Page 117 - Libro Max Cetto

Juan Manuel Heredia

foundation. Throughout his text, Cetto nevertheless revealed his own conception of ar-
chitecture, alluding to and sometimes making explicit the equilibrium required by Alberti
between intellect and emotion (mente et animoque), or between construction technique and
the composition of masses, what Vitruvius had conceptualized in his first book when talk-
ing about the necessary correlation between “practice and theory” (fabrica et ratiotinatione)
20
or meaning and signifier. In an analogue manner, Cetto reiterated the necessary balance
between reason and empathy (Einfühlung) required in architecture. To make clear that he
was not proposing mere dualisms, Cetto, distilling the philosophical and artistic theories
that had nurtured him in Germany, added that “in architecture…the whole is more than
the sum of the parts “and that its beauty “eludes any attempt to analyze it in terms of logic”
since it “does respond primarily to a direct intuition.” Further on, alluding to the inadequate
causal logic of the functionalist-organic motto “form follows function,” he elaborated: “the
relations between purpose and shape, object and form, are too deep to be symbolized by a
biological process and also too direct for intellectual perception.” 21
And in what would appear to be his greatest approach to a definition of architecture,
he simply described it as “a building set among earth and sky, trees, water, and other
22
buildings.” Objective in appearance (architecture as construction), this sketch of a defini-
tion resonated with Martin Heidegger’s famous characterization of human dwelling as being
codetermined by the act of building and “in saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in await-
23
ing the divinities, in initiating mortals.” Focusing on construction and not on dwelling,
Cetto’s definition inserted the human being and his dwelling indirectly, although less
esoterically than Heidegger. This he did right away (although, as we will see, somewhat
equivocally) when making an apology for the Albertian definition of the architect, while
criticizing it for containing a fundamental omission: “From this splendid definition noth-
ing has been omitted except the most essential factor: the conception of space and its
configuration.” 24

Cetto, Space and Dwelling

By mentioning space as the absent ingredient in the Albertian definition of the architect,
Cetto introduced a concept that was never in fact mentioned by Alberti, and which many
modern architects like him considered crucial in any discussion about their work. Cetto had
strong credentials to make this affirmation and “correct” Alberti: not only for having stud-
ied and worked in Germany, where “the conception of space and its configuration” arose
for the first time, but also because he was very close to Sigfried Giedion, one of the leading
twentieth century theorists of architectural space. In his book, Cetto thus made a compact
summary of the development of the concept of space that was clearly derived from Giedion,
suggesting, correctly, that the invention of perspective and Roman baroque architecture
25
lay at the origin of the discovery of space as a fundamental category for architecture.
Cetto also rightly intuited that it was a German author who formally introduced and de-
veloped the concept of architectural space: “To the best of my knowledge, it was August

20 The resolution of which required the architect to have “ingenuity and talent” (ingenio mobile): Vitruvius, Los diez libros
de arquitectura (Barcelona: Iberia, 1997), 124. In the original manuscript: Book 5, Chapter 6, Section 7.
21 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 25.
22 However, at this very moment, Cetto changed the connotations of his definition and, to refer to “architecture,” he used
the German word Baukunst (the art of construction) instead of Architektur.
23 Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, David Farell Krell, ed., (San Francisco: Harper, 1977), 353.
24 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 10.
25 See especially Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, third edition, 1954), 30.

117