No Badillo

ARH 511B
3/24/2011

Dialectics of Cosmology: A Hermeneutical Study of John Hendrixs

Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures
The idea that aesthetic form is manifested from the epistemological awareness within a
culture gives rise to many profound questions. As a work of architecture has an external form
which is engineered and constructed by an internal framework, the intention of John Hendrixs
book, Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures is to define this aesthetic manifestation
through the concepts by which it is brought forth. As Hendrixs book is a study of this internal
framework, the goal of this brief essay is to form an analysis of the authors method of applying
these philosophical constructs in his analysis. This paper will also be less about a direct review of
the publication, and more so about a critical discourse pertaining to the ideas within it. The
discourse will be guided by hermeneutical interpretation, both in an analysis of Hendrixs
writings, and also as a structure by which to interpret and reexamine the architecture discussed in
his book. Although his publication deals with many different topics in architectural history (fig.
1), I have also chosen to focus solely on an interpretation of the chapters pertaining to the
architecture of the Baroque period, including chapter 4, Francesco Borromini and the
Construction of Meaning, chapter 5, Guarino Guarini and Bernardo Vittone and chapter 6,
Leibniz and the Baroque.
These three chapters pertaining to the Baroque in Architectural Forms and Philosophical
Structures are constructed upon three primary dialectics. One of the most important and
fundamental problems grappled with by Hendrix about Baroque architecture is the reconciliation

of reason with the divine. This dialectic is typified by his examination of seventeenth-century
philosophies which were applied in the creation of cosmology in architecture by the architects of
the Baroque period. Within this dialectic occurs the problem of manifestation, which attempts to
describe the manner in which the formless and invisible nature of God can exist within the
architectural form. The third dialectic is founded upon the manifestation of symbol, which
questions the process by which symbolic architectural features manifest elements of the cosmos,
or the inverse, in which the cosmos manifests within a language of symbols.
In his chapter on Borromini, the philosophical systems present in the Italian Peninsula
during the seventeenth-century are examined in order to find correspondences within
Borrominis architecture. Hendrixs methodology stems from his years as a student at Cornell
University, where he studied under the progeny of Rudolf Wittkower and Colin Rowe, and
learned how to connect formal elements of architecture to underlying concepts from which they
are brought forth. What he learned at Cornell was also primarily influenced by Erwin Panofskys
work at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, which asserts the primacy of philosophy
and epistemology as the source by which to interpret the arts.1
Architectural Forms is a book that contains key concepts from an earlier book entitled,
The Relation Between Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures in the Work of
Francesco Borromini in Seventeenth-Century Rome, which was a development of his doctoral
dissertation, Philosophical Structures in the Architecture of Francesco Borromini. Hendrixs
most recent work includes his study of Lincoln Cathedral as a research associate at the
University of Lincoln, England. During his time there, he published three more books, two of
which pertain to Lincoln Cathedral, its cosmology and the philosophies of its Bishop, Robert

John Shannon Hendrix. Architecture and Psychoanalysis. Peter Eisenman and Jacques Lacan. (Peter
Lang: New York): 5.
1

Grosseteste. The other, of which he is the editor, entitled Renaissance Theories of Vision, in some
ways follows the theme of light and optical theory within the medieval philosophy represented
by his books on Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral.
The problem of manifestation in the study of ecclesial Baroque architecture deals with
the idea that God, as an immaterial and immutable substance, can be embodied or represented
within an architectural form. This problem is pertinent primarily in the study of ecclesial
architecture, which is intended to be a vessel of the divine, and a place to worship the presence of
God in the church. Hendrix describes the philosophies of seventeenth century scholars and
architects that manifest divine creation through geometries, philosophies and mathematics.2
Hendrixs method of connecting the manifestation of architectural form to philosophy is
exemplified by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his book Philosophical Hermeneutics, in which he
describes the experience of alienation within aesthetic and historical consciousness. Gadamer
expresses the relationship between art and the divine in aesthetic judgment, applying Hegels
example of the Greeks and their religion of beauty in which art represents a direct experience
with the sacred.3
The correlation of architectural forms and philosophical structures in Hendrixs analysis
is, like Hegels example, not based solely on a relationship between form and idea, but also
between a rational architectural praxis (logos) and religious aisthsis, in which one informs the
other. This is made evident within Hendrixs chapter on Guarino Guarini and Bernardo Vittone,
in which he defines Vittones idea of God as architect, by which man has formed a divine science
from his mystical and intellectual visions. 4 In this manner, the architects relation to logos is
based not only on cognition, but on the ability to be receptive to divine reason. This is made
ibid., 86.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Trans. and Ed., David E. Linge. Philosophical Hermeneutics. (University of
California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles): 4.
4
John Hendrix. Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures. (Peter Lang: New York): 97.
2
3

