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Architecture of Perfection

«No building can be said to be well composed unless it is made with symmetry and proportion, just as the limbs of a well‑formed body possess them.»

The idea of the body as the absolute matrix of perfection—an original model from which every deviation appears as arbitrariness—places Vitruvius among the most influential figures in the search for a non‑arbitrary foundation of architecture. The body, in its structural evidence and its inscribed potential, becomes the guarantee of an order that precedes artifice and judges it.

The intrinsic conflict of the architectural act, suspended between necessity and invention, has generated in designers a state of continuous uncertainty, dividing the discipline into two major interpretive lines of form. The first, oriented toward deciphering events according to natural certainties, seeks in biology, geometry, and measurement the reasons for building. The second, grounded in principles belonging to the realm of imagination, recognizes in form a generative freedom that does not derive from nature but from creative action.

Filarete and the Life of the BuildingFilarete expands the Vitruvian horizon, placing architecture in symbiosis with the rhythms of biological life. The building is not only a body: it is an organism, a process, a duration. Its birth, growth, and maturation become analogous to human life, positioned at the boundary between physical form and temporal form:«The building resembles a man, and therefore, if it is so, one must generate and then give birth as a man does… and thus it is born, just as the mother gives birth to her son at the end of nine months… and with good order and diligence make it grow.»In this vision, architecture is no longer a static object but a being that traverses time, a body that forms, transforms, and fulfills itself.

The Second Category: Theorists of ActionTo the second category belong the theorists of action, those who find justification in acting, in the movement of the primordial Vitruvian body. They imagine a body that is not only measure but energy crossing space, a gesture materializing into form.

The dynamics of action, once translated into architecture, intertwine with historical and mythical connotations: legends, archetypes of motion, collective narratives that root movement in a terrestrial dimension, even while originating from territories of the imagination. Architecture thus becomes trace of passage, imprint of gesture, memory of the body in action.

Architecture of Perfection

Filippo Lo Presti 1989

Architecture of Perfection

«No building can be said to be well composed unless it is made with symmetry and proportion, just as the limbs of a well‑formed body possess them.»

The idea of the body as the absolute matrix of perfection—an original model from which every deviation appears as arbitrariness—places Vitruvius among the most influential figures in the search for a non‑arbitrary foundation of architecture. The body, in its structural evidence and its inscribed potential, becomes the guarantee of an order that precedes artifice and judges it.

The intrinsic conflict of the architectural act, suspended between necessity and invention, has generated in designers a state of continuous uncertainty, dividing the discipline into two major interpretive lines of form. The first, oriented toward deciphering events according to natural certainties, seeks in biology, geometry, and measurement the reasons for building. The second, grounded in principles belonging to the realm of imagination, recognizes in form a generative freedom that does not derive from nature but from creative action.

Filarete and the Life of the BuildingFilarete expands the Vitruvian horizon, placing architecture in symbiosis with the rhythms of biological life. The building is not only a body: it is an organism, a process, a duration. Its birth, growth, and maturation become analogous to human life, positioned at the boundary between physical form and temporal form:«The building resembles a man, and therefore, if it is so, one must generate and then give birth as a man does… and thus it is born, just as the mother gives birth to her son at the end of nine months… and with good order and diligence make it grow.»In this vision, architecture is no longer a static object but a being that traverses time, a body that forms, transforms, and fulfills itself.

The Second Category: Theorists of ActionTo the second category belong the theorists of action, those who find justification in acting, in the movement of the primordial Vitruvian body. They imagine a body that is not only measure but energy crossing space, a gesture materializing into form.

The dynamics of action, once translated into architecture, intertwine with historical and mythical connotations: legends, archetypes of motion, collective narratives that root movement in a terrestrial dimension, even while originating from territories of the imagination. Architecture thus becomes trace of passage, imprint of gesture, memory of the body in action.

Architecture of Perfection

Filippo Lo Presti 1989

Shared Intelligence and the Collective Mental Field

Humanity has generated an accumulated and shared intelligence, a mind of the mind through which society thinks, remembers, and imagines.

It is a collective labor that produces thought as the sum of multiple minds, nourished by traditions, scientific methods, art, techniques, and visions.

Problem‑solving arises from specialized collaboration and continuous exchange: a cumulative technique that has enabled the survival of the species through medicine, agriculture, architecture, cosmology, and above all, research.This network of thinkers has reshaped the world, guiding it toward increasing awareness and collective consciousness — a true field of forces that, within the global network, becomes simultaneous thought.

Humanity learns to learn.

Learning Again to Live Together

We must rebuild the ability to live together, to create and share common spaces, and to draw benefit from integration and interaction.

Places of gathering, worship, play, creation, encounter, and exchange: spaces that the city must design as essential infrastructure for the physical and mental health of its inhabitants.There exists a profound need for human communication, yet this need has been transferred onto digital devices which, on one hand, amplify long‑distance communication, and on the other, generate the habit of sharing online and increasingly less in person.

Communication becomes telematic, textual, controlled, and ever less verbal.

Reconnecting the City to Human NatureUrban interaction spaces offer the city a possibility of rebirth:

physical encounter interposes itself between digital exchange, recreating the essential condition of human interaction, whose form leads back to the primary nature of the social body. Research consists in creating vibrant places where energy and contact operate within the human body of the city, in symbiosis with the habits and necessities of contemporary relational life.

These are spaces that function as organs of relation, capable of reactivating presence, voice, proximity, and mutual care.

