Book, Dancing Column On Order In Architecture, A[LS]

History, as we know, is much more than the succession and ordering of facts, it is an organic, dynamic, complex structure, full of gaps and inaccuracies, which imposes itself, in each generation, as a contemporary interpretation of the world.. The way in which each society organizes the available data, the allusions it makes, the way in which relationships are constituted determines the sequence of past phenomena and, evidently, establishes the understanding of the present.. We can therefore speak of not just one, but of many stories competing simultaneously. Joseph Rykwert had just published The Idea of the City in 1963. (Perspective, 2006), making extensive and detailed use of archaeological, anthropological and historiographical studies, to defend the thesis that the genesis of the urban arises from cosmogonic models and cultural principles, opposing the functionalist formula of contemporary city planning, when Moma opens the exhibition and publishes the catalogue Architects Without Architecture, establishing the thesis that many of the most extraordinary and beautiful buildings of all time would have emerged dissociated from any cultural context. A nonsense for Rykwert, who reacted by publishing Adam's House in Paradise in 1972. (Perspective, 2003), in which he discusses the genesis of the building, demonstrating its original connection to the beliefs and cultural practices of the societies of the time, dismantling the thesis of abstraction and chance of constructions. Because Joseph Rykwert was never an impartial researcher. His work clearly reveals itself as a work of resistance to the notion of the architectural object as a phenomenon in itself, devoid of social ties.. In 1996, reaffirming the importance of culture and cosmogonic models in all human work and, more than that, affirming the presence of the human body as a structuring element of architecture from Antiquity to the present day, Rykwert brings us the extraordinary 'The Dancing Column': On Orders in Architecture', which combines historiographical research from various areas of knowledge, gathers data and evidence from a long period of time and associates physical, metaphysical and psychological elements to form and shape the foundation of architecture as a metaphor in the great human adventure. Essential, erudite and grandiose, 'The Dancing Column' shows that history is much more than a chronicle, it goes far beyond the facts themselves.. It is a weapon and key to cultural development and humanity's self-understanding.. [SK]