apparent by Hendrix in his writings on Borromini by stating that the creation of material reality
through numerical and geometrical archetypes [is] provided by God the creator, 5 and in his
writings on Guarini in which he describes the manner in which mathematics and geometry are
manifestations of the intellectio divina.6
This idea of manifestation in Hendrixs methodology can also be seen as a metaphysical
process, in which a network of invisible mechanisms promulgate architectural constructs through
specific functions, elements and properties, and are delineated through the intellectual processes
of mathematics, geometry and philosophy. Thus the problem of manifestation is a cognitive
process in which metaphysical properties are codified, organized and translated into visual
expression, and the architectural form becomes the visible mirror that represents the solution of
the invisible algebraic equation. Hendrix references Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnizs Monadology, in
which he discusses [t]he machines of nature, and Aristotles idea of the infinitely divisible
living bodies, to express a form of organic structuralization occurrent in the relation between
architecture and the intelligences that manifest them.
The methodology of structuralism within Hendrixs architectural analysis can be found in
the ideas present in his discussion of Borrominis collaboration with Athanasius Kircher in the
original planning of the Fountain of the Four Rivers before the commission was taken over by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini and completed in 1651. (fig. 2) Hendrix observes that the fountain
contains a series of symbolic opposites of good and evil, and fertility and drought that are
borrowed from Hermetecism and Egyptian theology.7 Similarly, the origin of conceptual
structures is thought, according to theorist T.K. Seung, to have its origins in pre-Socratic
philosophy, including mathematical theories of odd and even within the Pythagorean School, the
5
6
7

ibid., 86.
ibid., 98.
ibid., 53-4.
4

concept of day and night in the Heraclitean School, and the polarity of temperature in the
theories of Anaxagoras.8 The subsumption of hermeneutics into the realm of ontology is
represented by Hendrixs semiotic analysis of the Fountain of the Four Rivers as it is connected
to the intellectio divina, thereby related to the function of telos as a signifier which points back to
the source of causation.
Although it is important to note that structuralist theory has it origins in French
philosophy of the late twentieth century, structuralism in and of itself is autonomous. As a
method of interpretation, it is a construct that is not limited to any field of study, time or culture.
As structuralists attempt to peer below the surface content of the physical fabric of the world to
find pattern, order and thereby meaning, 9 this underlying substructure is apparent within the
architecture of the Baroque. Hendrixs analysis reveals a multidimensional framework beyond
the scope of structural interpretation in which architecture is a location of coincidence. The
intellectual world of the Baroque architect exists as a stratification of mathematical, aesthetic,
astronomical and theological constructs, which are compressed into the solidified manifestation
of architectural form, to create an ontological coincidence between humankind and the cosmos.
Hendrixs analysis forms a typology of this stratified system, which polyvalently reveals
a coincidence between telos and techn. One in which the purpose of the intellect is manifested,
and once manifested, reified through the use of symbol, structure, and the occurrence of form
with divine vision. This process is evidenced by his reference to the philosophies of Giordano
Bruno and Leibniz, who described the living body as a divine machine which supersedes all

