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IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn

During the late 1400s, famed Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci created

one of his most famed drawings: Vitruvian Man. The drawing is so well regarded that Italians selected the Vitruvian Man to adorn their national one Euro coin starting in 2002. Developed from the writings of Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture, the drawing depicted a male figure inscribed within a circle and square. The drawing became highly influential,

as, in the late 1400s, new editions of Vitruvius’ Classical text were being published, but

the majority possessed no illustrations. For the discipline of architecture, da Vinci’s drawing

provided an important image for one of Vitruvius’ most foundational concepts. According

to Peter Eisenman, Vitruvian Man was seen as the “ideal origin” of architecture.1 Derived from the human body, or, more accurately, a “well-shaped man,” Vitruvius’ text and da

Vinci’s drawing provided principles regarding hierarchy, proportion, order, geometry,

organization, symmetry, and part-to-whole relationships, which, at the time, were the

most important aspects of architectural design.

As stated by Vitruvius in The Ten Books on Architecture, which serves as the original text in this chapter:

Since nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly propor-

tioned to the frame as a whole, it appears that the ancients had good reason for

their rule, that in perfect buildings the different members must be in exact . . .

relations to the whole general scheme. Hence, while transmitting to us the proper

arrangements for buildings of all kinds, they were particularly careful to do so in

the case of temples of the gods. . . . Further, it was from the members of the body

that they derived the fundamental ideas of the measures which are obviously

necessary in all works.

Vitruvius focused not so much on the absolute measurements of parts of the body but

the proportional relationships among the parts, for example the human face as one tenth

of the height. Vitruvius was not advocating the use of parts of the body—the face, the

1. Peter Eisenman, “The End of

the Classical: The End of the

Beginning, The End of the End,”

Perspecta, 21 (1984): 159.

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foot, the hand—as units of measurement. Instead, he was promoting a concept, that

the design of buildings, like that of the human body, strive for a “correspondence among

the measures of the members of an entire work, and of the whole to a certain part.”

While Vitruvius saw the human body as a proportional analogue to building, Le

Corbusier saw the human body as a direct unit of measurement. In Le Modulor, the

reflective text for this chapter, Le Corbusier outlined a system of proportion and measurement to be used in fabrication and construction. Le Corbusier sought to develop

a system that would supersede both the English system of feet and inches and the

European metric system, and would govern all forms of mass production. For Vitruvius,

the human body provided an organizational concept, whereas, for Le Corbusier, the human

body provided a system of measurement.

Lance Hosey, however, criticized both precepts. In “Hidden Lines: Gender, Race, and

the Body,” the philosophical text of this chapter, Hosey noted that Vitruvius’ and Le Corbusier’s theories of the human body were particularly narrow. According to Hosey, this

was also the case in architectural books like Graphic Standards, where the human figure is highly idealized.2 Representations depicted full-grown white males of a particular height

and weight, and did not address the diversity of human bodies in regards to age, race,

gender, and body size. As stated by Hosey, “architecture traditionally has been a restricted

profession, its standards of practice have been written by and for a narrow demographic

. . . white and male. . . . Graphic Standards may be read as a guide for white men to create buildings for themselves in their own image” at the exclusion of the others.

Architecture is built for human inhabitation. In other words, architecture is built to

be occupied by the human body (human bodies). As such, it makes sense that architects—

Classical, Renaissance, Modern, or contemporary—would use the human body as an

inspiration or principle of design. However, given the ever-growing diversity of religious,

cultural, political, racial, age-related, gender-related, and physical aspects of human bodies,

designers and students of architecture must ask a question previously posed by Diana

Agrest: “What body?”3

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2. Architectural Graphic Standards was first published in 1932.

Authored by the American

Institute of Architects, the 11th

edition was published by Wiley

& Sons in 2007. According to

the publisher, Graphic Standards has exceeded one million copies sold. Due to

popularity, the 1932 edition

was reissued in 1998.

3. Diana Agrest, “Architecture

From Without: Body, Logic, and

Sex,” Assemblage, 7 (1988): 30.

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OOrriiggiinnaall TTeexxtt MARCUS VITRUVIUS, EXCERPTS FROM THE TEN BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE.

First Published ca. 25 B.C.E.

ON SYMMETRY: IN TEMPLES AND IN THE HUMAN BODY

The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most

carefully observed by the architect. They are due to proportion, in Greek α′ναλογι′α. Proportion is a correspondence among the measures of the members of an entire work,

and of the whole to a certain part selected as standard. From this result the principles of

symmetry. Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design

of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members, as in the case

of those of a well-shaped man.

For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the

top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height;

the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head

from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of

the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the

summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from

the bottom of the chin to the underside of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the

underside of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to

the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. The length of the

foot is one sixth of the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth

of the breast is also one fourth. The other members, too, have their own symmetrical

proportions, and it was by employing them that the famous painters and sculptors of

antiquity attained to great and endless renown.

Similarly, in the members of a temple there ought to be the greatest harmony in

the symmetrical relations of the different parts to the general magnitude of the whole.

Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be

placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centred

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at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference

of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so

too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles

of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms,

the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces

which are perfectly square.

Therefore, since nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly

proportioned to the frame as a whole, it appears that the ancients had good reason for

their rule, that in perfect buildings the different members must be in exact symmetrical

relations to the whole general scheme. Hence, while transmitting to us the proper

arrangements for buildings of all kinds, they were particularly careful to do so in the case

of temples of the gods, buildings in which merits and faults usually last forever.

