Palladio vs Wren: should a building echo Rome or reason?

PALLADIO vs WREN go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.

PALLADIO

A building must obey the eternal proportions of the ancients; my villas breathe the perfect symmetry of Rome reborn.

WREN

Rome is a fine teacher, but I raised St Paul's dome by geometry and calculation, not by copying dead men's columns.

PALLADIO

Calculation without proportion is a machine, not architecture; beauty is measured, and the eye knows when the numbers sing.

WREN

Yet after fire consumed my city, it was mathematics that held that dome aloft, while your temples merely admired themselves in the reflecting pool.

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