Word: axial
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...formal bent. The network of ratios between height and width, void and solid, expressed in the façades of Villa Cornaro and Villa Malcontenta, subtly prepares the visitor for the less consciously felt proportions of the rooms within. For there was nothing improvised in Palladio. His plans-always axial, with lesser rooms grouped symmetrically around a high hall-obey stringent rules of harmony, not only in the three dimensions of each room, but in the relation of chambers one to another...
Consequently Kahn's relationship to past building is very strong; and because of his liking for traditional materials, axial planning and muscular interplays of light and shadow, space and solid, grand and intimate, he is linked to the historical icebox raiding of the Beaux-Arts tradition. "Except," he adds, "that I don't know it as a tradition. I know it as an introduction to the spirit of architecture, which has very little to do with the realistic solving of problems." The problems are posed and solved by what Kahn calls "reprogramming," and a radical questioning...