Further, it was from the members of the body that they derived the fundamental

ideas of the measures which are obviously necessary in all works, as the finger, palm,

foot, and cubit. These they apportioned so as to form the “perfect number,” called in Greek

τε′λειον, and as the perfect number the ancients fixed upon ten. For it is from the number of the fingers of the hand that the palm is found, and the foot from the palm. Again,

while ten is naturally perfect, as being made up by the fingers of the two palms, Plato

also held that this number was perfect because ten is composed of the individual units,

called by the Greeks µονα′δεζ. But as soon as eleven or twelve is reached, the numbers, being excessive, cannot be perfect until they come to ten for the second time; for the

component parts of that number are the individual units.

The mathematicians, however, maintaining a different view, have said that the

perfect number is six, because this number is composed of integral parts which are suited

numerically to their method of reckoning: thus, one is one sixth; two is one third; three is

one half; four is two thirds, or δι′µοιροζ as they call it; five is five sixths, called πεντα′µοιροζ and six is the perfect number. As the number goes on growing larger, the addition of a

unit above six is the ε′φεκτοζ eight, formed by the addition of a third part of six, is the integer and a third, called ε′πι′τριτοζ; the addition of one half makes nine, the integer and a half, termed η′µιο′λιοζ; the addition of two thirds, making the number ten, is the integer and two thirds, which they call ε′πιδι′µοιροζ; in the number eleven, where five are added, we have the five sixths, called ε′πι′πεµπτοζ; finally, twelve, being composed of the two simple integers, is called διπλα′ σιοζ.

And further, as the foot is one sixth of a man’s height, the height of the body

as expressed in number of feet being limited to six, they held that this was the perfect

number, and observed that the cubit consisted of six palms or of twenty-four fingers.

This principle seems to have been followed by the states of Greece. As the cubit consisted

of six palms, they made the drachma, which they used as their unit, consist in the same

way of six bronze coins like our asses, which they call obols; and, to correspond to the

fingers, divided the drachma into twenty-four quarter-obols, which some call dichalca

others trichalca.

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But our countrymen at first fixed upon the ancient number and made ten bronze

pieces go to the denarius, and this is the origin of the name which is applied to the denarius

to this day. And the fourth part of it, consisting of two asses and half of a third, they

called “sesterce.” But later, observing that six and ten were both of them perfect numbers,

they combined the two, and thus made the most perfect number, sixteen. They found

their authority for this in the foot. For if we take two palms from the cubit, there remains

the foot of four palms; but the palm contains four fingers. Hence the foot contains sixteen

fingers, and the denarius the same number of bronze asses.

Therefore, if it is agreed that number was found out from the human fingers, and

that there is a symmetrical correspondence between the members separately and the

entire form of the body, in accordance with a certain part selected as standard, we

can have nothing but respect for those who, in constructing temples of the immortal gods,

have so arranged the members of the works that both the separate parts and the whole

design may harmonize in their proportions and symmetry. . . .

In araeostyle temples, the columns should be constructed so that their thickness

is one eighth part of their height. In the diastyle, the height of a column should be

measured off into eight and a half parts, and the thickness of the column fixed at one of

these parts. In the systyle, let the height be divided into nine and a half parts, and one

of these given to the thickness of the column. In the pycnostyle, the height should, be

divided into ten parts, and one of these used for the thickness of the column. In the eustyle

temple, let the height of a column be divided, as in the systyle, into nine and a half parts,

and let one part be taken for the thickness at the bottom of the shaft. With these

dimensions we shall be taking into account the proportions of the intercolumniations.

For the thickness of the shafts must be enlarged in proportion to the increase of

the distance between the columns. In the araeostyle, for instance, if only a ninth or tenth

part is given to the thickness, the column will look thin and mean, because the width of

the intercolumniations is such that the air seems to eat away and diminish the thickness

of such shafts. On the other hand, in pycnostyles, if an eighth part is given to the thickness,

it will make the shaft look swollen and ungraceful, because the intercolumniations are so

close to each other and so narrow. We must therefore follow the rules of symmetry required

by each kind of building. Then, too, the columns at the corners should be made thicker

than the others by a fiftieth of their own diameter, because they are sharply outlined by

the unobstructed air round them, and seem to the beholder more slender than they are.

Hence, we must counteract the ocular deception by an adjustment of proportions.

Moreover, the diminution in the top of a column at the necking seems to be

regulated on the following principles: if a column is fifteen feet or under, let the thickness

at the bottom be divided into six parts, and let five of those parts form the thickness at

the top. If it is from fifteen feet to twenty feet, let the bottom of the shaft be divided

into six and a half parts, and let five and a half of those parts be the upper thickness of

the column. In a column of from twenty feet to thirty feet, let the bottom of the shaft be

divided into seven parts, and let the diminished top measure six of these. A column of

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from thirty to forty feet should be divided at the bottom into seven and a half parts, and,

on the principle of diminution, have six and a half of these at the top. Columns of from

forty feet to fifty should be divided into eight parts, and diminish to seven of these at the

top of the shaft under the capital. In the case of higher columns, let the diminution be

determined proportionally, on the same principles.

These proportionate enlargements are made in the thickness of columns on

account of the different heights to which the eye has to climb. For the eye is always in

search of beauty, and if we do not gratify its desire for pleasure by a proportionate

enlargement in these measures, and thus make compensation for ocular deception, a

clumsy and awkward appearance will be presented to the beholder. With regard to the

enlargement made at the middle of columns, which among the Greeks is called ε′ντασιζ at the end of the book a figure and calculation will be subjoined, showing how an agreeable

and appropriate effect may be produced by it.

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219

RReefflleeccttiivvee TTeexxtt LE CORBUSIER, EXCERPTS FROM LE MODULOR.

First Published in 1948

Building should be the concern of heavy industry, and the component parts of

houses should be mass-produced.

A mass-production mentality must be created:

a frame of mind for building mass-produced houses,

a frame of mind for living in mass-produced houses,

a frame of mind for imagining mass-produced houses.’

