Extract

Since the writings of Vitruvius in the first century AD, the use of the human body as a metaphorical and symbolic
referent has provided what is perhaps the most prolific trope for architectural theory. The image of ‘Vitruvian
Man,’ with limbs outstretched to touch the circle drawn from its navel, took on particular significance during the
Renaissance, as architects published their own interpretations of Vitruvius’ Ten Books. For these writers, the
body, as microcosm, was the best available means for representing the order of the cosmos, the world as a whole.
Yet just as the body was being rediscovered as the primary referent for architecture, the understanding of the
body was being transformed. Inherited medical texts, namely those of Galen, were being complemented by direct
observation of the body through dissection. The published results of anatomical studies were highly influential,
giving rise to new conceptions of bodily structure and function. As architects and anatomists exchanged
metaphors, methods, and images, these new understandings of the body came also to affect architecture. The
dissection of the body in anatomy transformed ideas about the constitution of knowledge, and about how that
knowledge was to be obtained. The methods of anatomical study were fundamental to the then emergent
discipline of science, with the practice of partitioning rendering models of cosmic unity untenable. Moreover, the
direct investigation of objects came to replace textual authority in the conception of both anatomy and
architecture.

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