The backgrounds
At the 25th of March, 1804, art patron George Beaumont had invited George Dance, Joseph Farington and Samuel Coleridge for dinner. Afterwards, a discussion commenced about the intricate powers required for each of the arts. Coleridge did most of the talking, but Farington noted in his diary only a contribution of Dance with his well-known plea for unshackled architecture:
"Dance said that the Temple at Paestum was only one remove, as architecture, above Stone-Henge. He derided the prejudice of Uniting Designs in Architecture within certain rules, which in fact though held out as laws had never been satisfactorily explained. He said that in His opinion that architecture unshackled wd. afford to the greatest genius the greatest opportunities of producing the most powerful efforts of the human mind." 1
Buildings answer to numerous technical and functional requirements which, though not strict in a mathematical sense, do offer unavoidable constraints to their design. But Dance's remark is not about those issues, for he could not have denied their existence. He is concerned with the arbitrary rules that are formulated to acquire the approval of public taste. Those were the rules that "have never been satisfactorily explained".
From Vitruvius to Vasari
The necessity for those rules was already established in the treatise of Vitruvius, who argued that architecture is a scientia which is completely established on rules or norms that stem from nature2. His definitions of the principles of architecture left little room for personal, artistic contribution. This is not surprising, because his aim was to raise architecture to the level of an intellectual discipline, on a par with the other arts, but the variation in buildings since has shown how elusive such principles are.
The question whether one was allowed to improve upon the rules that pertain to the Vitruvian canon inspired many writers on architecture. Freedom from rules had in light of this discussion been regarded as "caprice" or licentiousness. Giorgio Vasari, for instance, took licence as a measure of the accomplishments of a culture. He embraced the use of invention in terms very similar to Dance's when he commented on licentious use of the canon in the work of Michelangelo, who severed the "bonds and chains" that had confined others before3.
The plea for abolishment of arbitrary rules can thus be understood as a means to introduce invention to the architectural discourse. Invention in this sense is understood as a deliberate search for novelty. According to this reading, the aphorism could be deployed to explain the liberty Dance took in cladding the façade of Guildhall with Gothic and Indian patterns, in applying an entirely new order, styled "ammonite", to the facade of Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall; or in the omission of the architrave in the Ionic order of his first building, the parish church of All Hallows on London Wall. It can also explain why he was among the first to experiment with new building types, new commercial enterprises, new building materials and influences from distant parts of the world . He kept on searching for design improvements, even over designs that had been made decades before.
Left: All Hallows on London Wall, where Dance omitted the architrave in the Ionic order; a remarkable novelty at the time. Right: the "Ammonite Order" invented by Dance.
Does this than mean that rules had to be subjugated to invention? Certainly this is part of the answer, but it is not the whole story. Even for Vasari, licence was not boundless, and although he had not provided any boundaries, he did chastise all who invented "a caso", and created monsters. Dance, too, did not abolish all regulation per se. He "derided rules that had never been satisfactorily explained" and considered instead that "public taste" should be "emancipated from rigid adherence to a certain style". He thus relegates the rules of architecture not just to study of the discourse, but brings them in relationship with a third party, the public that is confronted with its appearance.