“Maisons en serie” L’Esprit Nouveau, 1921

And, in order to do that, it is necessary to standardize. . . .

To set down in concrete form . . . ideas on the subject of a harmonious measure

to the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and mechanics. . . .

My dream is to set up, on the building sites which will spring up all over our country

one day, a “grid of proportions”, drawn on the wall or made of strip iron, which will serve

as a rule for the whole project, a norm offering an endless series of different combinations

and proportions; the mason, the carpenter, the joiner will consult it whenever they have

to choose the measures for their work; and all the things they make, different and varied

as they are, will be united in harmony. That is my dream. . . .

I am going to talk to you about a Proportioning Grid, . . . which is expressed in

numbers, figures and diagrams. . . .

I felt that the Proportioning Grid, if it was destined one day to serve as a basis for

prefabrication, should be set above both the system of the foot-and-inch and the metric

system. . . .

The necessities of language demanded that the [Proportioning Grid] should be

given a name. Of several possible words, the “MODULOR” was chosen. . . .

The “Modulor” is a measuring tool based on the human body and on mathematics.

A man-with-arm-upraised provides, at the determining points of his occupation of space—

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foot, solar plexus, head, tips of fingers of the upraised arm—three intervals which give rise

to a series of golden sections, called the Fibonacci series. On the other hand, mathematics

offers the simplest and also the most powerful variation of a value: the single unit, the

double unit and the three golden sections.

The combinations obtained by the use of the “Modulor”’ have proved themselves

to be infinite. . . . The splendid result was the natural gift of numbers—the implacable

and magnificent play of mathematics.

Next, we were asked to round off our figures so as to bring them closer to certain

others in current use. The criticism addressed . . . was, in substance, this: the figures appear-

ing on the first strip . . . and in the first numerical table were based on the metric system,

e.g. 1,080 mm. for the solar plexus. Ill luck so had it that almost all these metric values

were practically untranslatable into feet and inches. Yet the “Modulor” would, one day,

claim to be the means of unification for manufactured articles in all countries. It was

therefore necessary to find whole values in feet and inches.

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FIGURE 7.3 Drawing of the proportioning system of Le Modulor (1943–1946). Architect: Le Corbusier.

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I had never anticipated having to round off certain figures of our two series. . . .

One day when we were working together, absorbed in the search for a solution, one of

us—Py—said: “The values of the ‘Modulor’ in its present form are determined by the body

of a man 1·75 m. in height. But isn’t that rather a French height? Have you never noticed

that in English detective novels, the good-looking men, such as the policemen, are always

six feet tall?”

We tried to apply this standard: six feet = 6 3 30.48 = 182.88 cm. To our delight,

the graduations of a new “Modulor,” based on a man six feet tall, translated themselves

before our eyes into round figures in feet and inches!

It has been proved, particularly during the Renaissance, that the human body

follows the golden rule. When the Anglo-Saxons adopted their linear measures, a cor-

relation was established between the value for a foot and that for an inch; this correlation

applies, by implication, to the corresponding values in the body. . . .

Overcoming this obstacle brought us unhoped-for encouragement: we felt that the

Modulor had automatically resolved the most disturbing difference separating the users

of the metre from those of the foot-and-inch. This difference is so serious in its practical

effects that it creates a wide gulf between the technicians and manufacturers who use

the foot-and-inch system and those who work on the basis of the metre. The conversion

of calculations from one system into the other is a paralysing and wasteful operation, so

delicate that it makes strangers of the adherents of the two camps even more than the

barrier of language.

The ‘Modulor’ converts metres into feet and inches automatically. In fact, it makes

allies—not of the metre, which is nothing but a length of metal at the bottom of a well

at the Pavilion du Breteuil near Paris—but of the decimal and the foot-and-inch, and

liberates the foot-and-inch system, by a decimal process, from the necessity for com-

plicated and stultifying juggling with numbers—addition, subtraction, multiplication and

division. . . .

On May 1st, 1946, I took the plane for New York, having been appointed by the

French Government to represent the cause of modern architecture at the United Nations

on the occasion of the building of the U.N. Headquarters in the United States.

I had the pleasure of discussing the “Modulor” at some length with Professor Albert

Einstein at Princeton. I was then passing through a period of great uncertainty and stress;

I expressed myself badly, I explained the “Modulor” badly, I got bogged down in the

morass of “cause and effect” . . . At one point, Einstein took a pencil and began to calculate.

Stupidly, I interrupted him, the conversation turned to other things, the calculation

remained unfinished. The friend who had brought me was in the depths of despair. In a

letter written to me the same evening, Einstein had the kindness to say this of the

“Modulor”: “It is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy.”

There are some who think this judgment is unscientific. For my part, I think it is extra-

ordinarily clear-sighted. It is a gesture of friendship made by a great scientist towards us

who are not scientists but soldiers on the field of battle. The scientist tells us: “This weapon

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shoots straight: in the matter of dimensioning, i.e. of proportions, it makes your task

more certain.” . . .

The “Modulor” is a measure based on mathematics and the human scale: it is

constituted of a double series of numbers, the red series and the blue. But, if that is all it

is, wouldn’t a numerical table do the trick just as well?—No. That is where I have to explain

again and again the set of ideas which I place at the very root of the invention. The

metre is a mere number without concrete being: centimetre, decimetre, metre are only

the designations of the decimal system. Later on I will say a few words about the millimetre.

The numbers of the “Modulor” are measures. That means that they are facts in themselves,

they have a concrete body; they are the effect of a choice made from an infinity of values.

