SORTES ARCHITECTII IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VENETO

The scope of this study is a historical investigation of the critical knowledge embodied in the works of professors and professional of architecture. The aim is to show that architecture is in itself a construction and a construing of critical knowledge. This is shown in the production of architectural details which are the result of two componets. One is predominantly manual and operative and is based on the logos of techne, whereas the other is mental and reflective and is based on the techne of logos. The selected case-study is the architectural theory developped by Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761) and the indirect application of its theory in three of the architectural educational settings of the Veneto in the second half of the 18th-century. The title\u27s initial Latin idiom is selected to capture the spirit of the study because it carries the concept of a symbiosis existing between the aim of the study and the selected case study. The reason for this symbiosis is due in part to the fact that the sources which have generated the study and its epistemological model are incorporated in the case-study itself. In a colloquial manner Sortes Architectii can be translated as \u27fate of architects.\u27 However, in this case the translation has to take into account the primeval meaning of the word sors, \u27the joining of many parts in the guise of a meaningful object.\u27 In other words, the latin part of the title indicates the manner in which architects build in order to construe. In the joint, that is the architectural detail, the practical norms (technology) and the aesthetic norms (semiotic) come together in a dialectical antinomy. The detail is the unit of architectural production. Through the joint the construction and the construing of architecture take place. Analogy is the mode of inference used in this process. In the joint the logos of techne and the techne of logos coverge because they share the same logos, i.e. they are analogous. The primeval meaning in the title also indicates what the historical analysis of the case-study is; a construction achieved by the joining of many different parts which is also a construing