13 - Proportional Design Systems in 17th-Century Holland

Summary

The study of proportional design in architecture offers a minefield of misunderstandings and over-interpretations. As historiography of this kind of research illustrates, the quest for a golden key that may unveil universal harmony in architecture of all ages resulted mostly in geometrical shapes in which especially the air around or the soil below the buildings seems to be well proportioned. Both Gothic and classical buildings always show manifold horizontal and vertical lines. By attempting to reconstruct an architect's intended geometrical frame on a modern drawing of an existing building, one always runs the risk of coincidence: there may always be something that, at first glance, seems to fit into any system imposed on it. The main question, nevertheless, should be the other end of the design process: could a certain proportional system indeed have been used from the start of the design? In other words, is the proportional system indeed a necessary help to define the outline and the crucial parts of the final design as we know it?

In order to prevent anachronisms in the reconstruction of proportional systems it is essential to go back to evidence of contemporary design practises. Unfortunately, in early modern times written sources on contemporary design systems are rare and drawings showing a proportional system applied are even rarer. The well-known treatises of Andrea Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi and others offer some basic theoretical principles as well as the final results, the ground plans and façades of villas and palaces. On the other hand, the actual practise of how to construct a design step by step is never explained—not because this was something “secret,” one may presume, but since it was a common practice well known to the reader.

Fortunately, some 17th-century witnesses are available who illustrate what had happened at the architect's drawing table in Holland. All these accounts date from the heyday of Dutch classicist architecture, between 1630 and 1680. In this period Dutch architecture was strongly embedded in the legacy of 16th-century Italian architects and their theoretical works, such as those of Palladio and, above all, Scamozzi. The most important protagonists in this development had been the architects Salomon de Bray and Jacob van Campen, followed by their younger colleagues Pieter Post, Arent van ‘s-Gravesande, and Philips Vingboons.