These measures, what is more, are related to numbers, and possess the properties

of numbers. But the manufactured objects whose dimensions these numbers are to

determine are either containers of man or extensions of man. In order to choose the

best measures, it is better to see them and appreciate them by the feel of the hands

than merely to think them (this applies to measures very close to the human stature). In

consequence, the strip of the “Modulor” must be found on the drawing table side by side

with the compasses, a strip that can be unrolled with two hands, and that offers to its

user a direct view of measures, thus enabling him to make a concrete choice. Architecture

(and under this term, as I have already said, I understand practically all constructed objects)

must be a thing of the body, a thing of substance as well as of the spirit and of the brain.

Having discovered the law of the “Modulor,” we had to think of its possible uses

and therefore also of its material form. . . . What material form would be given to the

“Modulor” and to what industry would it be applied?

The form: (1) a strip, 2·26 m. (89 inches) long, made of metal or plastic; (2) a

numerical table giving the appropriate series of values. The word ‘appropriate’ is meant

to indicate that the measures will be kept within a practical range, the limits of which are

decreed by actual perception, both visual and sensory. We thought that beyond 400

metres, the measures could no longer be grasped. . . . (3) a booklet containing the

explanation of the “Modulor” and various combinations resulting from it.

A delicate and interesting piece of work, a pretty object to put side by side with

the technician’s precision tools. . . .

The “Modulor,” if it has any right to existence, will only be worth something if it is

applied on a mass scale in the dimensioning of manufactured articles. . . .

In the minutely detailed work involved in the projects of Marseilles, Saint-Dié, Bally,

etc., the “Modulor” was used by constructors and designers, so that I had every opportunity

to appreciate its worth. And my reaction was so positive that I feel I am entitled to put

the whole mechanism of the “Modulor” before the reader, in order that each man may

judge for himself.

One more word needs to be said on the subject of the second version of the

“Modulor” established on the basis of a man six feet in height. The reasoning is simple:

the objects manufactured on a world-wide scale with the aid of the “Modulor” are to travel

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all over the globe, becoming the property of users of all races and all heights. Therefore

it is right, and indeed imperative, to adopt the height of the tallest man (six feet), so

that the manufactured articles should be capable of being employed by him. This involves

the largest architectural dimensions; but it is better that a measure should be too large

than too small, so that the article made on the basis of that measure should be suitable

for use by all.

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224

PPhhiilloossoopphhiiccaall TTeexxtt LANCE HOSEY, “HIDDEN LINES: GENDER, RACE, AND THE BODY.”

First Published in 2001

INTRODUCTION

Next year marks the seventieth anniversary of Architectural Graphic Standards. Since 1932, it has become the most common single reference source for design professionals.

In 1951, Ralph Walker proclaimed in the foreword to the fourth edition that “every

architect—embryonic and established—should have a copy, and should have it close at

hand.”4 Philip Johnson reiterates this thought in the most recent edition, published in 2000:

“No architect can be without Graphic Standards, and with it every architect is empowered and equipped to practice architecture.”5 The book is ubiquitous in American architectural

offices, and its widespread use arguably makes it one of the clearest reflections of

conventional methodology.

Over the decades, Graphic Standards has become a self-professed “chronicle of 20th-century architectural practice.”6 Its ten editions trace the developments and

preoccupations of the profession and, moreover, indicate the cultural changes responsible:

the decline of classical and craft-oriented detailing, the simultaneous rise of mass-

produced systems and prefabricated parts, the birth of historic preservation, the growth

of energy conservation techniques, and so on.7 The book, then, is not simply a technical

document: the selection, content, and presentation of the material all suggest discernible

values. But the publishers deflect responsibility for the material to the industry at large.8

This is justifiable, for any work that shapes its subject according to popular habits implicates

the culture that produces it. Such a book does not necessarily recommend how to do

things; it simply records how they are done. As Robert Ivy writes in the preface to the 2000

edition, Graphic Standards serves as “social history.”9

Graphic Standards reflects the implicit beliefs of architecture and the larger community. Nowhere in the book is this more evident than in the first section, originally

titled “Dimensions of the Human Figure.” For most of its history, the portrayal of the

body in Graphic Standards has revealed at once the selection of certain demographic

4. “Foreword,” Architectural Graphic Standards, 4th Ed. (New York: John Wiley and

Sons, 1951), vii.

5. “A Tribute to Architectural

Graphic Standards,” 10th Ed. (2000), xv.

6. “Preface,” 8th Ed., 1988. See also “Timeline,” 10th Ed. (2000), xiv. Graphic Standards “has mirrored the extraordinary

accomplishments of archi-

tecture in the 20th century.”

7. For example, the second edition

(1936) notes that the repeal

of Prohibition required the

inclusion of data pertaining to

the design of bars.

8. In 1964, the American Institute

of Architects took on the

editorial duties of Graphic Standards and has collected royalties from all subsequent

editions. However, it and all

institutions involved in the

publication disclaim

responsibility: “The drawings,

tables, data, and other

information in this book have

been obtained from many

sources, including government

organizations, trade

associations, suppliers of

building materials, and

professional architects or

architectural firms. The

American Institute of Architects

(AIA), the Architectural Graphic

Standards Task Force of the

AIA, and the publisher have

made every reasonable effort

to make this reference work

accurate and authoritative, but

do not warrant, and assume no

liability for, the accuracy or

completeness of the text or its fitness for any particular purpose” (emphasis mine). Verso, 8th Ed. (1988).

9. “A View of Architectural Graphic

Standards at the Beginning of

the Twenty-First Century,” 10th Ed. (2000), xiii.

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segments as representative of the entire population, as well as the restrictive conception

of a preferred or model inhabitant of buildings. The different methods used to represent

the body reveal the “human figure” to be gender- and race-specific: male and white. This

article examines these different methods, first by reviewing pertinent historical repre-

sentations of and cultural attitudes toward the body, and second by analyzing the unique

representational techniques of Graphic Standards.

