摘要：Since Alberti, and most critically since Wittkower’s Architectural Principles, architectural theory has tended to construe ‘proportions’ in plenary, static terms. The dimension of time and change that relentlessly affects all human endeavor is not accommodated by the celebrated Albertian ideal of immutable design perfection, so perfect in all respects that once attained ‘nothing can be added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse’. This article, drawing on the author’s recent book, Building-in-Time from Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion (Yale, 2010), outlines the antithetical, dynamic proportional methodology of the pre-Albertian architectural regime. Its point of departure was the author’s concept of durational aesthetics, according to which perfected architectural form is produced by a process of incessant revision. What distinguished this process from related ancient or neo-antique doctrines was above all its dynamic modality and participation in the fluid orientation and processes of ‘building-in-time’.