T.K. Seung. Structuralism and Hermeneutics. (Columbia University Press: New York): 22.
Eric Fernie. Art History and its Methods. A Critical Anthology. (Phaidon Press: London and New York):
19. Fernie defines structuralism as such: The structuralist approach looks for meaning at a level below
surface content, a technique which can be applied to visual material by, for example, ignoring the
iconographic identification of the figures in an image and using instead paired concepts such as
male/female, nude/clothed and light/dark in order to define and explore the content.
8
9

other forms of artificial creation. 10 Hendrix states that the architecture of the late Baroque is also
a manifestation of this organic and divine machine.
This stratification, as it pertains to the presence of symbol, is a product of Neoplatonic
influence, which Hendrix describes as a syncretic philosophy, involving numerous sources,
including Egyptian, Oriental, Persian, Greek and Byzantine philosophies. 11 The complex nature
of Neoplatonism manifests through symbol as not merely an amalgamation of cultural
iconographies, but a coincidence of universal principles. Beyond symbol, writers like Kircher
presented architects of the Baroque period such as Borromini with a world in which such diverse
subjects as astronomy, perspective and music harmonically coincide. The many layers of this
harmonic philosophical system are compressed into the typological layers of the architectonic
structure, revealing a complex coincidence of ideation within form.
This process of architectural manifestation is made evident by Hendrix in his assessment
of the influence of philosophical structures in the creation of architecture, including Borrominis
incorporation of the theoretical writings available in seventeenth-century Rome, such as Kircher
and Nicolas Cusanus. Hendrix also describes in his chapter on Guarino Guarini and Bernardo
Vittone how nature informs architecture, and that mathematics and geometry are the keys to the
universe.12 In this sense, the compression of universal knowledge into the architectural form is
both the lock and the key; the lock being the point at which epistemologies are structured as
form, the key being the harmonic coincidence of this knowledge with the cosmos in which it
exists.13

Hendrix. Architectural Forms, 93.

ibid., 51.
12
ibid., 90.
13
ibid., 89. The laws of nature continue to inform the laws of architecture. Mathematics and
geometry, the keys to the universe, as in the visio intellectualis, are related to movement and variation
in time and continuums, and drawn from celestial observations, as knowledge was given for Gian
Lomazzo and Pietro da Cortona. Guarino Guarini described geometry as the mirror of the world.
10
11

The teleology of this stratified system coincides at fulcrums and nodal points within the
geometric organization of architecture, thereby reflecting the dynamics of the universe.14 This
form of reflection is exemplified by his reference to Bruno, who proclaims that the substance of
the universe is the reflection of its divine essence, and that the participation in this essence and
its substantiation form a threefold sun of understanding in which divine radiance encompasses
all things, and unto which all things encompass its divine radiance.15
An emphasis placed on these symbolic occurrences within the physical fabric of the
Fountain of the Four Rivers is the presence not only of a structuralist methodology within
Hendrixs research, but within the formation of the fountain itself. Moreover, the proliferation of
a great deal of scientific diagrams during the Baroque period is evidence of this, as the
physicality of architectural fabrication is based upon these underlying philosophical ideas that
are intended to manifest as form, which in turn embodies and enigmatically reveals them. These
correspondences made evident by structuralism are based on ideas in which logos forms the basis
of cognitive structures which manifest as architectural forms.
Hendrixs examination of primary documents also lends itself to structuralist discourse,
made evident by his analysis of Cusanus De Coniecturis, Marsilio Ficinos Theologia Platonica
and Kirchers Primitiae Gnomonicae Catopticae, in a section pertaining to light and vision. As
the reception of light through divine vision is the source of architectural knowledge according to
Vittone, it is the understanding of the reflection and refraction of light both physically and
metaphysically that also manifests the architectural design. This interpretation, while formally
structural, also contains an ontological substrate. The intellectual process in which light is
perceived through the eye, is the underlying causality of the perception of architectural form and