SETTING STANDARDS

Visual and verbal representations of the body are persistent mechanisms for sustaining

the sociopolitical relationships between men and women, and such representations have

been integral to architectural discourse. The use of the male body as a model for buildings

occurs in various canons of architecture, and the influence of two of these, classicism

and modernism, may be seen in Graphic Standards.

The table entitled “Dimensions of the Human Figure” first appeared in the third

edition (1941), although the drawings themselves, attributed to Ernest Irving Freese,

had been published elsewhere in 1934.10 The table recurred in subsequent editions,

virtually unchanged, for forty years. The illustrations dimension the body in a variety of

positions, but only one body type is shown. Historically, when a single body is proposed

to represent all people, the body is male, and comparison with certain traditions confirms

that this is the case here. The figures are abstract silhouettes with few apparent anatomical

features, and, as such, they signify the body through the simplest pictorial means, profiling

human proportions and symmetry, not physiology. This emblematic quality resembles

many Renaissance drawings that glorify the body as a mandala or icon. Some of these,

particularly sketches by Leonardo and Dürer, have become so prevalent and universally

appropriated that they are signatures of Western culture. These renderings illustrate the

Neo-Platonic belief that the natural perfection of man could be seen through the body’s

relationship to primary geometry. The depiction in Graphic Standards of arms tracing arcs in the air is especially reminiscent of this pictorial tradition.

The similarities are not coincidental. In their original publication, the drawings were

titled “The Geometry of the Human Figure,” so clearly Freese was preoccupied with the

body’s aesthetic proportions and not just its statistical dimensions.11 Furthermore, Dürer’s

book on human proportions was a precursor to the modern field of anthropometry and

would have influenced any subsequent pictorial study of the body. But, in architectural

history, the body itself is not the primary concern of this tradition. The Renaissance sketches

elaborated on the Vitruvian proposition of the “wellshaped man” as a model of architec-

tural harmony: “since nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly

proportioned to the frame as a whole . . . in perfect buildings the different members must

be in exact symmetrical relations to the whole general scheme.”12 The indivisibility of

part and whole, observed in the body, is a fundamental tenet of classical aesthetics.

The table of human dimensions first appeared in Graphic Standards during a time when historians such as Rudolf Wittkower and Erwin Panofsky were writing extensively of

BODY AND BUILDING

225

10. Freese originally published his

drawings in an article titled,

“The Geometry of the Human

Figure,” from American Architect and Architecture (July 1934): 57–60. This

magazine was absorbed by

Architectural Record in March 1938.

11. An architect of Freese’s

generation was likely to have

received classical training, and

his other published articles

confirm his interest. He wrote

several articles in the 1930s

that betray a fascination with

classical geometry. In one

publication, for instance, he

applies the ancient geometric

theory of Apollonius to the

dimensioning of modern

stairs. See “Correct

Proportioning of Stair Treads

and Risers,” American Architect and Architecture (July 1933): 47; also “A Word

on the Involute Arch,” Pencil Points (March 1935): 141. Furthermore, Freese’s training

is evident from the traditional

moldings and profiles in the

cabinetry and furniture of the

Graphic Standards drawings. In the 1970 edition, these

details have been edited out.

12. Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, Morris Hicky Morgan, trans. (New York:

Dover, 1960), III, I: 3, 4,

72–73. The rule of

compositional unity actually

began with Aristotle’s theory

of drama: “the various

incidents must be so

constructed that, if any part

is displaced or deleted, the

whole plot is disturbed and

dislocated.” See The Poetics, VII–VIII. From Aristotle On Poetry and Style, trans. G. M. A. Grube, (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), 17.

Introducing Arch Theory-01-c 7/12/11 13:24 Page 225

Vitruvius’ impact on Renaissance thought, so the body metaphor was pervasive. Graphic Standards relates to this tradition in more ways than one. Robert Ivy recognizes harmonic unity in the book’s conception and structure, although he mistakenly identifies the origins

of the idea: “Graphic Standards presupposes the interrelationship of parts to whole projects, a nineteenth-century notion articulated by Wright when he said, ‘The part is to

the whole as the whole is to the part.’”13 Hence, the organic structure of the book itself

relates it to the body paradigm. The introduction displays the dimensions of an actual

human body, and what follows is a dissection of the body of a building, its various systems

laid out in seemingly anatomical order.14

The social prejudice of the Vitruvian model is blatant, the equation of “perfect

buildings” with the “well shaped man” being inherently sexist. Men are offered as the

image of perfection, which suggests the imperfection of women. Diana Agrest writes that

this gendered construct “remains at the very base of Western architectural thought.” “This

system is defined not only by what it includes, but also by what it excludes, inclusion and

exclusion being parts of the same construct. Yet that which is excluded, left out, is not

really excluded but rather repressed. . . . The repressed, the interior representation in the

system of architecture that determines an outside (of repression) is woman and woman’s

body.” Traditionally in architecture, Agrest states, “the human figure is synonymous with

the male figure.”15 “The Human Figure” of Graphic Standards echoes this statement in its allusion to the classical paradigm.

The presentation of the body in Graphic Standards relates to a larger cultural context that includes not only the classical precedent, but also modern architecture and,

more generally, modernity’s attempts to standardize the body. Alexander Tzonis and

Liane Lefaivre recount that a revision to the classical conception of the body occurred

during the French Enlightenment. The shifts in thought from nature to science and faith

to reason were represented by a shift in metaphor from the “divine body,” an abstract,

sacred vessel, to the “mechanical body,” a real organism operating in an environment.

