ON THE ART OF BUILDING IN TEN...

ON THE ART OF BUILDING IN TEN BOOKS by Leon Battista Alberti, translated Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor (The MIT Press: $16.95, illustrated). This new translation of Alberti’s classic treatise on architecture is the first made directly from the original Latin text, rather than the subsequent Italian version. Written during the mid-15th century, “The Art of Building” advanced the Renaissance beliefs in moderation, proportion and elegance, and became a standard of good taste for generations of architects. Alberti emphasized the need to restrain ostentation, concluding “ . . . anyone who wants to understand correctly the true and correct ornament of building must realize that its principal component and generator is not the outlay of wealth but the wealth of ingenuity.” It’s interesting to speculate how he would react to the garish, overscaled dwellings of contemporary Southern California.