale Ž gure and a graphic scale?20 This question seems even more
pertinent when considering drawings in which Viollet-le-Duc por-
242
trays a scale Ž gure actually holding a graphic scale.21 Despite their
evident redundancy, the human Ž gures in Viollet-le-Duc’s ortho-
graphic drawings contribute something that the graphic scale does
not. They provide an intuitive “feel” for scale that supplements the
mathematical determination of dimension contributed by the
graphic scale. In his perspective drawings, the human Ž gures con-
tribute not only a feel for scale, but also a sense of the building’s
functions and character.
Although his drawing style is very different from that of Boul-
lée or of Viollet-le-Duc, Le Corbusier also uses human Ž gures to
convey effects that are essential to architecture but that are not
contained solely in the ediŽ ce. The Ž gures in his perspective draw-
ings show how use and inhabitation serve to enhance the character
of the buildings depicted. For example, in the drawings for mass-
production houses, the Ž gures help to show that “standardized”
housing units develop character according to the tastes and activities
of their inhabitants. 22 (See Figure 7.) In these drawings, each unit
is identical in form and detail, but furnished and occupied in a
unique way.23 Figures are shown engaged in a variety of activities
among furnishings clearly not speciŽ ed by the architect: a baby
plays in a playpen, a man exercises with a punching bag, a woman
beats a rug over the balcony, and so on. These illustrations dem-
onstrate how inhabitation gradually changes the ediŽ ce by provid-
ing variety and softening hard edges.24 They show how individual
apartment cells—which otherwise would be indistinguishable, mo-
notonous, and potentially oppressive —become livable by allowing
their inhabitants to do what they like and express themselves as they
see Ž t. “The lodging is there . . .” Le Corbusier says, “to receive and
welcome the human animal, and the worker is sufŽ ciently culti-
vated to know how to make a healthy use of [his] hours of liberty.”25
The human Ž gures in the perspective drawings of Le Cor-
busier, Viollet-le-Duc, and Boullée emphasize that buildings affect
human sensibilities and accommodate human actions. The Ž gures
in the drawings of Carlo Scarpa, on the other hand, show that
elements of architecture can respond actively to human gesture, that
spaces shape themselves to affect sensations in particular ways, and
that the human body is a direct agent of architectural composition.
In his drawings, human Ž gures do not merely help to explain the
dimensions and effects of architectural compositions, they motivate
design decisions. Frascari suggests that “in Scarpa’s architecture, the
human Ž gure is both the subject that produces the buildings sub
specie corporis, and the object starting from which the building is
made,” and that “the small things of the body and its habits con-
stantly regulate Scarpa’s planning.” 26 Even in orthographic projec-
tion, the Ž gures are integral and essential to the intentions being
243
7. The Suspended Garden of an Apartment, Wanner Projects,
Geneva, Le Corbusier, 1928– 1929 (© 2002 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris).
expressed. These preoccupations are abundantly evident in his
drawings, where bodies (including Scarpa’s own body) touch, rest
on, observe, lurk behind, peek through, pass by, dodge, and balance
upon elements of the architecture, which in turn shape themselves
around these actions, in what Frascari calls a “metonymic proce-
dure” of design.27 This procedure is clearly illustrated in a drawing
for the private meditation pavilion in the Brion Cemetery at San
Vito d’Altivole, Treviso. (See Figure 8.) In this cross section of the
pavilion, Scarpa includes three Ž gures, presumably representations
of the same individual in various positions: one standing facing the
viewer, one standing in proŽ le, and a third seated in proŽ le. These
quickly drawn but expressive Ž gures indicate the relative size of the
pavilion, but they also demonstrate how the occupant of the pa-
vilion in uences its design. The concrete of the ground platform,
for example, steps up to accommodate the seated posture of the
Ž gure, while the canopy hangs low over her bowed back and head.
The seated Ž gure seems to carve a space of contemplation for herself
in which she feels the volume of the canopy resting protectively
over her on slender pillars. The standing Ž gures, however, appear
to shape and sense the pavilion differently. The canopy lifts and
deforms itself to make space for her head as she enters the pavilion,
to shield her eyes from the sun, and to limit the view outward. In
this drawing, Scarpa indicates that the pavilion responds directly to
the postures and movements of the people who will occupy it.