Scale, a preoccupation with number and proportion in order to maximize aesthetic

pleasure, was replaced by size, a concern for exact dimensions in order to increase

efficiency. One is a model of form, the other of function.16

Quatremère de Quincy refers to a “mechanical analogy” in his discussion of

typology, explaining that the body should fit a building the way it fits a chair: “Who

does not believe that the form of a man’s back ought to be the type of the back of

a chair?” Quatremère cites the Greek word typos, meaning “to impress” or “to mark,” so there is the suggestion of the body inscribing itself on the building for an optimal fit.17

The Graphic Standards diagrams illustrate this functionalist model, picturing the body molded to its environment through the immediate scale of furniture.18 Nearly half of

the chart depicts bodies in actual chairs, a literal realization of Quatremère’s model.

Like Vitruvius’ metaphor of “a well shaped man,” Quatremère’s description substitutes

the specific designation “a man” for the more general “man,” so the sex of his model

user cannot be mistaken. The rhetoric used to construct the standards of the body is

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226

13. The connection to Vitruvius in

particular is clear when Ivy

ascribes “firmness, commodity

and delight” to the book’s

organization (“A View of

Architectural Graphic

Standards at the Beginning of

the Twenty-First Century”).

Eero Saarinen made a similar

comparison, noting that

Graphic Standards offers a vocabulary for the future, just

as Vitruvius had spelled out

the classical language for

Renaissance architects.

Foreword, 5th Ed. (1956). 14. The table of human

dimensions originally

appeared in the back of

Graphic Standards, under the heading “Miscellaneous Data.”

With the sixth edition (1970),

the table became the first

section of the book. The

chapters that follow it are

organized according to the

Uniform System for

Construction Specifications.

15. Diana Agrest, “Architecture

from Without: Body, Logic, and

Sex,” Assemblage, 7 (1988): 29, 33.

16. Alexander Tzonis and Liane

Lefaivre, “The Mechanical

Body Versus the Divine Body:

The Rise of Modern Design

Theory,” Journal of Architectural Education, 29/1 (1975): 4–5. Tzonis and

Lefaivre recount that the

revision of the body paradigm

coincided with a transition

from the guild system to the

academy, which sought new

objective rules to replace

archaic standards. The

standardization of practice

that Graphic Standards is meant to aid began in this

period’s restructuring of

architectural training with new

methods of instruction. The

purpose of Graphic Standards,

Introducing Arch Theory-01-c 7/12/11 13:24 Page 226

characteristically sexist, and the canonical texts of modern architectural theory are rife

with such language.19

Graphic Standards appeared at a time when systematic documentation of the body was critical in many disciplines, particularly industry.20 The science of anthropometry

had developed in the late-nineteenth century in order to address the growing desire for

a precise understanding of human mechanics. From the start, however, this effort favored

men, partly because for many years most studies were conducted by the military.21 The

lack of statistics for women also related to the perceived impropriety of viewing and

measuring the female body, as physical examinations were often thought to violate

women’s natural modesty and “delicacy.”22 Moreover, many scientists did not view women

as an important subject for study. Ales Hrdlicka, an eminent Smithsonian anthropologist,

pronounced in 1918, “The paramount objective of physical anthropology is the gradual

completion . . . of the study of the normal white man under ordinary circumstances.”23

The modern practice of measuring bodies began in large part to reinforce existing social

BODY AND BUILDING

227

with its emphasis on classification systems, assembly methods, and fabrication techniques, belongs to the heritage of Quatremère, Durand, and

Diderot. The analytical layout of the body in figure/ground poses even resembles the plates from Durand’s Précis (1809) illustrating generic plan types in their various permutations. The normative views of the body in Graphic Standards relate to early modern ideas about normative building types. Buildings are conceived as universal forms, much as the male body is conceived as universal. For discussions of eighteenth-century French

theory and typology, see Anthony Vidler, The Writing of the Walls: Architectural Theory in the Late Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1987), and Rafael Moneo, “On Typology,” Oppositions, 13 (Summer 1978): 22–45.

17. Anthony Vidler, The Writing of the Walls, pp. 153–155. 18. In the original publication of the drawings, Freese notes that the diagrams are “particularly to be consulted” for the use of furniture (“The Geometry

of the Human Figure,” 57). The chair, of course, was a particular fascination of modern architects, and some of the most important modernist

chairs, including Mies’ Barcelona chair (1929), Le Corbusier’s Armchair (1929), and Breuer’s Wassily Chair (1925), were designed around the time

that the Freese drawings appeared.

19. David Cabianca points out similar language in Le Corbusier, who in the Modulor describes architecture as “a symphony of volumes and space meant for men.” Cabianca explains, “Although the statement can be made that Le Corbusier was using a variation of a term which only recently

has come under attack for its hidden gender bias, his choice of the plural ‘men’ precludes any such interpretation that includes women. ‘Men’ is

specific in its plurality—although the French ‘hommes’ would be only slightly more ambiguous in this context and ultimately forms its own mode

of silence.” See “Notes on James Stirling’s Hysterics: Ronchamp, Le Corbusier’s Chapel and the Crisis of Modernism,” openspace: Journal of Architecture and Criticism, on-line journal of the University of Cincinnati, 1997.

20. As industrialization rose through the turn of the century, the mechanical conception of the body evolved to an extreme. F.W. Taylor’s theory of

scientific management, which employed time and motion studies to increase efficiency, conceived of bodies literally as machines, dictating

workers’ every move with detailed precision. This theory became increasingly popular between the wars, and with the unparalleled production of

World War II, the Graphic Standards charts would have appealed to the demand for thorough documentation of human mechanics. Feminist critiques of scientific management highlight not just its dehumanizing effects but its tendency to strengthen sexual boundaries in the workplace.

