Palladio is an architect from the late Renaissance who, at the bottom of page 6 of his book Quattro Libri dell’ Archi-tettura, explains how one may arrive at beauty. A first method is to work from a concept, a guiding fundamental idea, thus from large to small. Palladio also indicates a second method, one that starts from the basic elements of the programme which only later seek a unity, thus from small to large. Both methods should be employed simultaneously, so that an organic unity like a human body arises, in which all parts are in balance. ‘Beauty will arise from the form and from the correspondence of the whole with the parts, of the parts with one another and with the whole. Thus the structure will appear as a pure and complete body, in which every part corresponds with the other and all the parts necessarily come together into that which you wish to make.’
