"Since first the dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin...." (Ruskin p.13)
Venice, La Serenissima, is built to emphasize its domination in the world trade, and the power of its fleet and diplomacy.
Her skyline is seen from far, her churches and towers loom out of the fog. She makes the incoming sailor feel like in a dream, makes every foreigner humble, impresses the world and its rulers and traders with her splendor, finally gives her inhabitants the proud feeling to live in the middle of the world.
Her shape can't emerge without her wealth and her power, but at the same time her wealth and power are not any more possible without their built counterparts.
In a closer look one will detect the skillfulness which is necessary to convey these complex messages in an appropriate way. There are thousands of ways to express wealth, but here obviously the one right way was chosen.
More general it seems on the first glance that the field of goals which architects try to achieve may be restricted and controllable: beauty, usefulness, stability.....; But it is the right way at the very moment to achieve a goal that is the task and that varies infinitely. There is no one precise expression which could be assigned to one goal once and forever, but the expressions change rapidly.
The architects of Venice captured in an extraordinary success what people not only at this time but even still today understand with the term greatness. They could not just simply use famous examples: building pyramids in Venice would no one have been considered as appropriate expressions of wealth and power. "The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal proportions - the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world"(Ruskin p.19). The task is to define the appropriate and successful elements.
One might say that it is simple to have a clear order as to express simple things like wealth and power, and translate the order to built reality. Looking at today's struggle to express simple things like the increasing importance of technology shows that on the contrary it is very difficult to find appropriate forms of expression even for the most obvious seeming facts.
Other Chapters:
2 Venice II
3 Venice III
4 Browsing
5 Blueprint
6 Construction
7 Bigness
8 Lille
9 Literature