Taylorism gave greater control to managers, mostly men, and tended to increase the division of labor based on generalizations about sex, further

limiting women to certain roles. Furthermore, because anthropometric statistics were predominantly male, the “standard” of body mechanics was

inevitably gender biased. This often created unequal working conditions that affected women’s performance and therefore seemed to give further

evidence to the argument that women did not belong in the workforce. See Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 238 ff.; and Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 145–147.

21. See, for instance, Niels Diffrient, Alvin R. Tilley, and Joan C. Bardagjy, Humanscale 1/2/3 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974), 4: “Large samplings are taken by the armed forces to make the man-machine relationship successful in a fighting environment, but although these measurements are

accurate and comprehensive they are limited to select groups. Civilian surveys have not been extensive in terms of samples and measurements. . . .”

22. See, for example, the American Medical Association Code of Ethics (Philadelphia: TK and PG Collins, Printers, 1848), 11–12.

Introducing Arch Theory-01-c 7/12/11 13:24 Page 227

strata by supporting stereotypes about sex, race, and class. Physiological difference

reflected political difference, and supposedly empirical data made “nature herself an

accomplice in the crime of political inequality.”24 When Graphic Standards was published, any compilation of the body’s dimensions would have inherited incomplete and biased

data.

The distinction between archaic and modern conceptions of the body provides a

convenient contrast, but it is not an absolute split, for much of the canonical discourse of

modernism reveals an emphasis on both sacred harmony and mechanical efficiency. In

The International Style, which appeared the same year as the first edition of Graphic Standards (1932), Henry Russell-Hitchcock and Philip Johnson declare that the best modern design rejects extreme functionalism in favor of aesthetic harmony, stating that

“a scheme of proportions integrates and informs a thoroughly designed modern building,

[which] composes the diverse parts and harmonizes the various elements in to a single

whole.”25 This passage simply inserts the word modern into a distinctly Vitruvian argument, and similar sentiments have been expressed by Sullivan, Wright, Le Corbusier, and Kahn.

As Tzonis and Lefaivre write, “sacred harmony” and the body paradigm are inextricably

bound in architectural theory. To invoke one is to invoke the other, as well as the underlying

conceptual principles and implications.26

The most obvious modernist heir to the classical body paradigm is the Modulor, which Le Corbusier proposed to aid both aesthetics and efficiency, referring to the human

figure as “divine proportion” and as a “machine.”27 Graphic Standards, which first offered its body charts during the period when Le Corbusier was developing and publishing the

Modulor, similarly combines the two conceptions of the body. The table of figures is divided evenly between images of repose and images of activity, the body in isolation and the

body applied to tasks—sitting, reaching, kneeling, and crawling—and Freese acknow-

ledges this balance of aesthetics and mechanics as intended.28 Pictorial references to

classical geometry combine with modernist functionalism in the detailed dimensioning.

Sexism is apparent in both paradigms. Le Corbusier writes, “Architecture . . . must

be a thing of the body.”29 But whose body? Vitruvius and Le Corbusier both extol the

ancient practice of using the body for units of measurement—the foot, the cubit, the inch,

and so on—but historically this habit has been sexually exclusive, whether the source of

measurement is the body of the builder, typically male, or, in the imperial system, that of

the king. Le Corbusier’s choice of bodies is explicit. He refers to “man as measure” and

proposes a singular “human figure,” as does Graphic Standards.30 With characteristically gender-specific language, he writes that man through his body imposes order “on his own

scale, to his own proportion, comfortable for him, to his measure. It is on the human

scale. It is in harmony with him: that is the main point.”31 In this passage, the similarities to the classical paradigm are clear: man as the standard of measure, man as the universal

human, the harmony of bodies and buildings, and so forth.

Here, Le Corbusier sounds much like Geoffrey Scott, the early twentieth-century

champion of classicism, who defines architecture as “the transcription of the body’s states

DIALECTICAL READINGS IN ARCHITECTURE: USE

228

23. Quoted in Jacqueline Urla and

Alan C. Swedlund, “The

Anthropometry of Barbie,” in

Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline

Urla, eds., Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1995), 286. Gustave Le Bon, a

founder of social psychology,

felt that women “represent the

most inferior forms of human

evolution and that they are

closer to children and savages

than to an adult, civilized

man.” Of course, minorities

were seen in the same light.

See Stephen Jay Gould’s

classic study of scientific

racism, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton and Company,1981),

104–105.

24. Marquis de Condorcet, quoted

in Gould. Ibid., 21.

25. Henry Russell-Hitchcock and

Philip Johnson, The International Style (New York: W. W. Norton and Company,

1966), 59–62.

26. Tzonis and Lefaivre identify

the human body as the most

common “epiphoric object” of

design theory. An epiphore

(literally, from the Greek, that

which “bears upon”) is an

everyday object that presents

in a “stenographic” way the

conceptual framework in use.

It condenses the complex set

of logical rules in a simple

form, and to use the form is to

embrace the logic it

represents. “By accepting an

epiphoric object in an

argumentation, one accepts a

conceptual framework in its

entirety, which means not only

an idea of the work as it is, but

also as it can be and should

be. . . . References to the

human body relate

Introducing Arch Theory-01-c 7/12/11 13:24 Page 228

into forms of building,” a process that humanizes the world through the “universal

metaphor of the body, a language profoundly felt and universally understood.”32 But the

supposed universality of the body (or of experience in general) is a prejudiced myth. In

their study of cultural views of the body, Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla write that

humanism “relied upon ideas of a single, generic human body to generate hypocritical

fictions of unity, identity, truth and authenticity. . . . [T]he ideal human body has been

cast implicitly in the image of the robust, European, heterosexual gentleman . . .”33 The

humanist projection of a universal individual may be found in both ancient and modern

symbols. Modern attempts to systematize the body are similar to previous idealizations

to the extent that bodies are constructed as abstractions; idiosyncrasies are ignored in

favor of generalizations. Graphic Standards, like these exemplars, proposes a solitary “human figure” as the definitive image of the body and, in doing so, succumbs to prevailing

patriarchal habits.