14
15

ibid., 94.
ibid., 94.
7

of the soul, by which the architect creates independently. 16 Light through the receptive process of
divine intelligence is seen also as the scientific basis of the perception of architecture, in terms of
the awareness of perspectival space.
The substance of light from its divine and formless nexus is given shape and structure
through processes which exist within the many sciences and metaphysical philosophies studied
in the 17th century academies. Hendrix delineates several of these schools of thought, including
Hermetic and Neoplatonic theories, connecting once again the coincidence of polarities in the
process of creation.17 Recurrent phrases punctuate Hendrixs text in his search for the manner by
which to describe this process, and create a paradigm of unification from this polarity. Such
instances include his description of geometric figures, in which the circle exists as that which is
eternal. An analogy is made in which God is inaccessible to material reality as the circle is
inaccessible to the geometric constructions of the polygon.18
This process is ultimately connected to Nicolas Cusanus treatise De circuli quadratura, a
treatise on squaring the circle, (fig. 3) a problem proposed but never solved by numerous
mathematicians throughout history. The impossibility of finding a solution to creating a square

with the same area of a circle is due to the impossibility of finding

, for the reason that

transcendental number, in that it is mathematically impossible to measure or contain. As

is a

is the

ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter, its transcendental nature also becomes symbolic
of the Neoplatonic idea of its inaccessibility. Hendrix points out that Cusanus book was of great
Hendrix. Architectural Forms, 97. This is stated according to the theories of Bernardo Vittone, in
which he discusses the manner in which man emulates God as an architect. For Vittone the architect
emulates God in constructing such a vision, as the builder and architect of the mystical house which
requires a conceptualization not limited to structure and technique, but which incorporates all arts and
science as well.
17
ibid., 57.
18
ibid., 67.
16

interest to architects in creating a relationship between the transcendent forms and those which
can be manifest as logical and abstractly divisible geometries.19
Another reference pertaining to the dialectic of the transcendent with architectural form is
made evident in Hendrixs mention of Guarino Guarinis Placita Philosophica, where he
describes that the unification of human substance and divine form can be brought about
through scientific discourse, and be described as a process similar to architectural forms which
coincide in anthropic relation to the human body, as in Leonardo da Vincis Vitruvian Man. 20
Hendrix observes that the five points of the human body, including head, arms and legs,
metonymically echo the pentagonal windows in the cupola of Guarinis church of San Lorenzo.
(fig. 4)
The subject of visual metonymy is also explored by Hendrix in his book Architecture and
Psychoanalysis, where he references Jacques Lacans theory of language signification, in which
the metonymic representation of visual language is signified by a point of perceptual transfer. In
Hendrixs example, the signified or surface meaning of visual representation may be
metonymically represented by an altered representation which appears disconnected, or
flipped. The point at which this visual transfer takes place is seemingly intended to conceal the
metonymic relation between the two objects, while simultaneously producing a meaning below
the level of surface representation. The visual displacement of metonymic forms creates the
fulcrums or nodal points of architecture which Hendrix speaks of as a conceptual mirror in which

ibid., 52. Hendrix also points out other corresponding texts, including Leon Battista Albertis De re
aedificatoria, De ludi matematici, De motibus ponderis, and Cusanus De Staticis Experimentis.
20
ibid., 93. The pentagonal openings in the cupola of San Lorenzo refer, as Guarini explains in Placita
philosophica, to the unification of human substance and divine form, through the use of scientific
investigation to discover divine secrets, as the five points of the human figure (head, arms and legs)
can be inscribed in the pentagon, as in the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. The method of using
anthropic units in the measurement of architecture also stems back to Vitruvius, of which Leonardos
Vitruvian Man, and as far back as ancient Egypt.
19

