La Misura

British painter Carl Laubin entitled one of his greatest works of art “Metiendo Vivendum”. The painting, which he defines a “capriccio”, represents almost the complete works of the architect Edwin Lutyens, disposed on a considerably large canvas like a romantic view of an ideal town. The centre of the painting is occupied by the Liverpool catholic cathedral which is cited as one of the greatest never-built architectures of the twentieth century. Absolutely classical in its symmetric disposition of arches, pediments, columns and frames, and crowned by a great dome, it is nevertheless undecorated in its complex, showing thousands of fine red bricks. The project was so enormous that Laubin believed he committed a mistake in reducing its scale for the painting. “Metiendo Vivendum” was Lutyens’ motto: a statement which invokes measure (mensura) as the essential virtue of the architect. The concept of measure recalls numerous theoretical issues in the practice of architecture. It goes far behind the simple act of measuring; it implies a profound knowledge of order, composition, balance between weights and shapes, and, ultimately, an aesthetic consciousness. The etymological root med already contains these meanings: to rule, judge, reflect, think. It is a word which belongs to the same universe of meanings of ius and dike: the cultural institution of justice, that requires not only “measurement” but also “moderation”. The art of composing architecture is then a measured capacity of conceiving beauty: aesthetic judgement. Edwin Lutyens was surely a master of measure. John Summerson compared Liverpool cathedral’s façade to the work of Leon Battista Alberti, in integrating the elements of the arch of triumph in designing prospects. But right after his death, in 1944, Lutyens was promptly forgotten, despite his brilliant career as one of the British Empire’s main architects. Post-war modernists viewed his Edwardian villas, memorials, colonial palaces in India and institutional buildings in Britain as an embarrassing witness of the past. Nikolaus Pevsner even stated that any British architect deserved to be cited in the first forty years of the twentieth century. These reputation’s rises and falls show how measure pervades the whole world of architecture, including the evaluations of historians and critics. It is then legitimate, even necessary, that also their works is submitted to measure and judgement, in a constantly changing structure of commenting and composing the discipline.