The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture

Joseph Rykwert, a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, has contributed to the body of work about architecture a wide-ranging study of the use of the human figure in the discipline, particularly in columns. Rykwert plunges deep into architectural history, tracing the development of the classic orders from Greece to Rome and on through the Renaissance in France and Italy. He says the relationship between the human body and architecture is "deeply ingrained in all recorded architectural thinking." He especially sees a close tie between the body and the column, the essential building block of architectural order.