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229

simultaneously to all levels of the framework of archaic design. The building is a human body: to accept such a concept is to commit oneself to the overall framework of archaic methodology, i.e. sacred harmony as an ultimate warrant” “The Mechanical Body Versus the Divine Body,” 4–5.

27. Le Corbusier, The Modulor, 5; Modulor 2, 296. Both Peter de Francia and Anna Bostock, trans. (Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2000). Le Corbusier acknowledges a connection to Renaissance exemplars, listing the work of Dürer, Leonardo, and Francesco di Giorgio, among others, as precursors.

28. Freese notes that he has divided the diagrams into two categories: those illustrating the geometry of the body, which he calls “‘working drawings’

of the human figure,” and those explaining common “applications.” (“The Geometry of the Human Figure,” 57.) The combination of aesthetics

and mechanics parallels the state of American architecture in the early 1930s, for the few major examples of American modernism at the time still

showed a distinct affinity for classical principles. Although in 1951 the second edition of The International Style would declare that “traditional architecture, which bulked so large in 1932, is all but dead by now” (p. 255), the original edition features only seven projects in the United States,

some of which were designed by Europeans and all of which were built circa 1930. Of these, most were obscure houses, and only two—Raymond

Hood’s McGraw-Hill Building and George Howe’s PSFS—were of a large urban scale. Both Hood and Howe were Beaux Arts trained architects, and

these two buildings have been shown to blend modern and Beaux Arts sensibilities. See William H. Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects: The Impact of European Modernism in the Mid-Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 87–117; and Robert A. M. Stern, “PSFS: Beaux-Arts Theory and Rational Expressionism,” JSAH (May 1962): 84–95. The concurrence of the classical and the modern in American architecture of the 1930s is also illustrated by the issue of American Architect and Architecture in which Freese’s drawings are printed (July 1934). It features articles on the Acropolis (referred to as “masterpieces of perfect building”) and Cass Gilbert, as well as on Rockefeller Center and Albert

Kahn.

29. The Modulor, 60–61. 30. Ibid., 56, 63. Interestingly, Le Corbusier cites Gustave Le Bon, whose misogynistic attitude toward female anatomy is mentioned above. The

Modulor includes two drawings (Plates 77 and 90) reproduced from Le Bon’s The First Civilizations that illustrate a sculptural relief from the Egyptian temple of Seti I, in which the pharaoh is depicted with attendant women, and the mathematical proportions of the sovereign figure are

delineated. Le Corbusier intends the drawings to convey the universality of the proportioning system, but the images also overtly illustrate

patriarchal privilege and the male-centered practice of body measurement. This attitude is prevalent in the Modulor. While working in the United States, Le Corbusier devised a second version of the system, in which the original height of 1.75 meters (approximately 5 feet, 8 inches) became six

feet. The height seemed to have epic connotations: “Have you never noticed that in English detective novels, the good-looking men, such as the

policemen, are always six feet tall?” Hence, the American standard is the heroic male, the “good-looking” man being the modern equivalent of

Vitruvius’ “well shaped” man. Elsewhere, Le Corbusier recoils at his colleagues’ attempt to include women in the Modulor. Plate 15 of Modulor 2 superimposes the male body and the female body, and Le Corbusier merely scoffs at his colleagues who drew the image: “Here is the drawing

prepared by Serralta and Maisonnier: you take the square of the ‘Modulor Man’ of 1.83 m. (but, since Serralta has a soft spot for the ladies, his man

is a woman 1.83 metres tall: brrrh!).” Modulor 2, 52–53. 31. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), 7–68. 32. Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974), 161. 33. See Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla, introduction to Deviant Bodies, 4.

Introducing Arch Theory-01-c 7/12/11 13:24 Page 229

READING GRAPHICS

To implicate Graphic Standards in this way is to view its portrayal of the body as a product of its historical and cultural context, which includes the visual and verbal languages of

classicism and modernism, as well as the political agendas and procedural methods of

anthropometry. However, a restrictive portrayal of the body may be read more directly

in the charts, separately from other precedents.

In the 1941 chart, the body is described graphically and numerically, and both

methods are problematic. Just as there is only one type of graphic figure, there is only

one set of dimensions. Body sizes and shapes vary according to physical and cultural

differences, including sex, race, age, nationality, occupation, and socioeconomic conditions,

and the use of a single dimensional set ignores human diversity. The caption note reads,

“These dimensions are based on the average or normal adult,” and the ambiguity of this

phrase is telling. Anthropometrists have long agreed that an average is a misleading

shorthand that causes dangerous errors.34 The designation “average” is less common in

science than it is in popular language as an expression of social and cultural judgment.

Similarly, the description “normal” is questionable. The word may be quantitative,

referring to a statistical distribution, and the above conclusions hold. Alternatively, it may

be qualitative, implying a politically charged standard of evaluation.35 In general, “normal”

necessarily posits the existence of its opposite, and dictionary definitions reinforce this

conclusion: “free from physical or emotional disorder.”36 If one type is presented as

“normal,” any deviation must be taken as abnormal. Extensive critical theory over the last

few decades has exposed the idea of normalcy as an elitist fiction. Norms and ideals are

routinely confused, and identifying one type as “normal” constructs a distinction between

Self and Other, between the privileged subject and the marginalized object.37 By pos-

itioning one type of body to stand for all, Graphic Standards supports this dichotomy.