symbolic layers of the universe are abstracted into architectural forms. 21 The relation between the
human figure and the pentagonal openings creates a displacement where the physical extensions
of the human body are abstracted into symbol and rotated on a metonymic axis between the
lantern and the fenestrations of the cupola.
The point of perceptual transfer also relates to the sub-surface awareness presented within
the structuralist theory, evident within the analysis of the Fountain of the Four Rivers. The
relation of Lacans linguistic theory to structuralism represents the idea of architecture as
language, in which the signifier can be read at a deeper, more embedded level. The pentagonal
openings in San Lorenzos cupola embody this sense of depth not merely due to a visual
displacement, but because of this stratified symbolism. The layers of embedded meaning create
an underlying subiectum, and a density of awareness within the object.
The five points of the human body which create the pentagonal fenestrations in the
cupola at San Lorenzo, as it pertains to the image of the Vitruvian Man, also coincides with the
circle and the square inscribed in Leonardos drawing from 1487, and which Cusanus examines
in De Circuli Quadratura. Hendrixs theory on Guarinis dome is therefore a coalescence of
symbolic and philosophical ideas evident within the interpretation of primary documents that
form a relation to the intricate dimensions and facets of the architectonic structure.

It is important to note that Hendrixs reference to Lacan pertains specifically to Peter Eisenman, of
whom Hendrix was a student. His reference also pertains to a studio project which he was assigned to
do in Eisenmans advanced design studio course, where he was assigned to create a building that is
irrational in appearance while ordered by a completely rational design process. While in a conceptual
sense, the description of Hendrixs design process in relation to Lacans theory is intended to represent
abstract constructs by which the architect arrives at the organization of forms, I have chosen to apply
this idea to his discussion of Guarinis cupola of San Lorenzo: Hendrix. Architectural Forms, 93-94.
Hendrixs original interpretation of Lacan according to Eisenmans project is as follows: Hendrix.
Architecture and Psychoanalysis, 6. In that the geometries were designed to suggest the geometries
of cells, the form can be seen as a visual metonym, standing in for something with which it has
something in common. The sequence of rotated forms can thus be seen as a metonymic chain, a
sequence of signifiers in language which produces a certain significationThe irrationality of the
rational sequence of metonyms, the presence of absence within signification, or within meaning, is
made present at the point at which the sequence flips and creates an irrational shape.
21

10

By examining the morphology of Guarinis dome of San Lorenzo, Hendrix points to a

synchronic point at which the philosophical structures present within the Renaissance and
Baroque periods form a typology which can be applied to the architectural form. Architectural
scholar Lindsay Jones also states that although these morphological organizations as they exist at
San Lorenzo are informed by history, they are in essence unbound by temporality.22 The relation
of Hendrixs interpretation, according to what Jones denotes as heuristic, is in fact a more
careful, calculated methodology consisting of specific historiographical connections between
philosophers and architects during the seventeenth century. Hendrixs process of investigation
entails a complex network of epistemologies, originating as far back in history as ancient Egypt
and Greece, as with the philosophies of Hermetecism and Neoplatonism, which are later carried
on by philosophers such as Kircher and Leibniz. This methodology is an underlying current
throughout Hendrixs Architectural Forms, beyond the scope of what is discussed herein, to his
first two chapters on architecture and cosmology in ancient Egypt and Greece. While the
informing of morphological relationships to a lineage of history is essentially diachronic, the
synchronic aspect in which they exist is within the realm of symbolism.
One way in which the synchronic relation to symbol is discussed within Architectural
Forms is through the geometrical unfolding of the Monad; which is a point of unity from which
all numbers flow forth, and therefore all geometric forms,23 of which their integers both
symbolically represent as well as form a fulcrum of their interaction. Hendrix states that the
triangle is the primary geometrical unity, symbolizing the connections between the Father, Son,

Lindsay Jones. The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture. Experience, Interpretation, Comparison.

Volume Two. Hermeneutical Calisthenics, A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural Priorities (Harvard
University Press: Cambridge): 5.
23
Hendrix. Architectural Forms, 74.
22

