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This book examines the application of drawing in the design process of classical architecture, exploring how the tools and techniques of drawing developed for architecture subsequently shaped theories of vision and representations of the universe in science and philosophy. Building on recent scholarship that examines and reconstructs the design process of classical architecture, John R. Senseney focuses on technical drawing in the building trade as a model for the expression of visual order, showing that the techniques of ancient Greek drawing actively determined concepts about the world. He argues that the uniquely Greek innovations of graphic construction determined principles that shaped the massing, special qualities and refinements of buildings and the manner in which order itself was envisioned.

In light of evidence for substantial alterations to the forms and spatial configurations of the Parthenon during the construction process, John R. Senseney interrogates the origins of the celebrated Ionic frieze, with its continuous figural procession sculpted by the workshop of Pheidias, in The Architectural Origins of the Parthenon Frieze. Emphasizing ancient planning methods, Senseney argues that the Parthenon’s builders settled on an Ionic frieze in response to the rare decision to include prostyle porches. To contend with formal complexities, the builders engaged in exploratory design within the construction of the east peristyle, east porch, and pronaos, the results of which then guided construction elsewhere in the superstructure. Comparative analysis supports Senseney’s argument that the Ionic form of the Parthenon frieze arose not from the sculptural program but rather in response to issues of alignment within the pronaos and as part of a fluid process of modeling that coalesced in an aesthetic focused on formal continuity and integration.

In seeking the origins of the celebrated portico-framed fora of Imperial Rome,John R. Senseneyexplores the earliest recognizable example of this architectural type, a lost porticus of the 160s BCE built by the victorious commander Gnaeus Octavius.Adrift toward Empire: The Lost Porticus Octavia in Rome and the Origins of the Imperial Foraadduces ancient testimony to aid our understanding of the purposes and formal appearance of this pivotal monument. While the author suggests that Octavius emulated a Hellenistic model, he does not posit that the patron necessarily sought to associate his triumph with those of his Greek forebears. Those meanings did, however, become attached to the building type by later viewers and the architects who created the Imperial fora. In order to appreciate this phenomenon, the author questions the usefulness of fixed categories like \"Hellenistic\" and \"Roman\" and argues for a history sensitive to the fluidic intentions and changing meanings of architecture.

The author uses analytic geometry and AutoCAD software to analyze the plan of Temple A of the Asklepieion at Kos, revealing a circumscribed Pythagorean triangle as the basis for the plan's design. This methodology and its results counter earlier doubts about the application of geometry to Doric temple design and suggest the existence of an alternative to the grid-based approach characteristic of Hellenistic temples of the Ionic order. Appreciation of the geometric system underlying the plan of Temple A leads to a consideration of the role of visuality in Hellenistic architecture, characterized here as the manner in which abstract ideas shared by architects and scholars conditioned viewing and influenced the design process.

In seeking the origins of the celebrated portico-framed fora of Imperial Rome, John R. Senseney explores the earliest recognizable example of this architectural type, a lost porticus of the 160s BCE built by the victorious commander Gnaeus Octavius. Adrift toward Empire: The Lost Porticus Octavia in Rome and the Origins of the Imperial Fora adduces ancient testimony to aid our understanding of the purposes and formal appearance of this pivotal monument. While the author suggests that Octavius emulated a Hellenistic model, he does not posit that the patron necessarily sought to associate his triumph with those of his Greek forebears. Those meanings did, however, become attached to the building type by later viewers and the architects who created the Imperial fora. In order to appreciate this phenomenon, the author questions the usefulness of fixed categories like \"Hellenistic\" and \"Roman\" and argues for a history sensitive to the fluidic intentions and changing meanings of architecture.

The following is an excursus on Plato, Vitruvius, and preceding traditions of thought and craftsmanship going back to Anaximander and architects of the Archaic period. In addressing possible alternative justifications for the existence of ichnography before the Late Classical period, the analysis here supplements the exploration of buildings in Chapter 1. In setting buildings aside for philosophical texts and architectural theory, one may thoroughly enter into the premise at hand: That an interest in drawing among educated architects as intellectuals might have arisen in a literary background from abstract thought, and not just the practical requirements of planning. Along with a subsequent return to visual material in Chapter 2, this evaluation will elicit a nuanced view of connections between craftsmanship, intellectual traditions, and the production of knowledge in the Classical period. As the chapters of the main text elaborate, the genesis of ichnography, linear perspective, and characteristically Greek understandings of order in nature appear to owe a great deal to the design process of Greek architects in the craft of building, particularly in regards to the role of drawing in the creation of individual features at 1:1 scale that preceded reduced-scale drawing.In carefully examining texts, furthermore, an encounter with additional concerns expressed in intellectual traditions changes the nature of questions asked in relation to the material evidence. Like the ideai that embody the principles of which architectura consists for Vitruvius, for Plato they connect unexpectedly to vision and the related graphic role of nature through representations of cosmic mechanism.

When Renaissance architects like Bramante or Alberti executed or wrote about linear perspective and scale architectural drawings, they engaged in practices and discourses that were already well established by the time Vitruvius picked up his pen near the end of the first millennium b.c. In addition to what Vitruvius tells us about the subject, there are other Roman references to scale drawings used in architectural planning, as well as a few surviving examples that can hardly attest to the frequency with which such drawings surely must have been made. More than just a fact of the design process, the application of geometry in scale drawings during the Imperial era in particular may have engendered the very aesthetic based on the curve and polygon that characterizes Roman vaulted buildings perhaps as best appreciated today in the Pantheon (Figure 1).This observation, which is far from new, underscores the formative role of reduced-scale drawing not only in the creation of buildings, but also in the guiding approaches to form that underlie their production. In a straightforward emphasis on technical determinism, one may view the fluid, plastic potential of Roman concrete as the primary impetus that transcended the prismatic forms determined by traditional Greek construction with rectilinear blocks. Yet keeping in mind the additional importance of the curvilinear, radial, and polygonal qualities of classical scale drawings, one may perhaps better understand Roman concrete as the material exploited to reflect in three dimensions the forms first explored in ichnography (the art of ground plans), elevation drawing, and linear perspective.