Notes from a Future Past

Notes from a Future Past

The notes from a future past are new thoughts generated from the writings of 1989, Design of New Words, a text composed in parallel with the drafting of my thesis at the University La Sapienza of Rome, under the supervision of architect Franco Purini. In those years, the first computers began to appear in the faculty: rare machines, almost objects to avoid, observed with suspicion rather than curiosity. My research, instead, was nourished by public libraries, by photocopies annotated by hand, by pages that returned to the studio to become writings composed on a typewriter. Today those materials take digital form and are published on the web, crossing a temporal leap that carries them from an analog era into a completely new dimension. At that time it was not easy to find information, and even less could one imagine the existence of something we now call artificial intelligence. For this reason, the reading of the text may appear “artificial” to those who do not know the study practices of that period; for others, instead, it will be natural to recognize the intellectual and physical labor that research required in those years. Now all we can do is adapt our habits to this new practice of collective knowledge, capable of expanding our vision of the world just as happened with the arrival of the computer fifty years ago. I continue to write and think with my own brain, remembering that what is around me is part of me, in every way and form.

The Vitruvian triad — firmitas, utilitas, venustas — remains the most vivid and pulsating contribution of Vitruvius to the history of architecture. It is not a theoretical relic but a breathing structure, a code that continues to shape the way we imagine the construction of the world.Firmitas today translates into environmental and structural sustainability, the use of durable materials, climatic adaptation, and low ecological impact. It is the column that sustains the continuity of life, the memory of the earth, the responsibility toward what endures.Utilitas becomes universal accessibility, spatial flexibility, the ability to welcome different bodies and abilities, and the capacity to transform over time. It is function that does not merely serve but liberates, includes, and opens possibilities.Venustas is not ornament: it is psychophysical well‑being, light, proportion, visual harmony, and the quality of dwelling. It is beauty that heals, that orients, that restores to the human being its cosmic centrality.These three principles change name across the centuries, yet they remain foundational pillars for any society that respects the environment and the life of its members. They are no longer debatable: they must become the priority agenda of every community that wishes to survive its own epoch.Vitruvius asks the architect to know geometry, astronomy, medicine, music, philosophy. This vision anticipates integrated and multidisciplinary design, the need to place different forms of knowledge in dialogue to generate a shared understanding capable of improving the quality of human existence. The synthesis of knowledge — often obstructed by personal interests or cultural discrimination — must become an active gesture, a form of resistance against the true enemies of our daily life, such as the climate crisis, which can no longer be concealed in the face of undeniable evidence.Vitruvius’ connection to the celestial cycles reminds us that there exists a kind of biochemical architecture, in which the orientation of a building can maximize winter solar gain and summer shading. It is proof that architecture is not only matter: it is rhythm, dialogue with the sky, cosmic ecology.What obstructs urban regeneration oriented toward citizens’ well‑being is the ignorance of facts, the daily blindness to what appears before our eyes. Vitruvius — like many today — shares a vision in which beauty is not merely exterior, but founded on respect, truth, and responsibility.

Design of New Words

The Ideal Vitruvian Schemes

Notes from a Future Past

Filippo Lo Presti, 2026

With regard to astrology, Vitruvius’ interest becomes outwardly visible in his discussion of sundials, instruments through which “the east and the west, the south, the north, and the turning of the heavens” may be discerned. Without such knowledge, he observes, “the rules of sundials cannot be understood in any way.” His decision to close the chapter with a programmatic declaration — “I promise, and I hope, to present them in these volumes with the greatest competence and without hesitation, not only to builders but also to all learned men” — reveals a broader ambition: Vitruvius does not address technicians alone, but outlines a dual vision of architecture, where practical knowledge intertwines with a speculative dimension intended for an educated audience.The rules governing sundials underscore their significance in an era that conceived these instruments as projections of the cosmos upon the earth. The shadow cast by a simple gnomon could define a space in correspondence with the planets and in harmony with the “music of numbers” sustaining the geometry of architectural works. Vitruvius consistently preserves this cosmic dimension, much like the priests of Alexandria, who impressed upon the world a trace of their knowledge — a trace that later became a pillar of our cultural tradition.Ultimately, the interaction between arts and sciences, understood as a synthesis of human expression, finds full justification in Vitruvius’ work, albeit across centuries and not without interpretive challenges. The deciphering of hidden terminologies remains an obstacle to the immediate use of his notions, yet it does not diminish the theoretical scope of a work that, despite its fragmentary nature, preserves a complex vision of architectural practice, where technical knowledge rests upon a symbolic and cosmological substratum.

Design of New Words

The Ideal Vitruvian Schemes

Filippo Lo Presti 1989

Poetry and spirituality remain, for the architects of the period, ideal horizons systematically removed, as if they belonged to a region of the intellect that normative practice does not dare to cross. Vitruvius, fully aware of the political fragility of his position, chooses to suspend these dimensions, shifting them to the margins of his discourse: not because he ignores their auric potency, but because he opts for a form of knowledge more easily acceptable to patrons and rulers who are little inclined to engage with speculative or ritual domains.Within this framework, medical knowledge is not a disciplinary ornament but a physiological necessity of construction. Climatic conditions, the orientation of places, and the healthfulness of sites become vital parameters. Vitruvius is firm, almost indisputable, when he states that without such knowledge no healthy dwelling can be built. Medicine, therefore, is not a parallel body of knowledge but an internal organ of architecture, one of its corporeal extensions.Similarly, law is treated through a practical, undogmatic approach. The entire treatise is traversed by an encyclopedic tension, a movement that seeks to provide useful and operative competencies while also veiling, with discretion, forms of knowledge perhaps not fully mastered, though clearly present within the author’s cultural horizon. Vitruvius thus constructs a text that is at once a technical manual and an atlas of collateral knowledge, where what cannot be fully articulated is nonetheless allowed to surface—like a symbolic substratum sustaining the visible structure of the treatise ...

Design of New Words

The Ideal Vitruvian Schemes

Filippo Lo Presti 1989