11

and Holy Spirit. He also states that this form represents the ultimate unity from which all other
geometric forms are promulgated.24
The proposition of an ultimate point of unity is also stated in Edmund Husserls essay
from 1939, The Origin of Geometry, in which he contrasts the geometric form to linguistic
structures: The sensible utterances have spatiotemporal individuation in the world like all
corporeal occurrencesbut this is not true of the spiritual form itself, which is called an ideal
object [ideale Gegenstndlichkeit].25 This ideal object or ideation from which the geometric
form generates is also spoken of within Maurice Merleau-Pontys writings on Husserl, in which
he states that, geometry and each geometrical truth exists only once, no matter how often it is
thought by geometers. Merleau-Ponty continues by asking, [b]ut if there was a pure and
detached ideality, how would it descend into the space of consciousness..? 26 These examples
from Continental philosophy, although temporally disparate from the ideas present within the
Baroque period itself, serve as representations of the ontological basis of architecture according
to geometry, as it exists as a visual and structural manifestation of form. The placement of
architecture outside historical temporality is not only due to the absolute nature of its presence,27
but to the universal paradigm of the aesthetic experience as a form of hermeneutical reflection.
However, an interpretive delineation can be made in Hendrixs analysis between the
experience of sensate perception (aisthsis), and the purely cognitive awareness that exists
within the philosophical structures of architecture. While a correlation can be made between
cognition and sense according to the way that epistemologies can be directly identified within
architectural form, the manifestation of these forms is, according to Hendrix, brought forth as a
ibid., 75.
Jacques Derrida. Edmund Husserls Origin of Geometry: An Introduction (Stony Brook, NY: Nicolas
Hays, Ltd.): 160-61.
26
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology. Including Texts by Edmund Husserl
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press): 7.
27
Gadamer. Philosophical Hermeneutics, 96.
24
25

12

reception of the divine. In his chapter Leibniz and the Baroque, Hendrix speaks of the
transformation and interaction of physical substances within Leibnizs Neoplatonic theory.
Through this explication, Hendrix expresses Leibnizs idea of nature as a structure of
organization, and as a mechanistic, teleological, system. Leibnizs system is also based on the
philosophical concept of an unchangeable state within nature known as the materia prima.
According to Leibniz, there is a threefold hierarchy of pure, immaterial form, which by
necessity requires material substance to exist, such as the human soul, and nature, which exists in
a complete causal relationship with materiality. Hendrix compares this hierarchy to the three
levels of the Baroque church, in which the lantern has no materiality, the cupola has materiality,
but no causal interaction, and the worship space contains both causal interaction as well as
materiality.28 While this system is in fact physical, it is at its core based on cognitive structures,
of which nature is the substance in which the immaterial is contained.
For this reason, a further delineation must be made between properties of physics and
metaphysics, or of physical substances which are beyond the realm of ordinary sensate
perception. The idea of cognition therefore manifests as the manifold structure by which ideas
represent themselves in the interpretation of architecture. It is for this reason that cognitive
structures relate to structural ideas within the architectural form, such as fulcrums and nodal
points,29 while symbols manifested as geometric elements within the architecture relate to the
conception of the visio intellectualis.30 While the symbol manifests as geometric form, the points
of juncture at the corners of the form represent a cognitive framework, while the sides represent
the sensate aspect (aisthsis), or aesthetic relation of the form to the viewer.

Hendrix. Architectural Forms, 103.

ibid., 94.
30
ibid., 89. According to Hendrix, this form of intellectual vision forms a coincidence between
mathematics and geometry with celestial observations, movement and time.
28
29

13

The ontological dimension of Hendrixs inquiry reifies the geometric form as a symbol
beyond merely a sign of appropriation, but an instance of cosmology; the awareness of which is
a product of the intellectio divina. As stated, [t]he Divine Mind divides everything, as our mind
discerns everything. God divides and produces things in real substance, while ours divides and
produces only numbers, which are similitudes of Divine divisions. 31 As the etymology of
symbol is derived from the Greek smbolon (), defined as the coincidence of two
things, Hendrixs description of the symbolic origin of geometry once again creates a bridge
between the human mind and the relationship to the divine.
Hendrixs relation of architectural forms to philosophical structures presents a dialectical
framework by which to think of the interaction between form and idea. The historicity of
Hendrixs argument is posited in a manner that exists more intricately than is stated in his text.
This relationship is even more evident by considering the entire scope of his book. Examples that
can be noted include the connection of Kircher, Ficino, Cusanus, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius and
Plato to Hermetecism, which in fact extends back to ancient Egypt. But the historicity of
Hendrixs claim runs deeper than relations between philosophers and architects.
The importance of Ficinos translation of the Corpus Hermeticum during the late
quattrocento lead to a revolutionary new understanding of classical thought, which created a
radical synthesis of ideas that, along with the incorporation of other philosophies came to be
known as Neoplatonism. In this sense, the triumph of Catholicism is appropriated to its
etymological title as the universal religion ().32 As stated by Hendrix, these
philosophies were absorbed by the Catholic Church, which also sought to broaden the bases of
Christian theology and to establish itself as the culmination of all religions.33
31
32
33