Although the Ž gures clearly indicate scale and suggest the sensations
the pavilion might evoke, they also demonstrate Scarpa’s design
Anderson

8. Pavilion, Brion Cemetery at San Vito d’Altivole, Treviso, Carlo
Scarpa, 1969– 1978 (Collection Archivio Carlo Scarpa,
photographed by L. Sloman).
intentions. The Ž gure and the project become complementary
agents, mutually shaping each other in Scarpa’s hands.
Frascari proposes that the metonymic procedure that Scarpa
uses in his drawings can provide a means by which architects might
reclaim the ontological dimension of human Ž gures in architectural
drawings. By forming architectural elements in direct response to
human gestures and actions, this procedure develops implicitly from
an attempt to understand how human beings meaningfully inhabit
the world. This problem preoccupied a number of philosophers
during much of the previous century. Early in the twentieth century,
for example, Henri Bergson declared that “the objects which surround
my body reect its possible action upon them. [Bergson’s italics]” 28
According to Bergson, people understand the world through the
body’s ability to act on things. Objects in turn become meaningful
because they seem to shape themselves to accommodate these ca-
pabilities. Maurice Merleau-Ponty further elaborates this idea in
much of his work. In The Phenomenology of Perception, he suggests
that “our body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it
keeps the visible spectacle continuously alive, it breathes life into it
May 2002 JAE 55/4
and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system.”29 Drew Leder,
a contemporary American philosopher, describes a speciŽ cally ar-
chitectural manifestation of this understanding when he declares
that the human body inhabits the world via “a complex dialectic
wherein the world transforms my body, even as my body transforms
its world. . . . [T]he very house in which one dwells is both a re-
construction of the surrounding world to Ž t the body and an en-
largement of our own physical structure.”30 This notion suggests
that architecture should account for the human body, its capabili-
ties, actions, and gestures if it is to be both physically satisfying and
personally meaningful. Because architects tend to conceive and de-
velop their ideas through representation, the human Ž gure should
therefore play an important role in architectural drawings.31
At the most basic level, human Ž gures demonstrate that peo-
ple understand the scale of buildings in relation to their bodies, and
that dimensions cannot fully describe scale. Adjectives of scale, such
as immense, lofty, huge, expansive, tight, or cramped indicate not how
big or small a space is, but how big or small it feels. For designers,
human Ž gures can help to facilitate thinking about the effects of
size in buildings, and they are indispensable for communicating
this aspect of scale to clients and potential users. Furthermore, Ž g-
ures that are expressive of occupation, use, or human actions can
help to elucidate the effects that buildings have on people, as well
as the important roles that people play in shaping their environ-
ments. Although human Ž gures in architectural drawings might not
be absolutely indispensable, they can be powerful tools for con-
ceiving and representing architecture.
Notes
1. Marco Frascari, “The Body and Architecture in the Drawings of Carlo
Scarpa,” Res 14 (autumn 1987): 132.
2. Ibid., p. 124.
3. Ibid., p. 124. The inexpressive quality of Venturi’s scale Ž gures is clearly
intentional. Because his projects themselves are highly demonstrative, expressive Ž g-
ures could muddle the clarity of his drawings. Yet, Venturi’s scale Ž gures also seem
to indicate, however intentionally, an attitude that Ž xes meaning in the physical
structures of architecture rather than in a dialectical exchange with their inhabitants.
In a famous photograph of the Vanna Venturi house, for example, even the real
inhabitant of the house takes on these characteristics. Venturi’s mother has been
positioned outside of the house at the building’s centerline, beneath the broken arch;
she is seated on a straight-backed chair with a book in her hands (not a good place
for sitting or for reading). She is represented as an awkward, enigmatic scale Ž gure
who also happens to be the building’s inhabitant.
4. The cover text declares: “This invaluable design tool will not only help
you establish scale and convey the function of your work, it will quickly bring all
244
your client presentations to life! . . . Here’s just a sample of what’s included: Figures:
Women; Men; Children; Couples; Families; Groups; Travelers; People and Pets;
Sports; Fashion; Casual.” Ernest E. Burden, Entourage: A Tracing File for Architects
and Interior Design, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), cover.
