Abstract

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant defines the architectonic as the “art of constructing systems.” For him, architectonics is the systematic unity of knowledge according to a principle he identifies as the ends of reason. In the discipline of architecture, the concept of the architectonic has varied understandings: the unity of form of the appearance of the building that is given; or the order of the unity of form that systematizes the appearance as it is grasped; or the principle of the order of the unity of form that is understood. This paper argues that the architectonic in architecture is described by a principle of order of the unity of form, and that this principle is tantamount to Kant’s principle of the ends of reason. This thesis is investigated by relating Kant’s concept of the architectonic to the concept of concinnitas proposed by the fifteenth-century architect and humanist, Leon Battista Alberti. Concinnitas is understood here as the conceptual complement to Kant’s principle of the ends of reason which underlies his architectonic: both are doctrines of the unity of the whole, and both are initiated as an a priori judgment of the immanent “ends of reason” that is inherent to an idea and assures the “systematic unity” of that idea is given as the perfection of the concept which in Alberti’s case is the building’s form. Both interpretations are grounded on formal perfection where the perfection of Kant’s systematic unity of reason finds its complement in Alberti’s unity of form.