ibid., 74.
Katholikos or kat hlou, can be defined as universal or according to the whole.
Hendrix. Architectural Forms, 51.
14

Writings such as Francesco Patrizis Nova de universis philosophia, combined Platonic

philosophy, Christian theology and Hermetecism to create a new understanding in which
epistemological ideas could be seen as a whole and unified system. 34 Leibnizs mechanistic
model of nature gave rise to the way in which geometry, mathematics, architecture and theology
can be seen as a stratified teleology, and a new and universal system. These universal elements
can be seen through epistemic lenses that define their form and meaning, thereby allowing the
architect to manifest the architectural form through the intellectual vision. The product of these
manifestations is an architectural embodiment of the cosmos.
The theoretical systems of Hendrixs architectural analyses are not merely interpretations
based on the incorporation of disparate knowledge in relation to the work of the architect. The
architects of the Baroque period were not merely designers. Guarini for example, was not only
an architect, but a mathematician, astronomer and theologian. Although less can be verified
about what he knew according to his own writings, Borrominis architecture is deeply embedded
within the philosophical ideas of the seventeenth century. This thread runs through directly to his
relations to Kircher and their original design of the Fountain of the Four Rivers.
The dialectic of aesthetics and epistemology in Hendrixs Architectural Forms and
Philosophical Structures forms a corollary between the study of architecture and its underlying
processes. His analysis serves the purpose of understanding a disparate body of
contemporaneous knowledge during the Baroque period in connection to the methods and
architectural production of its architects. Hendrix expresses the reconciliation of reason with the
divine, the substantiation of theological and philosophical ideas into architectonic structures, and
the idea of the symbol as a coincidence between form and idea as a way to understand the
complexity of architecture occurrent on the Italian peninsula during the Baroque period. Through
ibid., 54.

34

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an examination of the epistemologies from which the architecture of the Baroque is designed,
Hendrix exemplifies the work of architecture not as the causation of the idea, but as the direct
product of ideation, in which the architectural form is manifested by its theoretical origins.

Bibliography
Derrida, Jacques. Edmund Husserls Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Stony Brook, NY:
Nicolas Hays, Ltd., 1978.
Fernie, Eric. Art History and its Methods. A Critical Anthology. Phaidon Press: London and New
York, 1995.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, trans. and ed., David E. Linge. Philosophical Hermeneutics. University
of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976.
Hendrix, John. Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures. Peter Lang: New York, 2003.
Hendrix, John Shannon. Architecture and Psychoanalysis. Peter Eisenman and Jacques Lacan.
Peter Lang: New York, 2006.
Jones, Lindsay. The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture. Experience, Interpretation,
Comparison. Volume One. Monumental Occasions, Reflections on the Eventfulness of
Religious Architecture. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2000.
The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture. Experience, Interpretation, Comparison.
Volume Two. Hermeneutical Calisthenics, A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural
Priorities. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2000.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology. Including Texts by Edmund
Husserl. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2002.
Seung, T.K. Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Columbia University Press: New York, 1982.

16

John Hendrix, Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures, 2003

17

Fig. 1

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1651

18

Fig. 2

Squaring the Circle

19

Fig. 3

Guarino Guarini, San Lorenzo (cupola), 16661680

20

Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, 1487

Fig. 4

21