5. Digital drawing techniques have facilitated this increasingly common
practice.
6. See Rudolf Wittkower, “The Changing Concept of Proportion,” in Idea
and Image: Studies in the Italian Renaissance (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978),
pp. 109–123. Frascari also gives an account of this in “The Body and Architecture
in the Drawings of Carlo Scarpa,” pp. 123–124.
7. For an in-depth discussion of anthropomorphism in architecture, see
Marco Frascari, Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory
(Savage, Maryland: Rowman and LittleŽ eld, Publishers, 1991). See also Joseph Ryk-
wert, The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 1996), pp. 26–95.
8. Filarete’s Treatise on Architecture, Being the Treatise by Antonio di Piero
Averlino, Known as Filarete, John R. Spencer, trans., vol. 1 (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1965), p. 10. For an explanation of this passage in a broader
discussion of the theoretical origins of architecture, see Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s
House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981), pp. 117–119.
9. In 1741, for example, John Wood the Elder declared that “Man is a
complete Ž gure and the perfection of order. . . . And of the inŽ nite number of parts
of which he is composed, do but unfold any one of them and what astonishing
beauty will arise to the most intelligent eye!” John Wood, The Origin of Building:
or the Plagiarism of the Ancients Detected (Bath: 1741), p. 71 f. Joseph Rykwert,
commenting on this passage, asserts that “to John Wood the human Ž gure seemed the
exemplary incarnation of that harmony which also dominated building through the
various orders of architecture.” He goes on to say that “such an analogy between
the body and the orders, which is echoed by other parallels between the body and
buildings in general, is deeply ingrained in all recorded architectural thinking.” See
Rykwert, The Dancing Column, pp. 27–29. The drawings of Santiago Calatrava
provide contemporary examples of these sorts of associations.
10. For a discussion of anthropomorphism in the drawings of Francesco di
Giorgio Martini, see especially Frascari, Monsters of Architecture, pp. 90–91.
11. John Shute, First and Chief Grounds of Architecture ([1563] 1964).
Rykwert discusses these drawings in Rykwert, The Dancing Column, pp. 32–33.
12. Wittkower, “The Changing Concept of Proportion,” p. 117. The ori-
gins of this shift are generally credited to the assertions of Claude Perrault, whose
deŽ nitions of “positive” and “arbitrary” beauty had long-lasting implicationsbecause
they helped to legitimize “arbitrary” issues of “taste” and “character” in architecture.
See Claude Perrault, Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of
the Ancients, Indra Kagis McEwen, trans. (Santa Monica: The Getty Center for the
History of Art and the Humanities, 1993), pp. 47–53. For a discussion of Perrault’s
role in shaping architectural theory, see Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Architecture and the
Crisis of Modern Science (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1983), pp. 18–47, and
Joseph Rykwert, The First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century (Cam-
bridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1980), pp. 23–53.
13. Rykwert, The Dancing Column, p. 36. J. F. Blondel criticized an entab-
lature designed by Andrea Palladio on the grounds that it appeared to be “like a
human face whose parts do not seem . . . to have been harmonized. . . . The Nose
of a twelve year old [is] imposed on the chin of a man of eighty, and crowned by
the forehead of a man in his middle age.” He praises Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola for
245
getting these relationships right: “here the three parts seem to present a more ac-
ceptable relation between forehead, nose, and chin, which results in a uniŽ ed pro-
Ž le.” Jacques-François Blondel, Cours d’Architecture ou Traité de la Décoration,
Distribution et Construction des Batiments, Pierre Patte, ed., vol. 1 (Paris: 1771–
1777), p. 258 ff. In characteristic fashion, French architects of the time sought to
demonstrate “a measurable, or at any rate a geometrical, ‘proof’ of the relation of
passion to physiognomy.” See Rykwert, The Dancing Column, p. 47.
14. See Rykwert, The First Moderns, pp. 1–19.
15. For an explanation of the distinctive role of the observer in perspective
drawings, see Bernard Schneider, “Perspective Refers to the Viewer, Axonometry
Refers to the Object,” Daidalos 15 (Sept. 1981): 81– 95. For a more thorough
treatment of the development and signiŽ cance of perspectival representation, in-
cluding this aspect of them, see Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form,
Christopher S. Wood, trans. (New York: Zone Books, 1991), pp. 27–36.
16. The notion that the character of a building develops from the lives of
its occupants is asserted with particular vehemence by Adolf Loos. Speaking of his
family home, he declares, “but there was one style that our home did have—the
style of its occupants, the style of our family.” Adolf Loos, “Interiors in the Rotunda,”
in Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays 1897–1900, Jane O. Newman and John H.
Smith, trans. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1982), p. 24.
17. John Martin Robinson, in Helen Powell and David Leatherbarrow,
eds., Masterpieces of Architectural Drawing (New York: Abbeville Press, 1982), p. 99.
18. Quoted in Powell and Leatherbarrow, Masterpieces of Architectural Draw-
ing, p. 99. Original source not cited.
19. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, vol. 2. Ben-
jamin Bucknall, trans. (New York: Dover Publications, 1987), p. 257.
20. Viollet-le-Duc’s description of the drawing and the building it depicts
indicates that he intended the drawing to show physical characteristics of the build-
ing, not how it is inhabited. “By his skillful treatment of the angles—a delicate
point—the architect has succeeded in giving an aspect of sturdy strength to the
system of props that support a box of massive appearance. Plate XXIX, representing
the angle, shows the excellence of the design.” Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architec-
ture, vol. 2, p. 199.
21. See, for example, Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, vol. 2, Ž g. 4,
p. 63, and Ž g. 7, p. 283.
22. Le Corbusier protested that standardization does not eliminate the pos-
sibility for individual expression, as some of his contemporaries argued; rather, it
places the individual “on the highest level” because it “distance[s] us from the clutter
that encumbers our life and threatens to kill it . . . and, having won our freedom,
we think about something—about art for example (for it is very comforting).” See
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, James I. Dunnett, trans. (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1987), pp. 73–75, 77, 137.
23. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Frederick Etchells, trans.
(New York: Dover Publications, 1931, 1986), p. 265.
24. Beatriz Colomina argues that the Ž gures in these drawings betray other
agendas: “In a drawing of the Wanner project, for example, the woman in the upper
 oor is leaning against the veranda, looking down to her hero, the boxer, who is
occupying the jardin suspendu. He looks at his punching bag. And in the drawing
‘Ferme radieuse,’ the woman in the kitchen looks over the counter toward the man
sitting at the dining room table. He is reading the newspaper. Here again the woman
is placed ‘inside,’ the man ‘outside’; the woman looks at the man, the man looks at
the ‘world.’” Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass
Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), p. 296.
25. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 275.
Anderson
 26. Frascari, “The Body and Architecture in the Drawings of Carlo Scarpa,”
pp. 125, 130.
27. For a full accounting of the range of Scarpa’s intentions with regard to
the use of human Ž gures in his drawings and the roles they play, see Frascari, “The
Body and Architecture in the Drawings of Carlo Scarpa.” Frascari explains that “in
a metonymic procedure, the drawing of a handle results from a mold in the form
of a hand that grasps, rather than from a formal representation of the hand itself.”
Frascari, “The Body and Architecture in the Drawings of Carlo Scarpa,” p. 125.
28. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer, trans.
(New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 21. David Michael Levin discusses a similar
notion in The Body’s Recollection of Being (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul,
1985), p. 94: “I think we need to ask ourselves: of what are we capable? This question
May 2002 JAE 55/4
focuses attention on our capacity to develop the character of our primordial rela-
tionship to Being as a whole by virtue of our motility” (Levin’s italics).
29. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Colin Smith,
trans. (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1962), p. 203.
30. Drew Leder, The Absent Body (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1990), p. 34. For a similar account of the relationship between the body and
architecture, see also Michel Serres, “Visit to a House,” Daidalos 41 (Sept. 15, 1991):
88–91.
31. For an account of the role that drawings play in the conception and
representation of architecture, see Mark Hewitt, “Representational Forms and
Modes of Conception: An Approach to the History of Architectural Drawing,”
Journal of Architectural Education, 39/2 (winter 1985): 2–8.
246